Arizona State Men, Virginia Women Top CSCAA Season-Opening Swimming Polls

Division I Men

The Arizona State men, who finished 2nd at last year’s NCAA Championship meet, are 3-0 in the early season, taking a pair of dominant victories over #9 Georgia (one in long course, one in short course) and rolling through UNLV in the early weeks of the season.

The team is boosted by Leon Marchand, a triple titlist from last year’s NCAA Championships, with freshman Ilya Kharun showing massive early-season quality already, breaking a school record in the 100 fly in the early season.

The Cal men, the defending NCAA Champions, rank 2nd after winning their annual King of the Pool meet against Cal Poly. They face the Pitt men, led by former Cal assistant Chase Kreitler, this weekend.

While Cal are the two-time defending NCAA Champions and are co-favorites to win again, the choice of Arizona State atop this poll makes sense given their relative approaches to dual meets (this is a dual meet poll). The Sun Devils were fast in their first, while Cal left a lot of big names home from their opener.

With few blockbuster dual meets on the schedule so far (the SMU Classic being an exception), the rankings are not dissimilar to the NCAA Championship rankings from last year, plus-or-minus a few slots for each team.

The biggest movers are mostly in the negative direction: Missouri finished 16th at NCAAs but are ranked 20th here, while Notre Dame finished 18th at NCAAs but are unranked in the first poll. The biggest upward momentum is USC, which finished 22nd at NCAAs but is ranked 16th in this season-opening poll after placing 3rd at the SMU Classic behind Louisville (#12) and Auburn (#10). The poll ranked Auburn higher in spite of Louisville winning that meet by 1 point.

Rank	Previous	Team	Points
1	NA	Arizona State	299
2	NA	California	289
3	NA	Florida	272
4	NA	NC State	264
5	NA	Indiana	254
6	NA	Tennessee	234
7	NA	Texas	228
8	NA	Stanford	210
9	NA	Georgia	199
10	NA	Auburn	186
11	NA	Virginia Tech	182
12	NA	Louisville	168
13	NA	Texas A&M	161
14	NA	Ohio State	148
15	NA	Virginia	129
16	NA	Southern California	121
17	NA	Notre Dame	100
18	NA	Michigan	86
19	NA	Alabama	84
20	NA	Missouri	75
21	NA	Harvard	41
22	NA	Wisconsin	38
23	NA	Georgia Tech	36
24	NA	Florida State	29
25	NA	Kentucky	14

Division I Women

The women’s side, while based on predicted dual meet outcomes, is fairly-reflective of an expected NCAA Championship finish, especially at the top.

The three-time defending NCAA Champions from Virginia lead the way, followed by Texas and Louisville.

Louisville’s ranking at #3 is four spots better than USC’s ranking at #7, though the Trojans won the teams’ matchup at the SMU Classic behind some surprise freshmen and some early-season benchmarks that were faster than they swam at the NCAA Championships last year. The Trojans also have an NCAA relay “A” cut already in the 200 medley, the first women’s team to do that (the Arizona State men already have four “A” cuts).

Aside from the Trojans, this ranking again looks a lot like last year’s NCAA Championship finish, with a few notable exceptions. UNC was 10th at NCAAs but comes in 16th in this ranking behind Duke, who were 21st at NCAAs but climbed to 15th. Wisconsin, Georgia, and Michigan are all climbing quickly (Michigan up from 23rd to 14th), while a splashy freshman debut wasn’t enough to convince voters to keep Alabama in the top 20 (they were 14th at NCAAs).

Rank	Previous	Team	Points
1	NA	Virginia	350
2	NA	Texas	336
3	NA	Louisville	313
4	NA	NC State	308
5	NA	Ohio State	287
6	NA	Tennessee	276
7	NA	Southern California	256
8	NA	Florida	256
9	NA	Indiana	240
10	NA	Stanford	235
11	NA	California	200
12	NA	Wisconsin	192
13	NA	Georgia	186
14	NA	Michigan	157
15	NA	Duke	145
16	NA	North Carolina	132
17	NA	Virginia Tech	127
18	NA	Auburn	122
19	NA	Kentucky	106
20	NA	Alabama	75
21	NA	Arizona State	64
22	NA	Northwestern	63
23	NA	UCLA	40
24	NA	Minnesota	32
25	NA	Texas A&M	20