2024 Men’s NCAAs: How Did Our Top 20 Recruits Perform As Freshmen?

We’ve already done a deep dive into our recruiting archives, looking at how the top 20 recruits from the high school class of 2020 did after four NCAA seasons. Now it’s time to look back at a more recent recruit ranking: the current year’s freshmen:

Relevant links:

• Way-Too-Early Sophomore Ranks, Class of 2023 Boys
• Junior Ranks, Class of 2023 Boys
• Senior Re-Ranks, Class of 2023 Boys

Naturally, this analysis has a far smaller sample size than the lookback of how the class of 2020 fared over their entire career, 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.

As always, our notes on this data:

• The data included is only individual scoring at NCAAs. That’s not an exact measure of an athlete’s contribution to a program: many of these swimmers (and others not listed) were relay scorers at NCAAs, scored significant points at conference meets and provided great leadership and culture-building for their programs. This data isn’t a perfect analysis of the best recruits – it’s merely a quick look at the data we can compile.
• A college swimming career includes four years of eligibility, and sometimes more. Revisiting scoring after one year is an incomplete analysis of a swimmer’s career – this is not the final word on any of these prospects, and we will revisit this data over the next three seasons to get a more complete evaluation.

The ranks listed below are from our re-rank last summer – they are not current ranks of NCAA athletes. We also do not rank international athletes as recruits, as it’s hard to predict if and when they’ll come to the U.S., and which class with which to include them.

TOP 20 RANKED RECRUITS

HM=Honorable mention

The Hits:

• The top performer by a landslide was #4 ranked Ilya Kharun, who followed up his impressive World Championship performance in the summer by scoring 39 points at his first NCAAs, playing a key role in Arizona State’s first team title. Kharun won the 200 fly as expected, placed 5th in a close 100 fly race, and also scored in the 50 free.
• Two more recruits in the top five hit double-digit points: Will Modglin scored 10 for Texas, touching 1st in the ‘B’ final of the 100 back, and Longhorn teammate Nate Germonprez put up 12 after placing 7th in the 200 IM. Both had impressive freshman seasons as a whole and will be a big part of the future in Austin under new coach Bob Bowman.
• The #2 freshman scorer among the ranked recruits was Jonny Marshall, who was ranked 20th coming out of high school but performed better than expected in his first year at Florida. After sweeping the backstroke events at SECs, he was in the ‘A’ final of both races at NCAAs, scoring 26 points.
• Another Gator, Andrew Taylor, stood out among the Honorable Mentions, as he was the only one of them to score, placing 3rd in the 1650 free for 16 points. Taylor also set a PB in the 500 free at NCAAs (4:13.10) in a time that would’ve scored just last year.
• #3 Scotty Buff, #7 Henry McFadden and #9 Keaton Jones finished off impressive campaigns by scoring as well, with Buff and Jones doing so in two events and McFadden placing 11th in the ultra-competitive 200 free. His prelim time of 1:31.65 would’ve made the ‘A’ final (easily) in 2023.

The Misses:

With three more seasons of eligibility, there are no real misses, but we’re simply looking at swimmers who may have not performed as expected as freshmen.

• Top-ranked Rex Maurer didn’t have a bad season at Stanford, setting best times in his primary events at either the Texas Invite and Pac-12s, but didn’t hit his taper for NCAAs and failed to score.
• It’s generally regarded that it takes male swimmers longer to make an impact in their college careers compared to women, and that proved to be the case among this class. Eleven out of 23 women (47.8%) either in our top 20 ranks or an Honorable Mention who competed for the entire season didn’t score at their first NCAAs, while 19 out of the 27 men failed to put points on the board (70.4%). That includes 12 who didn’t earn an invite.
• Beyond Maurer, the top-ranked recruits who didn’t score were Hudson Williams and Brendan Whitfield, both in the top 10, while seven of the top 19 didn’t earn invites, including #11 Gibson Holmes and #12 Roman Jones.

UNRANKED RECRUITS

And of course, we’ll include which unranked recruits earned NCAA invites and scored points this season – both domestic up-and-comers and international pickups.

DOMESTIC:

• The only real unranked member of the boys’ high school class of 2023 who scored was Michigan’s Colin Geer, a “Best of the Rest” recruit who followed up a PB in the 200 fly at Big Tens (1:41.32) with another in the NCAA consols (1:41.23), placing 13th. Geer’s best time was 1:44.71 at the time of the rankings last year.
• Daniel Diehl finds himself in this group after he graduated high school early and joined NC State for the second semester in January. Diehl, ranked #2 in the boys’ class of 2024, set best times in the prelims of the 200 back and 200 IM at NCAAs, qualifying 12th in both before ultimately placing 15th and 16th, respectively.

INTERNATIONAL:

• Krzysztof Chmielewski came into his first year at USC with some pedigree as an Olympic finalist and World Championship silver medalist, and followed through with 16 points in his freshman season. The Polish native ranked atop the nation for the majority of the season in the 1650 free, and ended up placing 4th at NCAAs. The 200 fly being a vastly different event in yards and meters showed itself as the reigning Worlds runner-up was only 16th at NCAAs, setting a PB in the heats (qualifying 13th).
• Relative to Chmielewski, Jere Hribar was a lesser-known name when he entered the NCAA at LSU, but proved to be an elite sprinter. The Croatian, who won silver in the 100 free at the 2022 World Juniors, broke 19 and 42 in the 50 and 100 free at his debut SECs, and followed up by earning a second swim in the 50 at NCAAs, placing 11th after setting a best of 18.81 in the heats. He also nearly anchored the Tigers to points in the medley relays (both finishing 18th) with 18.5/41.3 splits.

DIVING:

• Minnesota’s YuTong Wang scored more than half of the team’s final tally in his freshman year, making the ‘A’ final of both springboard events for 22 points.
• The other four freshman divers who managed to score all only did so in one event, three of whom got their points on platform. Cal’s Geoffrey Vavitsas had the highest finish among the group, placing 5th for 14 points.

ARCHIVES: REVISITING RECRUIT RANKINGS