The summer of 2011 will feature a huge meet in the FINA World Championships, but that doesn’t mean it’s too soon to begin looking at the 2012 NCAA season. Over the next few months, we will count down the top 12 teams from last year’s NCAA Championships, along with a few teams that we expect to break through, until we finish with the two defending National Champions from Berkeley. To keep track of all of our season previews, we’ve added a link in the menu bar, just click “College Previews” at the top of the page.
Key Additions: Ivan Capan, Jacob Pearce, David Ingraham, Kyle Dudzinski, Jackson Partin, Charles Putnam
Key Losses: Matt McLean (50 NCAA Points, 2 NCAA Relays), Scot Robison (21 NCAA Points, 4 NCAA Relays), Taylor Smith (7 NCAA Points)
2010-2011 Season Recap: Virginia has had a lot of great seasons in program history, but perhaps none was better than 2011. They nabbed their 4th-straight ACC title, their highest-ever finish at NCAA’s (8th), and by more than 40 points their highest NCAA Point total (200 on the nose). Coming off of great summers where they both earned National Team spots, seniors Matt McLean and Scot Robison. Mclean, bolstered by a sick Conor Dwyer, scored a national title in the 500 free, which was the program’s first since 2000, and Robison scored a top-5 finish in the 200 free.
But Virginia was heavily reliant on their senior class. They have some good young swimmers on the rise, but nobody that is yet of the quality of either McLean or Robison. In all, Virginia graduated 78 of their 90 individual points, and the fastest piece of their four A-Final relays (the 15th-place 200 medley will return intact). The cupboard is note bare, and there’s still a lot of depth in Charlottesville, but it’s unlikely that the 2012 edition of this team will reach as high as last year’s.
Daniec: The future of this team, in terms of individual scoring at least, will be built around sophomore Jon Daniec, who placed 13th at NCAA’s last year in the 500 free. He’s needing to expand his repertoire a bit (he was 24th in the mile, but that still leaves him 13 seconds out of the points). As good as his freshman season was, he had an even better summer. Daniec spent much of his youth in the United States, but was born in Poland and competes for them internationally, so he was ineligible for finals at USA Nationals, but he had the 9th best 400 free time in prelims (tying with National Teamer Andrew Gemmell of Georgia). That time improved his career-best in 2011 by three seconds.
Other Returning Scorers: The Cavaliers had two other swimmers score at NCAA’s last year, all in the middle-distance events. Junior Matt Houser scored 13th in the 200 IM and 14th in the 400 IM. Senior David Karasek, was overshadowed by McLean and Robison’s 4th-and-5th place finishes in the race, but he placed 16th in the 200 free to give Virginia a 3rd scorer in the event.
Karasek will be the anchor of this year’s version of the Virginia 800 free relay that took 2nd at NCAA’s last year. Also coming back for that relay is Peter Geissenger, who last year split a great 1:45.0 on that squad.
Geissenger, who will be a senior this year, is going to be the most important part of keeping this Virginia squad atop the ACC. In his only individual swim at NCAA’s last year, he placed 20th in the 100 fly (46.68). Besides expecting to score in that race next year, he will be the fastest part of all 5 Virginia relays. He swam all 5 last year at NCAA’s, which is a rare occurance, and with McLean and Robison both gone, there’s no reason to believe he won’t do the same next year. Besides his primary butterfly events, he also split as fast as 19.1 in the 50 free, 42.7 in the 100 free, and a 1:35.02 in the 200 free. Those swims will all be hugely important if Virginia wants to get any of their relays into the top 8 this year.
Filling out the Medley: Besides the 800 free relay, which still has the depth to be an All-American type of relay, the Cavaliers could also have a very good 400 medley relay. On the backstroke, they’ll have junior Matthew Murray, who had respectable bests of 47.2/1:44.2 in the two backstrokes last year. This is the leg that will probaly have the biggest competition for relay spots, with sophomore John Murfee having a best of 47.5 in 2011.
On the breaststroke leg, sophomore Taylor Grey is the tops of a very small group. There’s only about three true breaststrokers coming back this year, so there’s a lot of pressure on this group. Grey showed to be a pretty good relay swimmer (he split a 53.98 in the 400 medley), but he’s really more of a distance breaststroker, and this is where the biggest upgrade could be coming from the freshman class. In the 200, which is his better event, he placed 25th in 1:56.75.
Sprinters: Besides Geissenger, Virginia will return junior Australian Tom Barrett in the sprint freestyles. He flat-started 20.2/43.5 last year, but was huge on relays to improve those times to 19.5/42.9. Kasarek, mentioned above as a cornerstone of the 800 free relay, will likely have to step up into the 400 free relay this year as well with a 44.0 flat-start from ACC’s.
