Are Zone Diving Scores A Good Predictor of NCAA Championship Performance?

A common question comes up every March when the psych sheets for the NCAA Championships are released and we start projecting how the team race will unfold: people want to know how diving will impact the standings.

We always score out the psych sheet, giving a rough indication of how things will fall, with the caveat that it doesn’t include diving.

That’s because the selection process for divers is different than swimmers. Rather than posting scores throughout the season that earn them a spot at NCAAs, the divers compete at one of five Zone Diving Championship meets to earn a berth at the biggest meet of the year.

Given that diving is, in a way, subjective, and the Zone meets usually take place after the women’s NCAA psych sheets have dropped, we don’t incorporate diving into our NCAA Championship predictions. But is it less predictive than swimming?

We’ve attempted to answer that question, or at least draw some conclusions based on 2026, by compiling what is essentially a diving psych sheet and then comparing it to the NCAA Championship results.

Below, find what the psych sheet would look like for each diving event at NCAAs using scores produced at one of the five Zone meets. Alongside each diver is their projected point total based on their seed, their actual NCAA result and point total, and the difference between each of them.

Under each event, we’ve included the “unseeded” scorers, which are the divers who didn’t post a top-16 score at their respective Zone meet, but cracked the top 16 at NCAAs.

Note that we’ve included each Zone score to determine a diver’s seed, but haven’t included their score at the NCAA Championships due to the numbers being different. Zone scoring adds a diver’s prelim and final scores together for one final tally, while at NCAAs, only the final score counts (or the prelim score for those who missed the final).

WOMEN’S 1-METER RESULTS

“Unseeded” Scorers

Notes:

• Top-16 Seeded Divers To Score: 13/16
• The women’s 1-meter proved to be fairly predictable based on the Zone results, as seven of the top-eight seeds coming in made the NCAA final, led by champion Chiara Pellacani. LSU’s Pellacani was the top seed coming in and backed that up by defending her title, edging out South Carolina’s Sophie Verzyl by 0.25 points.
• The biggest outlier was Texas’ Bayleigh Cranford, who placed 3rd at NCAAs after her Zone score didn’t quite crack the top 16 coming in.
• Indiana’s Lily Witte was seeded 9th and ended up placing 27th, while Ohio State’s Michelle Mazzara was 34th after coming in seeded 11th. Looking at both of their dive-by-dive scores between Zones and NCAAs, they scored lower on all six dives in the NCAA prelims, so these were just two ‘off’ performances.

WOMEN’S 3-METER RESULTS

“Unseeded” Scorers

Notes:

• Top-16 Seeded Divers To Score: 12/16
• Similar to the 1-meter event, the women’s 3-meter was very predictable based on Zone results. The top seed, Sophie Verzyl, won the title, and the top six seeds all finished in the top six at NCAAs. Additionally, the top eight seeds all finished in the top nine.
• While the finalists followed the psych sheet, the 10th through 16th-place finishers weren’t as predictable, with the women who took 12th, 13th, 14th and 16th were all seeded outside of scoring position coming in.
• Like swimming, there will always be a few divers who are seeded highly but don’t perform up to that level for various reasons. In this event, Florida’s Camyla Monroy stands out, placing 35th after coming in seeded 10th. Looking deeper into her results, she had two ‘off’ dives in the 3-meter prelims that scored lower than any of her dives at the Zone meet, which resulted in her falling down the standings. She performed well in the 1-meter and platform events, however.

WOMEN’S PLATFORM RESULTS

“Unseeded” Scorers

Notes:

• Top-16 Seeded Divers To Score: 14/16
• Women’s platform proved to be the most predictable event, with 14 of the top 16 seeded divers scoring at NCAAs. The top six finishers were all seeded in the top eight.
• Stanford’s Ellie Cole defended her top seed with a bullet, scoring a meet record 399.80 points in the NCAA final to beat runner-up Daryn Wright (343.45) by 56.35 points.
• Wright was a bit of an outlier, given that her Zone score ranked her 11th coming in, but she pulled off the runner-up finish. Her 343.45 score in the NCAA final was a marked improvement from her Zone final (324.90), resulting in her big jump up in position.
• The biggest drop relative to seed was Ohio State’s Hannah Newbrook, who scored 313.70 in the Zone C final but only mustered 234.80 in the NCAA prelims.

WOMEN’S SCORED PSYCH SHEETS VERSUS ACTUAL

Below, find the scored women’s diving psych sheets total on the left alongside the points each team actually scored at NCAAs.

The results tell us that, for the most part, yes, Zone scores on the women’s side can give us a good indication of NCAA results in diving events.

Minnesota was the top-seeded team on paper, and although they didn’t perform as well as their seed, they still led the way, with Miami (FL) close behind. Purdue was the biggest improver, outscoring their seed by 21 points, while Indiana scored 15 points fewer than projected.

