The calendars have flipped to September, which means that Division I NCAA programs are gearing up for the start of the 2024-25 season. As always, we’ll rank in reverse order from #16 to #1. But before we get started, we’ve got a few honorable mentions.
A few important notes on our rankings:
- The rankings listed are based on our Class of 2024 Re-Rank. “HM” refers to our honorable mentions and “BOTR” refers to our Best of the Rest section for top-tier recruits.
- Like most of our rankings, these placements are subjective. We base our team ranks on a number of factors: prospects’ incoming times are by far the main factor, but we also consider potential upside in the class, class size, relay impact, and team needs. Greater weight is placed on known success in short course yards, so foreign swimmers are slightly devalued based on the difficulty in converting long course times to short course production.
- Transfers are included, though they are weighed less than recruits who arrive with four seasons of eligibility.
- For the full list of all verbally committed athletes, click here. A big thank you to SwimSwam’s own Anne Lepesant for compiling that index – without it, rankings like these would be far less comprehensive.
- Some teams had not released a finalized 2024-25 team roster at the time these articles were published, meaning it’s possible we missed some names. Let us know in the comments below.
Best NCAA Swimming and Diving Recruiting Classes: Men’s Class of 2024
Michigan: This class should end up being a valuable one for the Wolverines, though as it’s a majority international group, it’s hard to gauge exactly how impactful, given their limited experience in yards. Canadian Olympian Lorne Wigginton is a freestyler/IM’er and seems to have swum exactly one SCY meet in his career. And while the 1:38.69 200 free/4:23.40 500 free/3:49.15 400 IM from February 2023 gives a baseline, it’s only that rather than a full picture of his potential. The Wolverines have also picked up Norwegian Olympian Jon Jontvedt, European Juniors finalist Inbar Danziger, and Brit Henry Gray joins a butterfly group that’s made significant strides under now second-year head coach Matt Bowe. Ireland’s Matthew Walsh Hussey rounds out the international contingent and is joined by Rian Herrmann, William Savarese, Thomas Farney, and Tyler Tannenberger. Open water Worlds swimmer Joshua Brown has joined Michigan after taking an Olympic redshirt year and training at the Sandpipers of Nevada. Brown spent two years at Notre Dame, scoring for them in the 1650 free at 2023 ACCs.
Georgia: Georgia’s getting a big boost this season from the return of Luca Urlando, though the list of new swimmers they’re bringing in is on the smaller side. They snagged #5 Drew Hitchcock, the best 200 IMer in the class with a 1:43.48. Additionally, his 400 IM best (3:41.81) would’ve snuck into the 2024 NCAA ‘B’ final and is the second-best in the class. He’s joined in the class by British breaststroke specialist Elliot Woodburn, sprinter Will Gavin, and distance freestyler Kyler Heffner. With Hitchcock as a flyer/IMer, the Bulldogs have brought in a well-balanced class under head coach Neil Versfeld, even if it is on the smaller side of recruiting classes.
Yale: The Bulldogs also have a small but mighty incoming men’s class of 2024. We know of only two swimmers slated to join Yale this fall, which makes it hard to move them any higher than the honorable mentions section of this list, but Jake Wang and Elliot Lee will pack a punch, especially combined with their heavy-hitting group of incoming sophomores. Wang debuted on our top 20 list of recruits in the re-rank at #13, thanks to improving his 100 breast time from 53.92 to 52.36, the best in the class. The time is within 1% of an NCAA qualification bid and would’ve been 3rd at 2024 Ivies, key for Yale as they’re looking to break into the top two in the conference. Lee also made big improvements in his senior season and like Wang is a highly versatile swimmer that Yale can deploy in a number of different ways for both individual and relay events.
Princeton: While Yale looks to dethrone Harvard and Princeton at the top of the conference, both schools have brought in strong recruiting classes of their own. BOTR Logan Noguchi highlights the Tigers’ class. He’s a well-rounded swimmer that boasts a 46.12 100 fly/1:45.32 200 fly/1:46.79 200 IM slash line and his 100 fly would’ve won 2024 Ivies. He’s joined by breaststroker Andrew Zou, freestyler Patrick Dinu, freestyler Santiago Gutierrez, freestyler Max Marcus, IMer Devyn Caples, Tomaz Chevres, breaststroker Conan Chen, breaststroker Curan Palmer, and diver Ben Romig. It’s a strong class that will help the Tigers in their quest to fend off challengers and remain in the top two of the conference.
