In the preliminary round of the men’s 1-meter event, the first competition with scoring implications at the 2015 SEC Swimming & Diving Championships, the Auburn Tigers have gotten a huge boost by earning three of the possible 8 spots in the final of the men’s 1-meter.
Finals will be held later, in the same session with the 200 medley and 800 free relays, but there was a lot of interest already in the preliminary round of diving. Missouri junior Clark Thomas was the top qualifier, but he held that same position after prelims last year before sliding to 7th in finals (though his score didn’t really get worse, everyone else just got better).
This is actually a slight change of schedule from last year’s meet, where the 3-meter event was the first day’s diving event for the men. In that event, Auburn earned 49 points from the A-final combination of Fraser McKean and John Santeiu, but with three into the A-final this year (Fraser McKean, Pete Turnham, and Justin Youtsey), Auburn is assured of a minimum of 69 points just from the A-final (although last year, they had four divers entered instead of three, so that grabbed them an additional 37 points).
The B-Final and C-Final will not actually be competed, and rather places 9-16 will be scored based on results of prelims, meaning that the first points are already locked up at this meet.
But maybe the biggest news comes from the Georgia camp, who got freshman Ian Forlini into this A-Final. The Georgia men didn’t have any male divers make an A-final at SEC’s last season (and more importantly, didn’t have any at NCAA’s either), so this will be a huge boost to their hopes of winning the SEC title.
Florida, meanwhile, had only one scoring diver, Zach Hernandez, who picked up 5 points. They didn’t have very strong diving last season when they won the SEC team title anyway, but even that result is a downgrade for the Gators.
Tentative scoring, without results of the A-Final:
- Texas A&M – 47
- Kentucky – 20
- South Carolina – 20*
- Alabama – 17
- Tennessee – 16*
- Missouri – 13*
- Georgia – 11*
- LSU – 6*
- Florida -5
- Auburn – 0*
* – team still has a diver in contention in the A-Final
Full men’s 1-meter prelims results, from DiveMeets.com:
