Will there be an NCAA Championships this year? If so, how different will it look? Will bored SwimSwam writers find other ways to occupy the late nights besides poring over swim results and creating spreadsheets? No one knows for sure, but as the poets say, hope springs eternal.
For the moment, we’re in between two weekends that constitute the fullest slate of college swimming meets in what feels like a very very long time. So let’s live in the moment, celebrate the fast swimming we’ve seen, and take at what our newly-updated Swimulator projections show here in mid-January.
Before we show you the results, a few reminders and caveats:
- The Swimulator pulls in data from USA Swimming’s NCAA results database. So, if meet results aren’t updated there, they won’t be included in the Swimulator rankings, either. It looks like a few of last weekend’s Big Ten meets haven’t made it in yet, for example.
- You can tweak the settings to the Swimulator uses to determine rankings. For instance, in the rankings below, we’re using season top times, instead of average times.
- No, we don’t really expect the current Swimulator rankings to wholly accurately reflect what the NCAA Championships will look like. We’re well aware that most Pac-12 teams have had very limited, if any, competition so far this season, while the ACC and SEC have been racing more regularly.
- It’s worth noting that these rankings may be thrown off by two more notable cases. Namely, NC State’s Nyls Korstanje and Stanford’s Andrei Minakov are included in the database with converted times from competing in their home countries, and each is projected to score over 30 points. Both still appear on their current college team’s roster, but last we checked, neither is expected to compete collegiately this season.
- Finally, the projected scores only take into account swimming events, not diving, so keep that in mind when looking at teams who regularly score a good chunk of points in the diving events.
As of this moment, the Texas Longhorns lead the Swimulator rankings by a wide margin, with a projected total of 617, and that’s without taking diving into account. Texas has gotten to race a lot more than most teams, and fairly unusually, was also putting up some increasingly fast times early in the season, including Drew Kibler and Carson Foster putting up some of the fastest times ever, in the 500 free and the 400 IM, respectively, at the Texas First Chance Meet in October.
Meanwhile, the Longhorns’ chief rivals, the Cal Golden Bears, haven’t raced nearly as much, but they’ve also shown some early speed, including Reece Whitley‘s 1:48 in the 200 breast the Cal-Stanford dual meet in November.
Once again, these are not predictions about what actually will happen come March, but rather a quick snapshot to show how things look at the moment. Without further ado, here’s how those rankings look currently, along with a reminder of where we ranked each team in our first (and so far, only) round of power rankings early last month.
Team | Points | December Power Rankings | |
1 | Texas | 617 | 2 |
2 | Georgia | 455.5 | 5 |
3 | Texas A&M | 330.5 | 6 |
4 | California | 243 | 1 |
5 | NC State | 237 | 9 |
6 | Florida | 217.5 | 4 |
7 | Georgia Tech | 202 | 20 |
9 | Missouri | 182 | 15 |
10 | Alabama | 173.5 | 12 |
11 | Virginia | 168.5 | 13 |
12 | Tennessee | 131 | 16 |
13 | UNC | 108 | |
14 | Louisville | 91 | 7 |
15 | Arizona | 64.5 | HM |
16 | Stanford | 62.5 | 11 |
17 | Florida St | 56 | HM |
18 | Virginia Tech | 56 | 18 |
19 | LSU | 35 | 20 |
20 | SMU | 31 | |
21 | Michigan | 26.5 | 8 |
22 | Auburn | 16 | |
23 | TCU | 11 | |
24 | UNLV (M) | 9 | |
25 | Kentucky | 8 | |
26 | U.S. Navy | 7 | |
27 | Pittsburgh | 6 | HM |
28 | Indiana | 6 | 3 |
29 | Northwestern | 5 | |
30 | Purdue | 4 | |
31 | Duke | 4 | |
32 | Brigham Young | 1 |
Love seeing USC irrelevant! Bottom feeders in the Pac 12!
Weird comment before they’ve swum any meets.
When will the women’s Swimulator be out?
WOW UGA and A+M ranked very well in swimulator! UT expected to dominate but NCST and STAAAN will be dastardly poor this year. Methinks Louisville will climb this ladder!
This is ludacris, the Indiana Hoosiers should be number 1!!!
This sounds like guerra made a second account
I second my good friend and compadre, HoosierDaddy. Don’t be fooled by this ranking. The great GOAT Coach, Ray Looze, has the mighty Indiana Hoosiers lying in the weeds ready to pounce on the NCAA title. As the SwimSwam “Coach of the Year” told Gold Medal Mel in his interview last week, “We’re not just going to knock on the door of winning the NCAA title, WE’RE GONNA BREAK IT DOWN! I’m designing my Ray Looze GOAT Coach NCAA National Championship t-shirt right now!
Indiana will never will an NCAA title as long as Looze is the head coach. Mark it.
That’s ridiculous. The texas B and C teams would both win the B1G
The D team could probably finish second after Michigan
Indiana is still living off the fumes from 68-73, they would finish 6th in the Big12
Did I do that right?
Guerra speaks facts, you are underestimating the powers of Ray Looze. He won Coach of the Year for a reason, and he will prove why come NCAAs.
I feel so strongly about this I’m going to name my new dog I’m getting soon…”RAYLOOZE”. One word.
Guerra has found his Robin
“Longhorn nation, we’re baaaaaaaaacccckkk”
Thanks Sam…..I mean Harambe
Not surprised that Texas is in first, but definitely surprised it’s by this wide of a margin. Many teams probably also lower than they should be without putting in serious relay entries yet, especially 400 medley and 800 free. Crazy to see Michigan/Indiana/Northwestern so far down, but that’s to be expected without any mid season meets in the Big Ten so far.
Cal’s ranking is low because at the Cal vs. Stanford meet where Cal swimmers were suited and rested most of the Cal swimmers focused on only one event while Texas swimmers swam three at their suited and rested meet. For example Hoffer only swam the 50FR and Whitley only swam the 200BR, so Cal’s ranking is not an apple to apple comparison. Let’s hope that there will be an NCAA Championship this year so everyone can race!
Not to mention that most of the swimmers on the teams ahead of Cal got to swim their 3 events twice (and possibly improve times) in their Nov / Dec meets.
Yes, Sir. Texas fans know better than trash talking Cal. Respek.
Yup. Another 2 team race for the natty, if they have one.