MEN’S 1-METER RESULTS

“Unseeded” Scorers

Notes:

• Top-16 Seeded Divers To Score: 10/16
• It’s important to note off the top that two divers who competed at the Zone B Championships, Georgia’s Matthew Bray and South Carolina’s Charles Bayer, posted scores that ranked in the top 16 and would’ve seeded them to score at NCAAs, but they didn’t qualify due to the depth of Zone B. As a result, they were taken out of the psych sheet.
• Although the men’s events weren’t as predictable as the women’s, the top end of the men’s 1-meter came out pretty close to the psych sheets. SMU’s Luke Sitz held up as the top seed and won the title, and the top four finishers were seeded in the top five, and six of the top-seven finishers were top-eight seeds.
• Texas’ Nicholas Harris was coming in seeded 9th, but pulled out after his first dive in the preliminary round, officially finishing 47th. Three other divers seeded to score finished 30th or worse: Purdue’s Nathaniel Grannis and Tyler Wills, and Florida’s Jesus Gonzalez. On average, the three of them scored 77.77 points lower in the NCAA prelims than they did in their Zone final.
• Utah’s Elias Petersen made the final and ultimately placed 7th after his Zone score had him on the outside looking in coming into the meet. Of the six divers who scored after being ranked outside the top 16, the lowest Zone score belonged to Stanford’s Gunnar Grubbs, who snagged 9th at NCAAs with 343.00 points after his Zone E score was 646.90 (equivalent of 323.45).

MEN’S 3-METER RESULTS

“Unseeded” Scorers

Notes:

• Top-16 Seeded Divers To Score: 11/16
• Similar to the 1-meter event, two divers posted top-16 scores out of the Zone B Championships but didn’t qualify: Georgia’s Matthew Bray and UNC’s Christopher Booler.
• Six of the top seven finishers in the event were seeded in the top nine, so the men’s 3-meter was still fairly predictable at the top end, though not as much as the other events.
• Mizzou’s Collier Dyer and SMU’s Luke Sitz, who both came out of the Zone D Championships, went 1-2 in the NCAA final after coming in as the 7th and 6th seeds, respectively.
• Miami (FL)’s Matteo Santoro had the highest Zone score of 895.55, but ended up 4th at NCAAs, while #2 ranked Moritz Wesemann of USC placed 3rd.
• The Tennessee duo of Bennett Greene and Thomas Ciprick were the 3-4 seeds coming in, and ended up 8th and 9th.
• Florida’s Conor Gesing moved up to 5th as the #10 seed, while his teammate Jesus Agundez fell from the 5th seed to 36th at NCAAs. With Jesus Gonzalez placing 25th after being seeded 12th, the Gators ended up -12 for the event, scoring 14 points after being seeded for 26.
• Texas made hay in this event, going +25 thanks to Nicholas Harris and Luke Forester going 6-7 after coming in unseeded.
• Utah’s Elias Petersen followed up his 7th-place finish in the 1-meter event by taking 12th here, giving him 17 total points after coming in seeded for none.

MEN’S PLATFORM RESULTS

“Unseeded” Scorers

Notes:

• Top-16 Seeded Divers To Score: 11/16
• Purdue’s Tyler Wills and Florida’s Jesus Gonzalez were the top two Zone scorers on platform, and they ended up taking 2nd and 3rd at NCAAs. Those two, along with NCAA champion Emilio Trevino out of Texas A&M, were the only three top-nine seeds to finish in the top nine, showing that this event was more unpredictable than others at the top end.
• Three of the top eight seeds finished well outside the points, with Miami (FL)’s Mohamed Farouk placing 25th as the #5 seed, Tennessee’s Owen Redfearn placing 21st as the #6 seed, and SMU’s Grant Cates placing 27th as the #8 seed.
• Beyond the top three finishers, the rest of the finalists in this event all drastically improved at NCAAs from Zones. LSU’s Carson Paul, Cal’s Joshua Thai and USC’s Laurent Gosselin-Paradis placed 4th, 6th and 7th, respectively, after being on the outside looking in coming in, while Stanford’s Misha Andriyuk took 5th as the #12 seed, and Tennessee’s Bennett Greene snagged 8th as the #14 seed.

MEN’S SCORED PSYCH SHEETS VERSUS ACTUAL

Below, find the scored men’s diving psych sheets total on the left alongside the points each team actually scored at NCAAs.

Compared to the women, there was more variation in the men’s results. Tennessee led psych sheet scoring by a wide margin with 87 projected points, but they ended up getting overtaken by Florida in the meet, as the Gators scored 58 points to the Vols’ 53. All five of the top-scoring teams didn’t perform as well as their seed, the top three of which came out of Zone B.

Two Zone E teams, Stanford and Utah, were two of the top squads that outperformed projections, as the Cardinal put up 21 more points than their psych sheet total, while the Utes went +17. Texas also went +17.

KEY TAKEAWAY

The data tells a pretty clear story. Similar to swimming, at the high-end, the top-seeded divers largely hold their positions or finish in the same range.

In the women’s events, the top seed won the title in all three events, and the top six to eight seeds made up the majority of each final. Things weren’t as clear-cut on the men’s side, but the top seeds still performed well for the most part.

This tells us that the Zone scores are useful in identifying the top contenders in each event. However, on the flip side, beyond the top eight seeds, things are much less predictable.

The back-half scoring positions (10th-16th) were all over the map, and a lot of seeded divers plummeted into the 25th-40th range in the standings, while several unseeded divers moved up and scored points.

This was more so the case for the men. The women were more predictable—on average, 13 of the 16 female divers seeded to score did so, while for the men, 10.67 of the 16 seeded to score landed in the top 16.

There’s also an element of randomness to the events, and due to the fact that Zone scores combine prelims and finals, and at NCAAs, the score is for one round, the NCAA results are more volatile.