2022 Men’s NCAA Championship Pre-Selection Psych Sheets Released

2022 Men’s NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships

• Wednesday, March 23 – Saturday, March 26, 2022
• McAuley Aquatic Center, Atlanta, Georgia
• Pre-Selection Psych Sheets

The pre-selection psych sheets for the 2022 Men’s NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships were released Tuesday morning, with the meet to start just over two weeks from now on March 23 at the McAuley Aquatic Center in Atlanta.

• See the pre-selection psych sheets here.

While the pre-selection psych sheets don’t confirm who has qualified for the meet, it does tell us what swimmers are planning to race at the meet.

SwimSwam will calculate where the projected cutline should be this morning.

The official list of qualifiers, an alternates list and eligible relays is expected to be published on Wednesday.

Relative to the women’s meet, the men’s entries for most of the top names appear to be more clear-cut with fewer options for maneuvering. But at first, some of the more notable entries include:

• Matt Sates, Georgia – 500 free/200 free/200 fly
• Kieran Smith, Florida – 500 free/200 free/200 back
• Drew Kibler, Texas – 50 free/200 free/100 free
• Leon Marchand, ASU – 200 IM/400 IM/200 breast
• Carson Foster, Texas – 200 IM/400 IM/200 back
• Brendan Burns, Indiana – 100 back/100 fly/200 fly
• Dean Farris, Harvard – 50 free/100 back/100 free
• Hugo Gonzalez, Cal – 200 IM/400 IM/200 breast

All of the names above had two clear events they were projected to enter and a third that was somewhat up in the air. Carson Foster and Kieran Smith have opted for the 200 back on Saturday, with Foster opting not to swim the 200 fly and Smith forgoing the 100 free. Matt Sates will race the 200 fly (could’ve done 100 free), and both Leon Marchand and Hugo Gonzalez will race the 200 breast (could’ve done 200 fly) on the final day. Texas’ Drew Kibler has opted for the 50 free over the 500 free on Day 2.

Indiana’s Brendan Burns has opted for the 100 back and 100 fly on Friday, rather than the 200 back and 200 fly on Saturday, while Harvard’s Dean Farris will swim the 100 back over the 200 free on Day 3.

INDIVIDUAL QUALIFIERS

The NCAA invites the same number of overall swimmers every year. 270 men and 322 women make the meet every year. Depending on how many of those 270/322 athletes qualify in multiple events, the numbers can range some as to how many entries in each event get invited. Last year, the first year under this selection system, roughly 29 men and 38 women were invited in each event.

The simple part: “A” qualifiers get in automatically. Hit an “A” cut, and you’re set. Then the NCAA fills in the remaining spots with the next-fastest “B” cuts.

Here’s a step-by-step process for how the NCAA selects the 270 men and 322 women for each year’s invite list:

1. 35 of the men’s spots and 41 of the women’s spots are set aside for divers, who qualify for the meet at zone competitions closer the NCAA Championships. That leaves 235 men’s spots and 281 for the women.

2. Every “A” cut put up this season is added.

3. The next fastest swimmers in each event are added until every event has the same number of entries. For example, if the 50 free were to have the most “A” cuts of any event with 10, then every other event would get swimmers with the top 10 fastest times in.

4. Finally, one entry is added to each event to keep the entries per event even. This process is repeated until all of the swimming spots (235 for men, 281 for women) are filled. Keep in mind that as more rows are added, swimmers will start to double and triple up. The #1 seed in the 200 back might be the #15 seed in the 100 back – as the 15th row of swimmers is added to each event, she’ll be added to the 100 back list, but won’t take up another one of the 281 invite spots, as she already has her official invite.

5. The final row of swimmers added won’t come out exactly even. In the final row, the swimmers with entry times closest to the NCAA “A” cut will get added first, and when the 235th man or 281st woman is added, the process stops. So the 100 fly could have 38 women and the 200 fly 39 women – that would mean the 39th 200 flyer was closer to the NCAA “A” than the 39th 100 flyer and therefore won the ‘tie-breaker’ for the final spot.