Hypothetical question for Braden:Who would you project as having more upside? There are two male swimmers both 18 years old with similar improvement curves in high school. Both swimmers are hard workers and highly motivated to improve. Swimmer A looks the part- muscular but maybe a little raw. Swimmer B is skinny with a thin frame. Does Swimmer A have more upside because he is “better athlete”? Or does Swimmer B have more upside because any top DI college weight program is likely to transform his body? Recognizing that each situation is unique, without any additional information, who would you bet on?
Without any more information, I’d usually lean toward “the better athlete” assuming we have a similar definition of what makes a better athlete. Athletes are going to athlete.
But if I were a coach who knew the magic of some of this new generation of “skinny” freestylers, maybe I’d choose Swimmer B.
Not every skinny guy can put on a lot of muscle, either.
Thanks!
Wyoming 2025 and 2026 class is about to be on the list! Keep an eye out
How do you put a recruiting class with two Olympian’s. Both of which have sub 1.2 power index’s. power index’s they got with LC times. In the honorable mentions list. I understand devaluing international guys because of the transition but Michigan are good enough to make this list without those two. Absolutely despicable placement.
Not all Olympians are created equal, and Swimcloud power rankings are notorious for overvaluing distance swimmers and long course times in their power ranking calculations.
Lorne Wigginton is a great swimmer and should have an immediate impact for the Wolverines at NCAAs, but he’s a one relay guy for now.
Joenvendt is definitely not the second-best swimmer in Michigan’s class. He’s 21 already, hasn’t improved in anything in over a year, and was 7:59 in the 800 free at the Olympics, which is 11 seconds slower than his best. His 800 times in 2024 are 7:56, 7:56, 7:56, 7:57, and 8:01, so not clear if he’s got more of that 7:48 in him from 2023. Hasn’t been under… Read more »
On what basis do swimcloud power rankings over value LCM? Based on the current swimcloud standards, compared to swimswam’s own swimulator, they substantially undervalue LCM.
For example: M 200 FR, for 10 points (1:37.14 SCY), the swimulated LCM time is 1:51.2, but a 10 point LCM time takes 1:50.21
400 IM 3:53.09 SCY 10 point time = 4:27.6 LCM conversion at age 17 (slower at older), but 10 point LCM time is 4.5 seconds faster 4:23.0.
You could argue that proven SCY times have more value than theoretical potential of LCM swimmers, but seems like is a steep penalty rather than an advantage for LCM performance (or your converters need a rehash).
The power index for LCM is considerably harder than SCY so I’m a little confused how you think their index’s are inflated?
You claim you base your times on a number on a number of factors. Lets look at some of those:
- Relay Value – If you are looking at these two guys alone I agree the relay potential isn’t massive. But if you look at their team, relays aren’t their weakness. Which brings me to my next point.
- Team needs – When you look at the Michigan results from their conference championships you can see one of their biggest weaknesses was their 400IM and 500/1650 freestyle. Looking at these guys events, those two boys will fill those slots
… Read more »Every guy who commits to a top 25 program in the NCAA feels like they have gigantic upside potential. That’s just the nature of the beast, the nature of the recruiting pitch, and the nature of men’s sports.
I don’t disagree with anything you said. But…the top 15 classes are all really good as well. It’s really splitting hairs – could they have been flipped with #15, and it still would have been a valid list? For sure. At some point, we’ve gotta make that choice based on what we see, though.
The Michigan disrespect is CRAZY! This class should’ve easily been ranked in the top 10
EASILY.
Will there be an Honorable Mention article for 2024 Women’s Recruits?
The Michigan hate is crazy
Acknowledging as good but not necessarily great is not equal to ‘hate.’
Go find a chill corner and wait for them to actually get better. Could happen … or not.
hate is a strong word… perhaps “anti-Michigan bias” is better??