More Potential Scorers: Brady Fox, a former National Age Group Record holder, will be entering his junior season. Last year, he had the best prelims time in the 200 back at ACC’s (1:44.0) before falling back to 6th in finals, but he began to show signs of his former self. Last year was his first full season in a few years, after he missed his entire freshman season with a rare, degenerative condition in his back. If he can continue to progress in his return, he should be an NCAA qualifier in the 200 back.
Sophomore Bradley Phillips looks to have a promising future for Virginia. He had a best of 4:19.85 in the 500 free, which would have scored at NCAA’s, but was about eight-tenths off of the cut-line. He’s also a pretty good 400 IM’er (3:50.01).
Freshman Class: Virginia had a lot of money to spread around after the classes they’ve lost the last two years, and they used it to bring in a big, fairly deep class. The top-get, in their biggest-need event, is Croatia’s Ivan Capan. He had a light 2011 summer as he prepared for his big move, but in 2010 he was a European Junior finalist in the 100 and took bronze in the 50. He was also the 50 breaststroke champion at the inaugaraul Youth Olympics in 2010 in Singapore. His sprint breaststroke makes him a perfect compliment to Grey in the breaststrokes – his best meters times convert to 24.3/53.8 in yards in the two shorter distances, both of which would have put him tops on this Virginia team last year. That will be a big boost to those medleys and really allow Grey to focus on the 200.
Capan is also a pretty good sprint freestyler, with 20.7/45.6 converted bests in the 50 and 100.
Oklahoma native Jacob Pearce, who is one of the best recruits out of the state in recent memory, is a great story. He’s not a Dax Hill type where he’s physically huge, but he is a Dax Hill type in that he’s very athletic. He swam as a little kid, but as he got closer to junior high he gravitated more towards track. A friend convinced him to give swimming another try, and despite his time away from the sport, within three years he had broken state records in both the 50 (20.25) and the 100 (44.99) freestyles and become one of the best sprinters in the country. Pearce has outstanding turns that will separate him from other freshmen coming to campus, and he should immediately step onto both of the shorter free relays. See the video of his 44.99 100 free below.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9JZ7bWPXmo&feature=related[/youtube]
David Ingraham out of the Spartaquatics YMCA program, is the most versatile member of this class. He’s already got Olympic Trials cuts in three events, the 200 fly, 200 IM, and 400 IM, where his yards times are: 200 fly (1:47.2), 200 IM (1:48.9), 400 IM (3:53.0). The 200 fly mark is within three seconds of scoring at NCAA’s, which is a reachable time with a good freshman year.
Ingraham also has a good 100 fly (48.9), 100 free (45.7), and 200 free (1:39.1). With that 200 free, he’s going to be competitive for the 800 free relay as a freshman.
The Cavaliers also raided some serious talent from the state of Pennsylvania to bring in two similar swimmers in Tim Maurer and Kyle Dudzinski. Maurer, from the same Hershey club that produced David Nolan, has a 1:39.7 in the 200 free and a 48.7 in the 100 back. Dudzinski out of Pittsburgh goes 1:39.8 in the 200 free but a 48.4 in the 100 back. Dudzinski also has a great butterfly and is the defending Pennsylvania state champion in the 100 fly (49.01).
The depth doesn’t stop there, either. Pearson Gean, and Johnny Germains both go 46’s in the 100 free, and Jackson Partin is another sub-1:40 200 free, as well as a 4:23 in the 500 free.
This class is loaded and one of the better ones in the country in terms of both building depth and filling needs. They’ve got a ton of swimmers from great programs who are on the verge of great things. When you look at this group, you know that at least a few of them are bound to turn into college superstars.
Diving: Diving is not a big part of this Virginia program, though they have just enough to make an impact. Their lone returning diver is senior Briggy Imbriglia. He will be a worth-while point scorer at ACC’s (he was 10th on both the platform and 1-meter last year) after missing the fall with injury. Still, with the platform as his best event, he seems unlikely to be able to crack the NCAA roster this year as a victim of being in the Northeast Zone A, which means that he basically has to win the plaftorm at the zones to make NCAA’s. That seems unlikely with a pair of great young Virginia Tech divers around.
The Cavaliers do bring in a very good freshman diver this year in JB Kolod (another one out of Pittsburgh). He was the Pennsylvania high school runner-up last year, and among his other accomlishments took 4th in the 16-18 age group at Nationals on the 3-meter.
2011-2012 Outlook: This team is going to take a step backward this year. With their two big losses, it would be hard not to. But with the way that things are developing for Virginia and coach Mark Bernadino, it’s definitely a case of a step-backward to take a step-forward in the long term. Their free relays should take a small slide, but that will be made up for by some improved medley relays. They’ll be in the typically-tight group at NCAA’s between 10th and 14th, with somewhere around 120 points and it’s a toss-up from there as to where they fall. By 2014, It’s a safe bet that they’ll be back in the top 8, though.
Correction: for Jacob Pearce, you mean he went 44.99, not 49.99 in the 100 free.
Oops, sure do. Good catch, thanks Eric.