NCAA Men’s Diving Preview: How Zone Scores Project To Impact The Team Race

2024 MEN’S NCAA SWIMMING AND DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS

• March 27-30, 2024
• IUPUI Natatorium, Indianapolis, Indiana
• Short Course Yards (25 yards)
• Meet Central
• Official Psych Sheets
• SwimSwam Preview Index
• SwimSwam Pick ‘Ems Contest
• Live Results

The Men’s NCAA Championships kick off on Wednesday in Indianapolis, and the question that always comes up pre-meet will try to be determined in this article: How will diving impact the team race?

When we score out the psych sheets, we know things aren’t going to go exactly as projected for a myriad of factors, with things such as taper, nerves, event schedules and everything else playing into how swimmers perform on the big stage.

In diving, there’s a different set of variables at play, as the NCAA qualifiers competed at five different Zone meets earlier this month, meaning there were five different sets of judges. Therefore, comparing scores across multiple meets is far from being an exact, definitive ranking, but it does give us some indication of who the favorites are heading into NCAAs.

Below, find the top 16 scores in each of the three men’s diving events across the five Zone meets (using finals results only), and how they would stack up against one another in an NCAA scoring format.

MEN’S 1-METER

MEN’S 3-METER

MEN’S PLATFORM

Looking back at last year’s projections and how things ultimately panned out, the Zone scores did a fairly decent job in determining where the points would come from in the diving events, though far from the accuracy we see from psych sheet points in swimming due to the various factors at play in diving.

Indiana junior Carson Tyler, the defending NCAA champion on platform, was the top Zone scorer in both the 3-meter and platform events, while his Hoosier teammates Quinn Henninger and Maxwell Weinrich are also positioned to score big. Henninger was 3rd on both 3-meter and platform last season.

Stanford’s Jack Ryan was another top Zone scorer with some pedigree behind his name, having placed 3rd on 1-meter in 2023, while Pitt fifth-year Dylan Reed leads the 1-meter standings.

Reed was 16th in the 1-meter event last season, but notably saw a stark improvement at the Zone A Championships from 2023 (628.80) to 2024 (774.95) in the event.

In the team Zone scores below, Indiana leads by a wide margin with 88 points, while Texas is a clear 2nd and Minnesota, Stanford and Pitt all project to crack 30.

SCORING THE ZONE RESULTS – TEAM STANDINGS

If we add in the projected diving scores with the psych sheet scores from the swimming events, here are the key takeaways:

• Two teams moved up two places inside the top 10: Indiana and Stanford. The Hoosiers jumped up from 6th into 4th, while the Cardinal moved from 9th to 7th.
• Texas’ diving used to propel into the title conversation. This season, it boosts them from 11th on the swimming psych sheets into the top 10, sitting 8th thanks to 55 projected diving points.
• Texas A&M, Ohio State and USC all move up three spots in the mid-tier range, with the Aggies now 14th, the Buckeyes 16th and the Trojans 19th.
• As the third-highest projected diving scoring team, Minnesota jumps four spots into 20th.
• Pitt and Purdue both go from having no psych sheet points to cracking the top 25 thanks to diving, while Miami (FL) and LSU sit 27th and 28th, respectively, solely due to their projected points from the boards.

PROJECTED SCORES: PSYCH SHEETS + ZONE RESULTS