On this week’s episode of Open Turn, Braden Keith and Garrett McCaffrey try to stick to three topics of discussion. The first topic is this week’s SwimSwam Poll of the Week brought to you by A3. With the recent admission of guilt by Lance Armstrong, performance enhancing drugs are a major topic of discussion lately. Most of our viewers think the top swimmers are clean, but how do we know for sure? Are there holes in the testing process? How are the processes different depending on where the athlete is training/competing? Let us know what you think by leaving your comment or simply voting in our Poll of the Week:
Loading ...Braden and Garrett also tackle some college swimming topics. They start with Braden’s recent power rankings, get side tracked on a superstars of college swimming topic, and finish up discussing the possibility of new recruiting rules. All that on this week’s Open Turn!
You guys probably shouldn’t have named a name if you didn’t mean to name names.
I don’t see USC winning any relays, do you? The breast and fly just aren’t at the elite level and I don’t think they have 4 top free sprinters. I guess that does just leave it at Michigan and Cal. Still, I think Michigan is going to have to challenge through their individuals, because I don’t see their relays being that strong either. Their back is ok, but their breast isn’t great. They are also a bit short on sprint freestylers. If only their were a 4×500 FRR …
What am I missing?
USC has a really really good shot at winning the 4×200 free relay. Quintero, Morozov, Coulapaev, and Bobrosky/any of there other 1:35 high or 1:36 low guys flat start…
Vlad not really a 200 Free guy but USC has others that can fill the spots…Plus he’s more valuable in some of the other “sprint” relays. Question for both individual as well as the relay spots will be, what will he swim – free, back, breast?
So you think Morozov is going to miss out on one of the shorter relays? Either way, you’re right. They should be in the mix. Woulda been 3rd without a DQ last year. There’s still Cal and TX to deal with, though.
I don’t see Vlad doing the 200 Medley. USC isn’t stocked with sprint strokers. Put him on the 800 free relay where he’ll split a 132 or 133.
The fastest freestyle relays wpuld not look good for Auburn this year with 2 top tier sprinters?
I’ll tell you what you’re missing, especially in the medley’s. To say that our breaststroke is a weak point is pretty ignorant taking into account Bruno Ortiz’s 50 splits at NCAAs last year and at the Hawkeye Invite this past December where he split a 23.2. That time would have been the fastest in all of Div 1 last year. Also, Richard Funk had a great swim at SMU classic splitting a 52.3 breast on the 4 medley– take into account that that is an in season swim. As for our sprint freestylers, Turk is an exceptional anchor for the medleys. 8 Free relay also has numerous options. That alone accounts for 3/5 relays. Count the Wolverines out and NCAAs is going to be a surprising ride.
Ignorant is right; I didn’t realize Ortiz was so quick in the breasts! Touché, my friend.
I’m not counting Michigan out, but I am saying they are up against a team that took 1st or 2nd in each relay last year. Come to think of it, they’ve taken 1st or 2nd in 13/15 relays over the past 3 years.
NCAAs is always a surprising ride! Just bought my ticket 3 days ago!
Very interesting – perhaps the probable choice would be to use Bruno in the 200MR and Funk in the 400MR.
Justin – would you have any color on what the Cal medley relays will probably look like this year?
Shouldn’t Arizona at least be in the medley relay conversation?
Yes, they should. Giles Smith, Mitchell Friedemann, and Kevin Cordes are arguably the best front three in the country, Cal and Michigan included. If they had Tandy this year (instead of next) they’d be the favorites hands-down.
When you talk of the signing date they are inviting problems if they go any earlier than late fall. It already has caused some that it takes away the carrot that some need thru their Sr. Yr..how many have seen some let up when they know things are set. Some just think that next year the college coach will wave that magic wand that you see in “Pinocchio”or”Cinderella” and all will be well next year. There are are many scholarships not just the top 20 teams. It was better in the spring like before but the present system allows the coach to mainly concentrate on the team with much les time consumed during the season and starting on the next group in the spring. The proverbial carrot is one of those important piarts of swimming a sport that relies so much on training in a serious manner. So much is driven by the revenue sports of Football and
B-ball. That goes for picking the Olmpic Team to soon.
I am not advocating an early signing period but do you really want to recruit an athlete who’s “carrot” disappears when they are admitted to college? Doesn’t sound like someone who will deliver four years of improvement…..
As a swimmer who just went through the recruiting process for a D1 school, I think that people seem to be forgetting about the swimmer and their opinion. Yea sure it would be great to know where you’re going earlier, but i know for me July-August was stressful. With all the calls and coaches contacting me, I felt overwhelmed. I can’t imagine trying to deal with that an extra year earlier. That just seems incredibly stressful, especially during your junior year when academics and tests like SAT or ACT are important as well. So really it would just be adding to the stress and the pressure that juniors already face.
Re: Power Rankings
Very much appreciate that swimswam is trying to rank based on the metric that matters: NCAA finish. Collegeswimming and swiminfo polls are a sham. Might as well just survey uSA Today readers for their opinions on the swim rankings while they are at it. Total embarrassment on their part.
