The 2012 version of the Men’s NCAA Swimming Championship is a lot less clear-cut than was last year’s, and that is borne out in the psych sheets. The team that were the favorites entering the season, the Texas Longhorns, sit only 6th based on swimming seeds. Michigan, on the other hand, who was a big question-mark coming into this year with how young they are, are seeded 2nd.
See the full, cut psych sheets here.
Of course there’s always caveats here.
The first is that the Texas men have not hit near a full-rest this season. They had a bit of a rest meet mid-season, but nothing near where top seeds Arizona have been. The rest of the top 7 teams have all been at varying levels of taper: USC was pretty rested for the same Texas Hall-of-Fame Invite; Cal and Auburn had moderate, but not full, rests for their conference championship meets; Michigan and Stanford were tapered for conference championship meets – though I think both still have some amount of time to drop.
As opposed to last season, diving will also play a massive role in this year’s National Championship meet. If you add to Stanford’s score some monster points from diver Kristian Ipsen, or to Texas’ score the duo of Drew Livingston and Matt Cooper, both teams would shoot up these rankings. But Arizona isn’t going to roll-over: absent of Ipsen and Arizona State’s Constantine Blaha, their senior Ben Grado swept the Pac 12 titles. Though it was a very weak diving field, and Grado didn’t even qualify for NCAA’s last year, there’s a big hole in this year’s national diving field, and he could score some points.
Unlike the women’s meet, we haven’t extrapolated relays past the 12 invited squads. That’s because there’s a lot more uncertainty for those 13th-16th spots and even their ability to qualify enough swimmers to participate in those relays.
Here’s all projected scorers, based strictly on seed, ranked 1 through 41
1. Arizona 408
2. Michigan 351
3. Stanford 347
4. Cal 326
5. Auburn 306
6. Texas 243
7. USC 238
8. Florida 148
9. Louisville 147
10. Ohio State 134
11. Georgia 97
12. Indiana 80
13. Florida St 72
14. Virginia 66
15. Texas A&M 63
16. Iowa 56
17. Purdue 44
18. Penn State 42
19. Wisconsin 37
20. North Carolina 36
21. Princeton 24
22. Harvard 23
23. Notre Dame 21
24. Alabama 21
25. UNLV 16
26. Virginia Tech 15
27. Clemson 14
28. Minnesota 13
29. Brown 12
30. SMU 12
31. Duke 10
32. Eastern Michigam 9
33. Tennessee 7
34. Michigan State 7
35. Old Dominion 5
36. Penn 4
37. NC Sttate 3
38. LSU 3
39. Kentucky 2
40. Missouri 2
41. Wyoming 1
