How Much Faster are Conference Championship Meets Getting? Part III: ACC Men

This article is number three in the series looking at how the times at conference level have been changing in the last 5 years (2020-2024) for the Power 5 conferences + Ivy’s. It’s felt like times required to qualify, final and win have been coming down considerably recently, but how much does the data back this up?

We’ll be including the Pac-12, even though the conference swim & dive championships no longer exist.

1. SEC Men‘s
2. SEC Womens
3. ACC Men’s
4. ACC Women’s
5. PAC-12 Men’s
6. PAC-12 Women’s
7. Big Ten Men’s
8. Big Ten Women’s
9. Big-12
10. Ivy League

NC State has dominated ACC over the last decade, interrupted by Louisville in 2022, but there may be a new winner this year. Cal and Stanford arrive in a shake-up for the top of the conference, and could well both finish in the top-three. Notre Dame, last year’s runners-up, are suspended for the year in somewhat of a blow to conference depth, but there should still be four ACC teams in the top 10 at Nationals in March. That’s driven by a competitive conference, and one that’s getting quicker across the board.

WHAT DATA ARE WE LOOKING AT? 

We’ll look at the times required individually to make ‘A’ (8th), ‘B’ (16th) and ‘C’ (24th) finals (where they exist), as well as the winning time for each year. For relays, we’ll choose to look at 1st, 3rd and 8th. If there were fewer than eight teams competing, we will just take the times from 1st and 3rd. Other than the winning individual time, these will all be from heats.

WHAT ARE WE INTERESTED IN?

Have the times got faster, and is there a definitive trend in the times? The first of these is simple to work out – were last year’s times faster than in 2020 – but the second is a little trickier. How do we judge what is significant and what may be due to a single swimmer, à la Leon Marchand? To make this decision, we make use of something known as correlation- essentially how much of a link is there between two separate variables. In our case, the two variables are the year and the finishing time for each position.

A QUICK STATISTICS REFRESHER

The R-value is the measure of correlation and can take a value between -1 and 1. To get a sense of what an R-value means, there are three important values:

• An R-value of 1 would indicate that there is a perfectly linear positive relationship between the two (eg. each year the winning time increases by 0.5),
• An R-value of -1 would indicate a perfectly linear negative relationship (eg. each year the winning time decreases by 0.5).
• An R-value of 0 indicates that there is no relationship between the two – the winning time does not depend on the year at all.

Think about plotting the data on a graph of year against time and drawing a best-fit line through the points. The closer the points are to that line, the more correlated the data and the higher the R-value.

WHAT MAKES AN R-VALUE SIGNIFICANT?

With the data we’re choosing to look at, an R-value is only significant if it is either greater than 0.805 or less than -0.805. That is a pretty high threshold, and we’ll see that for some events and placings there’s a strong trend that doesn’t quite hit this.

So what does significant mean? In this context, it means that we can say that there is an extremely strong trend in the times for this event and placement getting faster – and that it’s happening every year. A winning time that has a general downward trend but fluctuates pretty wildly year on year will have an R-value closer to zero than an event that gets faster at a slower rate, but gets faster every time.

The R-value in this case is a measure of consistency – how confident we are that this is a real trend and not just noise in the data. The significance level (0.805) is our confidence threshold in this.

Because the significance threshold is so high, we’ll also define another – a Strong threshold. We’ll set this to be when the R-value is greater than 0.5 or less than -0.5. Anything between these two values we’ll call Weak.

AN OVERVIEW

Of the 67 event/position combinations, 54 have been trending faster over the last five years.

54 of 67 combinations are faster than in 2020 as well, with nearly two-thirds of those that are not from the distance freestyles. Once again, an outsize proportion of the combinations getting slower are for individual winning times – five of 13. But there are some very strong downward trends: 12 with an R-value of -0.9 or lower. We’re expecting a big bump from the additions to the conference this year, but even without Cal and Stanford, the ACC is significantly quicker than five years ago.

FREESTYLE

Sprint free is on the way down in a big way. Losing Chris Giuliano to the SEC is a blow, but Jack Alexy and Bjorn Seeliger coming in should help keep the winning times on track. The 100 has seen the biggest trend down: -0.943 is the least significant R-value there, and with 26 men already under 43 seconds so far this season there’s no reason to think that this trend isn’t sustainable.

