2023 NCAA DIVISION I MEN’S SWIMMING & DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS
- March 22-25, 2023
- Jean K. Freeman Aquatic Center | Minneapolis, MN
- SCY (25 yards)
- Meet Central
- Psych Sheets
- SwimSwam Preview Index
- SwimSwam Pick ’em Contest
- Live Results
- Day 2 Prelims Live Recap
For those unfamiliar with swimming terminology, the concept of “Ups” and “Downs” is a good way to track which teams performed best at prelims. In prelims, swimmers qualify for one of two finals heats: the top 8 finishers make the A final, and places 9th through 16th make the ‘B’ final. In finals, swimmers are locked into their respective final, meaning a swimmer in the B heat (spots 9-16) can only place as high as 9th or as low as 16th, even if they put up the fastest or slowest time of any heat in the final.
With that in mind, we’ll be tracking “Ups” and “Downs” after each prelims session. “Up” refers to swimmers in the A final, and “Down” refers to swimmers in the B final.
TEAM SCORES THRU DAY 1
- Arizona State, 68
- NC State, 66
- California, 62
- Florida, 60
- Indiana, 58
- Texas, 50
- Louisville, 42
- Auburn, 40
- Stanford, 38
- Alabama / Tennessee, 26
- –
- Virginia, 22
- Georgia, 20
- Notre Dame, 10
- Virginia Tech / Texas A&M, 8
- –
- Missouri, 6
- Wisconsin / Michigan, 4
- –
- Ohio State, 2
The Cal Golden Bears had an excellent preliminary showing on Thursday, positioning themselves to take over the team lead by the end of the night with five swimmers qualifying for an ‘A’ final.
The Bears put two swimmers up in both the 200 IM and 50 free, led by Destin Lasco, who produced the fifth-fastest swim in history to qualify first in the 200 IM, and Bjorn Seeliger, who enters the 50 free final seeded second.
Jack Alexy, who wasn’t seeded to score on the psych sheets in 24th, jumped up into the 50 free championship final with a massive best time of 18.77 to advance in fifth.
Trailing Cal, Texas put up the second-most projected points based on prelims results with four ‘A’ finalists and two more in consols.
The Longhorns had David Johnston and Luke Hobson qualify 1-2 in the 500 free, with Hobson, although he was third last year, having come in as the 20th seed and out of scoring position.
Carson and Jake Foster gave Texas two men up in the 200 IM ‘A’ final, while NC State went 2/5, including three in the 50 free ‘B’ final, to rank third in terms of prelims points.
Texas put three divers in scoring position in the 1-meter event, inching them ahead of Cal in the prelims points.
DAY 2 UPS/DOWNS
Credit to Andrew Mering for running the numbers.
| All | 500 Free | 200 IM | 50 Free |
1 mtr Diving
|
|
| Texas | 5/4 | 2/1 | 2/1 | 0/0 | 1/2 |
| California | 5/2 | 1/1 | 2/0 | 2/1 | 0/0 |
| Florida | 3/2 | 2/0 | 0/1 | 1/0 | 0/1 |
| Texas A&M | 3/0 | 0/0 | 1/0 | 0/0 | 2/0 |
| NC State | 2/5 | 1/1 | 1/1 | 0/3 | 0/0 |
| Arizona State | 2/4 | 0/1 | 1/3 | 1/0 | 0/0 |
| Stanford | 2/0 | 0/0 | 1/0 | 0/0 | 1/0 |
| Tennessee | 2/0 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 2/0 | 0/0 |
| Virginia Tech | 1/2 | 0/0 | 0/1 | 1/0 | 0/1 |
| Ohio State | 1/2 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 0/1 | 1/1 |
| LSU | 1/1 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 1/0 | 0/1 |
| Indiana | 1/1 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 0/1 | 1/0 |
| Wisconsin | 1/0 | 1/0 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 0/0 |
| Georgia | 1/0 | 1/0 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 0/0 |
| UNC | 1/0 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 1/0 |
| USC | 1/0 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 1/0 |
| Auburn | 0/2 | 0/2 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 0/0 |
| Notre Dame | 0/1 | 0/1 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 0/0 |
| Georgia Tech | 0/1 | 0/1 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 0/0 |
| Princeton | 0/1 | 0/0 | 0/1 | 0/0 | 0/0 |
| Louisville | 0/1 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 0/1 | 0/0 |
| Virginia | 0/1 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 0/1 | 0/0 |
| Miami | 0/1 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 0/1 |
| Pittsburgh | 0/1 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 0/1 |
SCORED PRELIMS
- Texas, 96
- Cal, 91
- NC State, 55
- Florida, 51
- Arizona State, 45.5
- Texas A&M, 39
- Tennessee, 33
- Ohio State, 32
- Stanford, 28
- Virginia Tech, 24.5
- Indiana, 24
- LSU, 20
- Wisconsin, 14
- Georgia / UNC, 13
- –
- Auburn, 11
- USC, 11
- Notre Dame / Louisville, 4
- –
- Georgia Tech / Princeton, 3
- –
- Virginia / Miami (FL), 2
- –
- Pittsburgh, 1
Texas outperformed their psych sheet score by a whopping 56.5 points in just three events, while Cal also hit double digits, largely due to the swim from Alexy.
