How Much Faster Are Conference Championship Meets Getting? Part IX: Big 12

This article is number nine in the series looking at how the times at the 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, despite its swimming & diving championships no longer running.

1. SEC Men’s
2. SEC Women’s
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

There’s a big change at the top of the Big 12 this year. Texas, 28-time reigning champion on the men’s side and 12-time on the women’s side, are now in the SEC. Their place has been taken by Arizona State, who are looking to sweep this year. The rest of the conference has been on the small side – until last year only 3 colleges competed in the men’s championships and this still only stands at seven now. That has meant that Texas could use this championship as a non-taper meet, which meant slower times at the top than elsewhere. The Sun Devils will almost certainly flip this. Even in their NCAA-winning season last year a lot of their swimmers were faster at Pac-12s, and they seem to throw down fast times in almost every meet. Herbie Behm will want to make a statement ahead of NCAAs, and there should be a competitive battle behind them: Arizona, TCU and Utah on the men’s side, Houston and Arizona on the women’s.

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 would 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 is maybe due to a single swimmer, à la Gretchen Walsh? 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 90 event/position combinations, 78 have been trending faster over the last 5 years.

Men

Women

There was an influx of colleges in 2022. BYU on the men’s side and Houston and Cincinnati on the women’s brought some stiff competition for ‘A’ final places, and BYU came away with two event wins in the 100 and 200 Fly thanks to Jordan Tiffany and Brad Prolo. Even prior to last year though there were a lot of events trending downwards. There are definite drops in 2024, especially in the ‘A’ and ‘B’ final places, but these aren’t completely out of place in the year-on-year drops in some events. The percentage of combinations improving is high, and 77 of them were faster last year than in 2020 as well – 31 for men and 46 for women.

FREESTYLE

Men’s

Women’s

A lot of strong and significant trends here, and almost every combination is faster in 2024 than in any of the previous four years. Luke Hobson had dropped the NCAA record by more than he has the Big 12 winning time over the last two years – he was nearly 4 seconds slower at conferences than nationals last year, but this was still the fastest winning time, in a time period where Texas had Daniel Krueger and Drew Kibler swimming. The women’s 200 winning time had been coming down slowly but got a big kick last year from Erin Gemmell. The times to final are getting stiffer too – the ‘A’ time is now solidly under 1:50 and should be joined there by the ‘B’ final time this year.

Men’s

Women’s

The 500 is pretty much inverted for men and women. 1st is strongly coming down for the men, and everything other than 1st is coming down strongly for women. There’s only one swimmer who’s been a triple champion at this distance in the five years, and it’s maybe not the mid-distance freestyler from Texas you would expect: Coby Carrozza won in 2021, 2022, and 2024. On the Women’s side, the winningest swimmer is Erica Sullivan after she swept the distance freestyles in 2022 and 2023.

BACKSTROKE

Men’s

Women’s

The men’s side has been a little inconsistent in both winning and ‘A’ final times. Will Modglin won both distances last year, the first time the backstrokes were swept, but only touched out Cincinnati’s Hunter Gubeno by 22 hundredths. The trends are much stronger on the women’s side, although more so in the times required to final than to win.

BREASTSTROKE

Men’s

Women’s

The women’s 100 has gotten much quicker, with Lydia Jacoby and Anna Elendt leading the charge. Cincinnati’s Joleigh Crye is the favorite this year, but she’s got competition from Houston’s Henrietta Fangli.  There have been big moves in the times required to make the final at both distances though, and it’s the same on the men’s side. The winning times there have been less consistently dropping, partly due to last year’s slight weakness in the discipline after the graduation of Casper Corbeau.

FLY

Men’s

Women’s

Fly has seen some big improvements in the women’s as Texas became a powerhouse in the stroke nationally, even without many PBs at the conference championships from swimmers like Emma Sticklen and Olivia Bray. Following the theme we’ve been seeing, there’s a lot more depth now than there was in 2020 – another stroke where 2020 ‘A’ finalists would miss out on the 2024 ‘B’ final. The men’s side is a little more hit-and-miss, but Jordan Tiffany brought the winning time in the 100 under 45 for the first time since Alvin Jiang did so in 2021. There were some sizable drops in the ‘A’ final times at both distances as well, 1.81 and 2.84 seconds respectively. Watch for there to be big movements at the top this year with the addition of Ilya Kharun.

IM

Men’s

Women’s

Even with the graduation of Carson Foster the 200 IM has stayed quick, although the same can’t be said for the 400. Yet another event with strong downward trends in the times needed to get a second swim, there is also a clear split between the winning time in the 200 and 400 on the women’s side as well. The loss of Texas on the women’s side will affect that winning time a lot though – Charli Brown leads the conference in both medleys, and whilst she’s about on the winning time in the 400 she’s nearly four seconds off Kelly Pash’s winning time in the 200 last year.

RELAYS

Men’s

Women’s

Relays are getting a lot quicker, and more strongly so for 3rd than for 1st – teams catching up to Texas at the top. Arizona State lead all five women’s relays this year heading in, but not decisively and the extra competition could see times carry on coming down this year. The men’s side will be a different story: there will be huge drops in the winning time from Arizona State, although Arizona, led by Ralph Daleiden and Tomas Lukminas, are only 0.13 behind in the 800 free relay so far this season.

IN SUMMARY

A small conference that’s gotten a lot deeper, the Big 12 will likely live up to that even more this year. With Texas leaving the wins will be spread around a little more than in previous years – they won all but three events in 2024. Arizona State should dominate the men’s side, but the women’s is a little more open: Houston and Cincinnati should put down some strong performances and may look to pounce if the Sun Devils slip up.