32 Men’s Teams Qualify Relays for 2022 NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships

2022 MEN’S NCAA SWIMMING & DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS

• Wednesday, March 23 – Saturday, March 26, 2022
• McAuley Aquatic Center, Atlanta, Georgia
• Updated Psych Sheets
• Live Results
• Pick ‘Em Contest

There are a lot of ways to measure the success of collegiate swimming programs on a holistic level. From the overly-simplistic (points scored at NCAAs) to the complex (improvement curves and attrition rates), swimming is a sport made to analyze a team’s success.

One of my favorites, though, is looking at the number of relay qualifications that a school has.

To me, when a school starts to get 5 relays qualified for the NCAA Championships, it enters them into a special level of depth among NCAA teams. It means they need at least 5 really good swimmers, and more typically 7 or 8. It means they’re beginning to put together some level of depth and not just relying on a single star or two to carry them.

To get even a single relay qualified for the NCAA Championships is a huge turning point for a lot of programs.

Below is a chart of which teams have made which relays for the 2022 Men’s NCAA Division I Championships.

How Relays Qualify for NCAAs:

• The simplest way to qualify relays for NCAAs is to hit the “A Cut,” formally known as the “Qualifying Standard” in a relay.
• Once a team has an “A” standard relay, they can also enter all relays in which they have a “B” standard, formally known as a “Provisional Standard.”
• Teams with four individual swimmers qualified can swim relay events in which they have at least a “B” standard.

Some Observations:

• 32 different men’s teams have qualified relays for the NCAA Championships. Like we saw at the women’s meet, that’s an increase from last year, when only 27 teams qualified relays. The Havard and UNLV men are the only mid-major teams (men or women) to qualify a relay for D1 NCAAs this season.
• 22 of those teams will send all 5 relays. Two, Kentucky and UNLV, will only send 1 relay each.
• 12 schools hit Qualifying Standards (“A” cuts) in all 5 relays. That’s an increase of only 1 from last season.
• Last year, the Stanford men had 1 “A” cut relay and 2 “B” cut relays. This year, they have 5 “A” cut relays – reflective of the observed improvements they’ve had this season under 3rd year head coach Dan Schemmel.
• Even after a tumultuous season that saw Notre Dame lose their best swimmer Jack Hoagland to injury and their head and associate head coaches leave the program a month into the season, the Irish have been resilient: they qualified 4 relays for NCAAs (all but the 800 free). That is a huge improvement from last season, when they qualified only 1 relay for NCAAs – and that 800 free relay was only a Provisional Standard.
• Like their women’s team, Auburn’s men went from 0 relays last season to 5 this year under first year head coach Ryan Wochomurka. Only 1, the 400 free relay, didn’t hit the “A” standard.

2022 Men’s NCAA Championships Relay Qualifiers