2017 Men’s NCAA Championships: Day 1 Finals Preview

2017 MEN’S NCAA CHAMPIONSHIPS

• Wednesday, March 22 – Saturday, March 25
• IUPUI Natatorium – Indianapolis, IN
• Prelims 10AM/Finals 6PM (Eastern Time)
• Defending Champion: Texas (results)
• Championship Central
• Psych Sheet
• Live stream: Wednesday/Thursday Prelims & Finals, Friday/Saturday Prelims / Friday/Saturday finals on ESPN3
• Live Results
• Heat Sheet (no names)

We’re here at the legendary IUPUI Natatorium in Indianapolis, Indiana for the first night of the 2017 NCAA Division I Men’s Swimming and Diving championships.  There’s only one event tonight, but it should be a race for the ages.

We’ll get to see three heats of the 800 free relay, which will be one of two races contested this week in a timed final format instead of prelims/finals (the other being the 1650).  We’re still waiting to see exact relay lineups, but here’s a quick heat-by-heat preview of what we’ll be keeping an eye on this evening.

Heat one will feature Harvard in lane four, presumably led by freshman sensation Dean Farris, who put himself into the 200 free conversation after blasting a 1:31.56 at the Ivy League championships.  How he looks tonight could be an indication of what’s in store for the freshman for the rest of the week.

The Stanford Cardinal will be swimming out of the middle lane in the second heat.  Stanford has a great distance group this year, led by standouts Grant Shoults, Liam Egan, and True Sweetser.  They’ll be one of several teams in this heat that’ll be fighting to crack the top eight overall.  One of those teams will be Georgia, whose lineup should include Gunnar Bentz, an Olympic gold medalist as part of the USA 4×200 free relay team last summer.

Finally tonight, the big guns will come out.  Heat three projects to be a race between defending champions Texas (lane 7), NC State (lane 4), and Florida (lane 6).  This heat particularly could come down to whether or not Olympians Joe Schooling (Texas), Ryan Held (NC State), and Caeleb Dressel (Florida) swim for their respective teams.  Dressel indicated on Twitter earlier today that’ll be leading off the Gators’ relay, and we’re assuming he’s not just trolling, but we’ll have to wait a bit longer to know for sure.

The NCAA and U.S. Open records stand at 6:08.03 from this same evening last year, but given what we’ve seen from these teams so far this season, that could go down.  Last year was the first time this event was raced on Wednesday evening, instead of the end of Friday’s session, and that paid off immediate results, with three teams under the old U.S. Open record.  Texas went on to win four of the next five events, and steamrolled its way to become the national championships.  The Longhorns are the favorite again this year, but an upset by Florida or NC State could derail some of the momentum and make the rest of the week a lot more interesting.