2018 Men’s NCAAs: How Did Our Top 20 Recruits Perform As Freshmen?

2018 MEN’S NCAA SWIMMING & DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS

• Wednesday, March 21 – Saturday, March 24
• Jean K. Freeman Aquatic Center – Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Prelims 10 AM / Finals 6 PM (Central Time)
• Defending champion: Texas (3x) (results)
• Psych Sheet
• Championship Central
• Event-by-Event Previews
• Team Power Rankings: Final Edition
• Live Stream
• Live Results

We’ve taken a pretty deep dive back into years-old recruiting ranks over the past two days, and we have one more piece of that puzzle to reanalyze. Luckily, the ranking we’ll revisit today is much more recent: how did our top 20 recruits in the class of 2017 perform as freshmen?

Further reading:

• Men’s Top 20 recruits from 2014 after four NCAA seasons
• Men’s Top 12 recruiting classes from 2014 after four NCAA seasons
• Women’s Top 20 recruits from 2014 after four NCAA seasons
• Women’s Top 12 recruiting classes from 2014 after four NCAA seasons
• Women’s Top 20 Recruits from class of 2017 as freshmen

Naturally, this analysis has a far smaller sample size than our reports from the past two days, so it’s much more difficult to read too much into these numbers. Still, it’s useful to look at which first-year NCAA swimmers had the best performances relative to their recruiting ranks.

The ranks are from our top 20 story from July of 2016. Bear that in mind – a lot of these ranks would have changed if we had ranked them in July of 2017, after their senior years. Our recruiting ranks also only include domestic athletes, as international students are often hard to group into a specific recruiting class, and are generally shrouded in mystery as to when they’ll join an NCAA team, if they do at all.

• Austin Katz was the first of this group to win a national title (though two internationals did as relay members), taking advantage of a wide-open 200 back field. Those 20 points surge him to the top of the list for early scoring returns. This class made a tough choice between Katz and Michael Taylor who came into recruiting season with almost identical backstroke times. Taylor had a better senior year of high school (dropping from 47.1 to 45.5 in the 100), but Katz clearly had the better freshman year in the NCAA. That’s somewhat to be expected, given freshman seem to be more plug-and-play in Texas’s system, while Florida’s program usually has a pretty steep adjustment period.
• Louisville’s Nicolas Albiero is proving to be a great value, scoring among the best in the class from the 18th rank. Behind Katz was a logjam of 20-point scorers, including Ryan Hoffer, Bryce Mefford, Sam Pomajevich and Albiero, along with unranked Zach Yeadon of Notre Dame.
• Ryan Hoffer wasn’t going to win any NCAA titles swimming in Caeleb Dressel‘s event, but he quietly had a very solid meet, even if he didn’t improve his sprint free times.
• While Cal took one on the chin in our look at Class of 2014 recruits earlier this week, their class of 2017 freshmen were outstanding. All 5 of their ranked recruits not only made NCAAs but scored in double digits. That includes Hoffer (26.5), Sean Grieshop (10), Bryce Mefford (26), Trenton Julian (12) and Daniel Carr (13).
• Only five of these guys missed NCAA invites individually. Stanford’s Matthew Hirschberger was the big one, not dropping from the times that got him a #3 rank – but that was just following the trend of his senior year, where he also failed to drop time. And he improved from 2017 to 2018 and was within a second of an NCAA invite in the 500.
• USC’s Jake Sannem went to NCAAs as a relay-only swimmer and scored points on the 800 free relay for the Trojans. He had moderate drops in his 100 and 200 frees as a freshman and ultimately split 1:34.6 at NCAAs.
• Neither Harvard recruit got an individual invite – Corban Rawls or Michael Zarian. Rawls had a bad senior year, but went lifetime-bests in the 50 and 200 free as a freshman. Zarian dropped time in his 400 IM, but making NCAAs in those events is pretty brutal.
• Spencer Rowe had two good drops in his breaststrokes for Auburn at SECs, and was brought to NCAAs as a relay-only swimmer, though he didn’t compete.

And of course, we’ll include everyone’s favorite part: which unranked recruits scored NCAA points as freshmen.

Domestic:

• Check out the time progression on Yeadon, who scored more NCAA points than all but one ranked recruit:
  • July 2016 (when we ranked recruits): 15:09/4:23/1:40
  • July 2017 (end of his senior year): 14:49/4:19/1:37
  • Current (after freshman season): 14:34/4:12/1:36

International:

Diving:

These don’t include relay contributions.