One thing. Ok two things….1. don’t blow off Stanford jr college. Biig mistake. When their guys come out and start talking them up then yeah they should be ridiculed. But to just write them off, and in favor of Michigan, is a bad bad idea. Playing with fire is fun, until you get burned. The administration at Stanford announced their intent to keep the pressure on to maintain the status quo with the men’s program with the promotion of Ted rather than a dedicated coaching search(think the Streak, but try not to vomit when thinking ‘streak’ and ‘Stanford students’ in the same sentence). They have the potential to win it every year, but just back down in favor of an assured, smaller trophy. God help us if Meehan has success with the girls and jumps to the men’s squad. It would be quite a show handing the NCAA title back and forth across the bay every other year like it was the Axe. Why would he be more likely to take the Cardinal to number one at NCAAs? Well, thats number….2. If you want to know where the top few teams will end up, look to the top; upwards; kings of the mountain; the COACHES. It is ALL about strategy. More specifically, it is all-about how they approach a season, and what they value. It is clear that the sport has evolved to where many can coach swimmers to fast times in a club setting, where specific meets are de-valued in favor of focusing on season-best, or annual-best, or personal-best times. In a college championship meet setting, with set roster sizes, these goals fall by the wayside, replaced by the need to perform at a high-level(not necessarily best times or wide-margin victories) across the board, and limit deficiencies rather than ride strengths. The game is all about who can squeeze the most blood from the proverbial 18-man rock. How the coaches approach this varies, and many stick to what they know. Variables include but are by no means limited to: when to taper and/or shave and how many times to taper in a season, yardage and swimming/weights ratio, training trip philosophy, dual meet rest, sacrificing swimming fast all year for high rankings and/or morale boost, placing emphasis on top individuals vs. bottom ones, conference importance, big dance qualifying, etc. Etc. and on and on. The coach who employs the best mix of all variables wins. Boom. That’s the secret. And many of the top coaches have either chosen the wrong set of ingredients or deliberately sabotaged their team’s chances to win NCAAs for other, less substantial gains in the short-term – you can decide what to call it depending on your level of knowledge about the top coaches and perhaps, your particular predilection towards or against healthy cynicism(some people actually believe that ‘cynic’ is a four letter word haha sorry had to throw that in there). One coach has it together at the moment, despite having drawn in less talent, for years now, than several other notable schools. Try to think of reasons why schools like Stanford and Texas don’t win very year. You will inevitably be led back to specific coaching decisions that affect the season’s strategy. For example, the Streak, or u$c swimming fast year round but unable to taper big, or Bottom unable to utilize talent in a team sense aka early 2000s Cal tapering for Stanford dual meets, or Arizona swimming faster mid-year to ensure high year-round rankings – not to mention turning over swimmers like they were hotcakes, or Texas refusing to innovate and relying on the out-dated mid-distance train everyone like 200 freestyles method, or Auburn sending swimmers off left and right with horror stories about the coaching abuse and lack of professionalism, and the list goes on. Things will inevitably change, but these trends are too hard not to spot, and they dictate the success, or lack-thereof, of their respective teams, year-in and year-out, like clockwork. Durden and Meehan chose the hard route to winning. To put it most simple terms: they sacrificed rest, duals, rankings, vacation, conference, and more in favor of the NCAA titles. It can be risky, obviously, as one could imagine, if you sacrifice all the little wins and then DON’T get the big one, you are left with nothing to show for years of work. Looks like the gamble, the risks, the sacrifices, the Strategy, has paid off. But, things will change. If I can see trends that are so, so clear, imagine what the guys who are paid to love and follow and coach NCAA swimming are seeing. They will adjust, but until then they are what they have repeatedly done, and I wouldn’t expect anything new until, you know, one of them takes the hard route and tries something new.
/Sorry for the big block of text I spoke this into my phone while watching tennis this morning.
Yes, a few paragraphs would of helped as I was drinking a cappuccino in a cafe in San Francisco and watching CNN and on SWIMSWAM all at the same time. I am a Cal Bear fan— couldn’t be a greater time, right?
But I am concerned our string of NCAA’s could end this year. I see so much improvement in top recruits going to other schools albeit Cal always does well here, obviously. I did not like seeing Meehan going_–especially to our top rival. So what do you think Yuri can provide this year and in the near future?
For Cal’s men, losing Messershmidt for this year kind of muffs up some of the options in the relays because Shields cannot swim in every event. But maybe it won’t be so bad as Cal seem to be performing roughly as usual. We will learn a lot more of the Men Bears real soon.
The women’s team is still trying to bring down sprint times and we won’t get a lot of points in distances and diving at NCAA’s. Don’t know if Leverenz, Bootsma, Pelton, Tran and, to a lesser extent, Naze, Pielh, Breed, Driscoll and Acker can pull it out. Georgia, Stanford, USC, Arizona, Texas A&M, among others should be right there.
Now, hate to be greedy, but if Missy would of done an EE (Early entry to Berkeley), I’d pick the Women Bears for the title easily. But we all can see how much she wanted to swim her last year in High School with her friends.
I know I got a off topic here, but you seem to have a intelligent grasp of Collegiate swimming, and I am interested in your thoughts as to the above.
Thanks!