How Much Faster are Conference Championship Meets Getting? Part VII: Big Ten Men

This article is number two 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 and the Ivy League. It’s felt like the 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 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 fish in the Big Ten this year. Indiana is among the favorites for the title this year, having brought in a big transfer class that could have a real effect on the times at the conference championship. Behind them will be Michigan, Ohio State and USC will be in a battle for podium positions, and the addition of USC could be a boost. Times have stayed more stable than we’ve seen in the other conferences for the men so far, although there’s still a majority getting quicker. The conference has historically been strong in breaststroke at NCAAs, but hasn’t had an NCAA team champion since Michigan in 2013 – could that be about to change this year? Indiana will need to put down some quick swims at Big Tens if they want to build momentum towards that, especially after Cal and Texas’ midseason additions.

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 62 event/position combinations, 39 have been trending faster over the last 5 years.

Forty-two of the combinations had faster times in 2024 than 2020, a majority, and two-thirds of those were by over half a second as well. Whilst the trends aren’t as strong as we’ve seen elsewhere, Big Tens is held a week later and therefore a week closer to NCAAs – a full taper is riskier. One change that happened in this time period was that non-scoring athletes were introduced in 2022, and we do see times to dip slightly from 2021.

FREESTYLE

We’ve got at least one strong downward trend at each distance: the ‘B’ final time for the 50 and 100, and the ‘A’ final time for the 200. In the 50 there is a second, for the winning time, but that may stabilize this year – Mikkel Lee leads the conference with a 19.18, although Matt King and Taiko Torepe-Ormsby may have not shown their full hand so far this year. The Big Ten is also the only conference where the winning time in some of the sprint freestyle events is slower than in 2020. In the 200 that’s unsurprising: this is the only conference with a winning time under 1:33 in 2020, driven by a tight battle between Andrew Loy and Paul Delakis, and both Loy and this year’s winner would have ‘B’ finaled at NCAAs – less a slowing down than of a conference a few years ahead of everyone else (and that swimmer, Rafael Miroslaw, ended up finishing 5th at NCAAs this year).

There have been three Olympians at the top of the mile in Felix Auboeck, Charlie Clark and Michael Brinegar, but the time taken to win has slowed down by over 12 seconds, whilst at the same time the 8th place finishing time has come down by nearly 10. The ‘A’ final time in the 500 has come down as well: after hovering around 4:20 it dropped under 4:18 this year and there are 11 men under that time so far this year. The final one of those, Tomas Navikonis, is a huge threat to win to 200 and may have more to give at this distance. but Zalan Sarkany should be the favourite just as he is in the 1650. Ohio State has had a strong distance program as well and has four men under 15 minutes in the mile this year, the most of any team in the NCAA.

BACKSTROKE

Trending downwards slightly in the 100, and a little more stable in the 200. Indiana has been the powerhouse, Brendan Burns and Gabriel Fantoni winning every backstroke title in these five years, and they have the two fastest swimmers in both distances this year – Owen McDonald and Miroslav Knedla. That domination at the top had driven some trends down in the winning time, especially so in the 200. Burns was over two seconds faster in 2023 than Fantoni was in 2020, and this was on the first race of a 200 Back/200 Fly double – one he won three years in a row.

The 200 is a strong event conference-wide. There’s a lot of depth, but the ‘A’ final trend has stayed fairly consistent really, jumping around a 46-mid and a 1:42-low – somewhat of a contrast to the other conferences we’ve looked at. The 100 however has been creeping down the last two years and is on track to do so again in 2025 – Luke Barr is the 8th fastest in the conference this year so far with a 46.14.

BREASTSTROKE

Breaststroke in the Big Ten is synonymous with Indiana. Josh Matheny, Van Mathias and Ian Finnerty have had success at the top of the NCAA, but we don’t see much of a move faster at the conference championships. The timing of the meet of course plays a big part here, but there’s a definite trend slower. At the top, that would be understandable after the graduation of Max McHugh, the Big Ten record holder in both distances, but it’s the ‘A’ final that has slowed down the most. The 200 falls roughly in line with other conferences, but has been dropping off where they’re accelerating. The drop off in the 100 however can be attributed to the phenomenal time required in 2021 – it’s been fairly stable the last three years – but with USC, as well as Brian Benzing and Caspar Corbeau, in the conference looks like dropping down to 52-lows again.

It’s worth pointing out that 100 in 2021. It took 51.85 to make the ‘A’ Final that year, just 12 hundredths off what was required to ‘A’ final at NCAAs, and seven of the swimmers from that heat scored come March. It could be similar this year: 52.11 is 8th in the conference, with all of those eight swimmers from either Indiana or USC.

FLY

There’s a similar trend in both distances, although stronger in the 200. ‘A’ final and winning times have been on the way down, led by a couple of big jumps in the 200 in 2022 and 2024. Michigan join Indiana at the top in this discipline – Gal Cohen Groumi, Tomer Frankel and Brendan Burns have each been under 1:40 – and Tyler Ray had a good year last year at both distances. Krzysztof and Michal Chmielewski will make it a bloodbath for the podium places this year in their first year in the conference, and there’s potential for that ‘A’ final time to come down into the 1:41s. The winning time on the 100 has been getting faster incredibly consistently, led by Groumi, Frankel and Burns, but in the 200 it’s stabilizing in a 1:39-mid: the overall drop from 2020 to the times in the last four years explains the strength of the trend

IM

The IMs are a mixed bag, both in strength and direction of the trends. Paul Delakis and Andrew Loy have given way to Gal Cohen Groumi at the top of the 200, dropping a second and a half in five years – half of that coming in 2024. The 400 is a different story – very consistent winning times, with four different winners. There may be another one this year: Olympians Dominik Mark Torok and Tristan Jankovics will fight for the win, Torok gunning for a three-peat.. ‘A’ final times at both distances have stayed stable absolute time-wise (although they’ve both boomeranged up and then back down), but the ‘B’ final time in the 200 dropped a lot this year and pushed the time for 8th down with it – it’ll be interesting to see if this continues to drop this year.

RELAYS

If we thought the IMs were a mixed bag, the relays are even more so. The 200 free relay has been getting a fair bit quicker in every conference, so it’s no surprise to see that they have the strongest downward trends here. The 200 medley has dropped around a second at each position here as well, and has been won by each of Indiana, Ohio State and Michigan in the last five years – it’s been the most competitive of the relays. Whilst the trends are mixed, the direction is not. All but two combinations were faster last year than 2020, although interestingly the winning time was faster in at least one previous year in all five.

IN SUMMARY

It’s been a while since the Big Ten had a championship contender, and with Indiana having a shot this year there may be a drop required at Big Tens to win an ‘A’ final. My feeling is they’ll want to build some momentum heading into March, but that won’t be the only thing pushing them. Michigan are on the up, and are only four years removed from their last conference title, and USC’s breaststrokers will look to break up the stranglehold Indiana had on the conference last year.