At the other end of things, Louisville, Florida and Tennessee were all lower than projected by more than 30 points, while ASU wasn’t far off at 26.5.
Updated with diving, Texas projects to pull within seven points of Cal at night’s end, not including the 200 free relay.
The biggest mover in diving was Ohio State, who project to score 29 points in the 1-meter event.
SCORED DIVING PRELIMS (1-METER)
- Ohio State, 29
- Texas A&M, 26
- Texas, 25
- Indiana, 17
- Stanford, 16
- UNC, 13
- USC, 11
- Florida, 6
- LSU, 5
- Virginia Tech, 4
- Miami (FL), 2
- Pitt, 1
SCORED PRELIMS + ACTUAL
- California, 153
- Texas, 146
- NC State, 121
- Arizona State, 113.5
- Florida, 111
- Indiana, 82
- Stanford, 66
- Tennessee, 59
- Auburn, 51
- Texas A&M, 47
- Louisville, 46
- Ohio State, 34
- Georgia, 33
- Virginia Tech, 32.5
- Alabama, 26
- Virginia, 24
- LSU, 20
- Wisconsin, 18
- Notre Dame, 14
- UNC, 13
- USC, 11
- Missouri, 6
- Michigan, 4
- Georgia Tech / Princeton, 3
- –
- Miami (FL), 2
- Pitt, 1
indiana’s divers didn’t show up today, that’s their sole hope of jumping into the top 5
Agreed thought 2-3 would make in each board.
Marchand will go at or under 1:36.50 tonight in the 200 IM
1:36.22
Was I right or was I right?
1 Marchand, Leon SO ASU 1:38.33 1:36.34N 20 r:+0.66 21.09 44.07 (22.98)1 Marchand, Leon SO ASU 1:38.33 1:36.34N 20 r:+0.66 21.09 44.07 (22.98) 1:11.73 (27.66) 1:36.34 (24.61)Texas with 1/2 down in diving, projected to score 25 points moves the seeded scores to:
Cal-153
Tex-146
plus 34-40 points for Cal on the relay and probably 0 for Texas
Genuine thought: Should Corbeau scratch the 200IM tonight? The brings Vines up (so projected scoring for Texas is the same), and makes him more fresh for the three relays he has left, especially the 200 free relay tonight.
Guess it depends whether he/they thinks/think he can get close to his best time of 1:40 and move (way) up from 16th.
Interesting thought. I think he runs the double though. Texas doesn’t usually have a difficult time finishing NCAAs – taper carries them through the entire way. He’s got 2IM 50free, 3 100 breasts, 2 200 breasts and 100 free left. I think he can handle it.
It would be interesting to see the percentage of swimmers who are 1st, 2nd, etc. in prelims who end up getting 1st, 2nd, etc. in finals. So if say lane 4 in finals wins say 40% of the time, is 2nd 30% of the time, is 3rd 20% of the time, and is 4th the other 10% of the time, then instead of projecting them at 20 points, they would be projected to get 20*0.4 + 17*0.3 + 16*0.2 + 15*0.1 = 17.8 points. It might matter when a team gets a lot of 8th places vs. 9th places; the former can only move up, while the latter can only move down.
This could make a particularly big difference in… Read more »
Random math question since I suck at it. Would the total points projected from 1-8 seeds add up to the total points available in A final with this model? I’m assuming it would but if it didn’t it would make projecting a little weird
Good question! Yes, if you do it the way I suggested in the first paragraph. Essentially, you’re taking a weighted average over all possible outcomes (who gets 1st, who gets 2nd, etc.), and since every possible outcome has the correct number of points, taking the average doesn’t change this.
The idea in the second paragraph to “just guess that everyone in the B-final gets 12.5th place” was more of a throwaway, and not how I’d suggest doing it. If you did, you’d have to give everyone one-eighth of the total points at offer, which is 4.625 because of the extra point for 9th
I love this idea. Im always a fan of getting better prediction.
Basing the expected results across, say the last 10 years of NCAA results, this would likely converge sufficiently to have a slightly better statistic.
To be the devils advocate, each event is unique and there are some swimmers are more likely to win or very likely to medal while others are a wash 1-8. IE, you could ‘expect’ Leon to win the 2im while anyone can realistically win the 500.
My point being that it is always murky. We know projections are just guessing anyway so the marginal gain from doing a weighted average on that 500 might be washed by some outliers either way like Leon’s events.
when was the last time Michigan had no individual scorers on day 2? Probably in the 1980s
And just their luck they just extended Bottom’s contract, so lots more to look forward to in the coming years
(maybe diving is missing from this, which isn’t complete yet?)
and appears Texas has 3 divers to 0 for Cal, so if Texas gets close to their historical diving points, meet is pretty close at end of the night. Thru 4 of the six rounds, Texas divers were in places 6, 11, 12 or 1/2 equivalent – https://secure.meetcontrol.com/divemeets/system/livestats.php?event=stats-8962-7180-1-Started
Texas divers 4, 10, 14 after prelims; only 4th place can change
Can someone explain this, using TN as an example: per the psych sheets, the only expected points were in the 50: Crooks and Caribe were seeded #1 and #4. Crooks finished 1st, Caribe 6th – so the only point gap is from #4 to #6, which is a 2 point differential. How do you come up with -31.5?
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