Where Cal and Stanford’s addition has one of the biggest impacts is the 200 free. Colton Paulson, the winner in 2020, would only rank 18th in the conference today – seven of those ahead of him are from the West Coast colleges.

Interestingly, in the distance frees we see the polar opposite – every single combination is trending slower, and quickly. NC State has a strong distance crew, but they’ve maybe been geared more towards NCAAs in the last couple of years, finishing 1-2 there in 2023 with Will Gallant and Ross Dant. In 2020 and 2021 these events were swept by Notre Dame swimmers Zach Yeadon and Jack Hoagland (who returns with SMU this year), so the depth in the conference exists elsewhere too.

The addition of Cal this year may help, with Lucas Henveaux already much quicker this year than last year’s winning times. However, with roster limits coming into place, the positions further down may carry on with their current upwards trends

BACKSTROKE

Winning times up, everything else down. Coleman Stewart swept the backstrokes in 2020 in times that haven’t been matched since, even with Kacper Stokowski in the conference. Although it may take a couple more years for the 100 to trend faster – 44.0 puts you right in the hunt at NCAAs in an event that habitually drops from conference champs – in the 200 there’s already a swimmer under last year’s winning time. Cal’s Gabriel Jett, somewhat of a surprise in the backstroke events after focusing on free and fly previously, swam 44.54/1:38.31 at the Minnesota invite.

The ‘A’ and ‘B’ final times are where we’re likely to see these trends strengthen even further. Current eighth seed in the 200, Mewen Tomac, enters in a 1:40.30. That’s quicker than the 2024 NCAA cut line and a second plus drop from last year’s ACC ‘A’ final cut off. The 200 may be the strongest event at these championships – six men are under 1:40 this year, including Virginia’s David King and Jack Aikins

BREASTSTROKE

The breaststroke trends look a little top-heavy. Led by internationals Evgenii Somov, Carles Coll Marti and Denis Petrashov, the 200 especially has taken a major step down, and that looks like continuing this year. Coll Marti, fresh from becoming World Champion in the SCM 200, is already around last year’s winning times, and will be pushed by another international athlete in Cal’s Yamato Okadome.

Further down, the scoring times are going to receive a big bump from the addition of Cal and Stanford. Already though, despite being somewhat mixed in strength, they’re all getting faster.

FLY

Similarly to the SEC men, there’s an obvious split between the distances. Driven by 4 titles in a row from Youssef Ramadan and a sneaky-deep NC state (5 men under 45 last year), the 100 is getting significantly faster. Ramadan wasn’t even the fastest swimmer in the conference last year – that was Luke Miller in a 43.90 – and he’s not the fastest so far this year either. That’s Virginia freshman Spencer Nicholas, although Dare Rose’s converted time from SC worlds beats him out by a tenth.

The 200 has been pretty stable since 2020 – the final day of a conference meet generally isn’t when you’re feeling freshest. Even without Cal and Stanford this year it looks to be faster in 2025 than last year though – the trend should continue creeping down.

IM

There are some very significant trends here – almost perfect in the case of the 200 IM ‘A’ final. That time is creeping down closer to the NCAA cutline, and the winning time is now a firm NCAA ‘A’ final time. Destin Lasco and Ron Polonsky will challenge Arsenio Bustos for the title this year as well, potentially driving it down under 1:40. But all of this is driven by the improvements lower down – an ‘A’ finalist five years ago wouldn’t be guaranteed ‘B’ final spots last year.

RELAYS

*There have been some big DQs at ACCs, and in relays, these can have an outsized effect on the trends. Therefore we’ve included the times of DQ’ed teams, such as NC State in 2022 and Louisville in 2020

All downward trends, and almost all strong or significant. There are some areas where improvement is clearer than others though. The sprint freestyles, perhaps unsurprisingly given the strong trends individually, are much faster, to the point where previous winners would now struggle to make the podium.

This isn’t just one college getting quicker either. Virginia, NC State and Notre Dame have all won these relays recently, and it’s probably a good bet that at least one conference record goes down in Greensboro.

IN SUMMARY

Big improvements almost everywhere except the distance freestyle, and over two-thirds with a strong improvement trend – the ACC is geared up for their high-profile additions. It’s likely to be a bit of a bloodbath for those ‘A’ final spots, and it’ll be interesting to see how it matches up with the SEC. In Cal the conference now has a genuine NCAA title contender – we’ll have to see if they mix up their approach to conference meets to lay a marker down this year.