SwimSwam’s Pre-Season 2024 Men’s NCAA Champions Picks

Braden Keith, James Sutherland, Anya Pelshaw, Robert Gibbs, YanYan Li, Riley Overend, Spencer Penland, and Reid Carlson contributed to this report. 

It’s the beginning of the 2023-24 NCAA season, which means it’s time to make our early picks for who this season’s NCAA champions are going to be. Like last year, many of the SwimSwam writers debated who they think will win each event and listed them in the table below.

• Women’s Pre-season NCAA Champions Predictions

Compared to our women’s picks, there’s a little less uniformity. However, at a quick glance that might not look true, because the writers unanimously picked the same swimmer to win in more individual events than the women’s side.

Writers picked Leon Marchand to win the 200 IM/400 IM like he did last year. He’s the NCAA and U.S. Open record holder in both events by a significant margin, so that’s understandable. As is everyone picking Jordan Crooks to win the 50 freestyle, Destin Lasco for the 200 back, and Luke Hobson for the 200 free. All three have hit times in their respective events that make them clear favorites in those events: Crooks broke 18 seconds in the 50 free, Lasco scared Ryan Murphy‘s American record, and Hobson is the latest member of the sub-1:30 club.

Ahmed Hafnaoui is the final unanimous pick in an individual event. All nine writers picked him to win the 1650 freestyle. Hafnaoui had an incredible World Championships after training at Indiana for the last year, winning gold in the 800/1500 free and silver in the 400, making the top 10 all-time list in each.

Last season, Josh Liendo was the only first year–men or women–picked to win an event. But we picked Bella Sims to win three events on the women’s side and on the men’s, we chose Hafnaoui to win the 500/1650 free and Ilya Kharun in the 200 fly.

The relay picks are also much more varied than women’s NCAAs. The only unanimous relay pick was Florida in the 200 free relay and there are two relays where three different schools were picked to win. In the 400 medley relay writers chose Florida, Indiana, and Cal. In the 800 free relay ASU, Indiana, Texas, and Cal all made at least one ballot.

There’s also three individual events with at least swimmers picked to win. Leading the way in that category is the 100 breaststroke with five different swimmers named: Denis Petrashov, Josh Matheny, Liam Bell, Noah Nichols, and Aleksas Savickas. The 100 breast sees only two 2023 ‘A’ finalists return (Petrashov and Bell), so it makes sense that our choices reflect that wide open field.

The 100 backstroke features winners picks of Destin Lasco, Kacper Stokowski, and Brendan Burns. In the 200 fly, Kharun, Burns, and Dare Rose have all been picked to win.

Without further ado, below are the ballots. Like last year, each writer picked a winner for each event, then picked a potential upset, which are compiled below.

In 2023, our SwimSwam picks went 9.5 for 17 (we were split on the 500 free champ). In terms of our potential upsets, 1.5 of our potential upsets were correct. The half point is for Braden, who was right that Aiden Hayes would win an event, but picked him in the 100 fly, not the 200. Interestingly, the 1 is Riley picking Crooks in the 50 free. Looking back and seeing that he was the only one to pick Crooks as the winner shows how much and how quickly Crooks improved last season.

Men’s Pre-Season Picks

Potential Upset:

Anya: I agree with Sophie and could see Bjorn Seeliger winning the 50 free.

Braden: There are a crazy number of wide-open events this year, but my upset special is Towson senior Brian Benzing in the men’s 100 breast in his last year before doing a victory lap at Indiana.

James: Jonny Kulow stuns the big dogs and wins the 100 free.

YanYan: With how wide-open this 100 breast race is, I can see a surprise winner. Maybe Brian Benzing?

Sophie: Let’s go for some drama: Bjorn Seeliger excels under Josh Huger‘s sprint training and beats Jordan Crooks in the 50 free for his first individual title.

Spencer: I’m going with Cal freshman Aaron Shackell in the 200 free. 1:32.85 is seriously fast for an incoming freshman and I really think we’re going to see Shackell continue to flourish in his first year under Dave Durden.

Riley: Virginia’s Noah Nichols dropped more than half a second in the 100 breast as a junior (50.82), though he ended up adding time at NCAAs and placing 17th in prelims (51.67). However, an improvement of similar magnitude as a senior would put Nichols right in contention for a national title among a wide-open field.

Reid: ASU could win the 200 medley relay; Ilya Kharun could upset in the 100 fly.