Revisiting NCAA Recruit Rankings: Men’s High School Class of 2014

Each summer, college swimming fans look forward to recruiting – the lifeblood of any NCAA swim program. Since 2012, we’ve been ranking down the top NCAA prospects in the nation from each recruiting class. But sports are inherently unpredictable, and even the most sure-fire prospect can go awry or completely change their role over four years.

As we did last year with the first class we ever ranked, we’ll look back at the high school class of 2014, which just finished four years of college eligibility this spring.

First, a few notes:

• Most of the data we’re tracking here deals with NCAA scoring. Obviously, some swimmers are great assets for their teams in dual meets and conference competition without ever being national factors. While we don’t discount the impact of those types of swimmers, the difference in competition between various teams’ dual meet schedules and conference meets makes NCAA scoring the best “apples to apples” comparisons between swimmers.
• Relays are another point of contention, as a swimmer in a strong program has more opportunity for NCAA relays, though they also have more competition for those relay spots. We’ve mostly left relay results out of the data below, except where specifically indicated. That, too, gives us a more fair comparison between athletes.
• We did our best to scour NCAA results over the past four years, but it’s certainly possible we made a mistake in compiling our data. If you spot an error, please respectfully let us know in the comment section so we can update our work!

Since our annual recruit rankings only take into account domestic recruits, the following analysis won’t include international swimmers. We’ve found that determining when international students will come to the U.S. or officially start their NCAA eligibility is too unpredictable. Fitting swimmers into specific recruiting classes is often a patchwork effort, so we’ve only included domestic swimmers in this data.

REVISITING OUR TOP 10

Check out this post for our analysis of the top 10 recruits in the high school class of 2014. Bear in mind that this was posted in July of 2013, when these swimmers were high school juniors. Complaining about slighted swimmers is barely a scrap above useless at the time of posting, and putting on Captain Hindsight goggles and complaining now without looking up best times from July 2013 is even less enlightening than that.

Here’s a look at our top 10 recruits, plus how many individual points they scored at NCAAs in each of their four years:

A few big takeaways:

• At the top, this class always felt like a 1A/1B situation with Caeleb Dressel and Joseph Schooling. Through their freshman seasons, Schooling was the more impactful one, though both had won individual national titles. But Dressel scored 177 out of a possible 180 points over his final three seasons, a torrid pace that included 9 of his 10 NCAA titles.
• Schooling ultimately fell to the #3 performer in the class in terms of individual points, but his big-time relay splits were a major part of Texas’s NCAA four-peat, and it’s still probably fair to say most teams would still take Schooling’s overall impact over a Gunnar Bentz type, even considering Schooling’s less-than-expected senior output.
• Bentz quietly racked up 148 individual points and was remarkably consistent, scoring more than 27 points every year. Only he and Dressel accomplished that feat.
• With Cal still fighting for NCAA titles all four years of this class, it’s a bit jarring to see how their top-tier recruits didn’t pan out. #4 Silverthorn didn’t improve much and never made NCAAs individually. #3 Gornay went backwards his freshman year, then dropped off the roster. Honorable mention Kao was a two-time NCAA qualifier but never scored, though he was a big Pac-12 contributor. Justin Lynch was solid, though, scoring in three of his four years. Cal had to supplement its class with big scoring from unranked Connor Hoppe, but still didn’t get nearly as much out of this class as it could have.
• Texas, by contrast, got a lot out of their top 3 recruits. Schooling and Jonathan Roberts scored in all four of their years and Brett Ringgold scored in 3.
• A number of these guys dropped off their teams rosters, quit the sport or transferred. Ellington only swam one year for NC State and hasn’t recorded a swim since. Olmsted only swam two years for Stanford. Katz started with a year at Michigan, then transferred to Florida but never swam a meet for the Gators. He resurfaced on NYU’s roster at one point, but also never logged a swim with them, per USA Swimming’s database.
• Jacob Molacek didn’t score in two seasons with Auburn, but was part of two NCAA title-winning relays in his first year with NC State. He’s got one more season left and could theoretically move up in overall scoring.
• Meanwhile Okubo and Kim went Ivy League and though they weren’t big NCAA scorers, they had impacts at the conference level. Okubo was an NCAA qualifier during his career.
• Certainly this list proves that getting a top 20 recruit doesn’t guarantee NCAA success, but it also shows that the vast majority of top NCAA scorers are indeed blue-chip recruits. Of the top 10 individual scorers in this class, 4 were ranked inside the top 20 (including recruits #1, #2 and #6), 4 were foreign (and thus not included in our rankings) and only 2 came from outside our top 20 ranks.

Top 10 Individual Scorers in the class:

Ranking indicates their ranking in our top 20. HM means honorable mention, or ranked between 11 and 20. UNR means unranked, INTL means international, and not included in our ranking system.

This table actually includes 14 swimmers – that means the top 10 domestic scorers (those eligible for our pre-recruiting rankings) along with the top 10 overall scorers.

NCAA TITLES (RELAY & INDIVIDUAL) AMONG TOP CLASS OF 2014 RECRUITS:

OTHER IMPACTFUL SWIMMERS IN THE HIGH SCHOOL RECRUITING CLASS OF 2014

Of course, not every contributor comes from our top 10 list. Some swimmers develop extremely well in college. Some swimmers slip under our radar, or don’t really show their ability until their senior year of high school, after our rankings come out.

We dug through NCAA results to find the best American swimmers from this class to not appear on our top 10 list. Again, it’s not always easy to account for redshirt years, gap years or mistakes in an athlete’s listed class each season. So if we forgot anyone, respectfully let us know in the comments!

Note: We tracked these athletes based on individual All-America honors, or finishes inside the NCAA’s top 8 in any given individual event in any given year:

• NC State got nothing from top 20 recruit Colin Ellington, but found a diamond in the rough instead in Ryan Held, who finished as the class’s #4 overall scorer behind Dressel, Bentz and Schooling. Held’s times when we ranked these recruits: 19.9/43.9/1:39.5. By the time he’d finished his senior year of high school, he was 19.5/43.3/1:36.8, and over the course of his college career, he moved to 18.5/41.0/1:31.3.
• Indiana’s Blake Pieroni was the only other domestic, unranked recruit to crack our top 10 in overall scoring. He scored all four years for Indiana, getting steadily better with each season. He ultimately ranks 8th in this class in total scoring.
• This was a big class with a lot of scorers overall – 12 ranked recruits, 30 unranked recruits and 20 foreign swimmers. Compare that to their women’s NCAA counterparts, which had 14 ranked recruits 25 unranked recruits and 14 foreign swimmers.
• On the international side, Jan Switkowski scored zero in his year with Virginia Tech, then averaged just under 40 points a season in his three with Florida. Had he gotten four years of his average production at Florida, he’d rank #2 in class scoring behind only Dressel.
• Anton Ipsen scored in all four years, but about doubled his previous yearly scoring output as as a senior to tie for the class lead among internationals.

Domestic

Foreign