With the release this morning of the uncut entry lists for the NCAA Championships, we’ve gone through and scored things as they’re seeded.
A note to make sure there’s absolute clarity: these lists released late Monday by USA Swimming are not official lists of who’s been invited to NCAA’s. They are lists of which three individual events, and relays, each team is trying to send to the meet, if the cuts fall in their favor.
With that being said, the top 16 seeds in each individual event are about as sure of a lock as one can get, so scoring out those top 16 is possible, even before the psych sheets are cut.
First, let’s start with a reflective look. Psych sheet scoring is not infallible. It doesn’t take into account taper patterns, diving, and disqualifications or scratches.
What it is, however, is a good starting point perspective, so that during the meet, teams and fans sort of know where things stand, how their team is improving, etc. But they are pretty good. Last year, they correctly predicted both NCAA Champions (Georgia women, Michigan men). The year before, they were close, but not right on. Last year, they had the right top 10 teams in the wrong order, with a lot of the differences (but not all) explained by diving (Tennessee’s scoring difference was largely explained by diving, for example, and they were the really big mover). Below, we’ve done a comparison of the top 10 teams from last year’s psych sheet scoring to the actual outcome, for your viewing enjoyment.
PSYCH | PSYCH | ACTUAL | ACTUAL | |
1 | Georgia-GA | 396 | Georgia | 477 |
2 | Texas A&M-GU | 368 | Cal | 393 |
3 | California-PC | 345 | Tennessee | 325.5 |
4 | Florida-FL | 340 | Texas A&M | 323.5 |
5 | Southern Cali-CA | 279 | Arizona | 311 |
6 | Tennessee-SE | 266 | Florida | 305 |
7 | Stanford-PC | 238 | USC | 291 |
8 | Arizona-AZ | 216 | Stanford | 246 |
9 | Minnesota-MN | 192 | Texas | 186 |
10 | Texas-ST | 136 | Minnesota | 141 |
We’ll break the scoring down a dozen different ways in the next two weeks, but to start, here’s a full list based on just swimming psych sheet scoring. We’ve put a (D) for teams that should expect a significant positive diving impact to their score – which there’s an increasing number of top programs on the women’s side who will be impacted.
Both Cal and Georgia can expect diving points, but Georgia’s should be more with two potential scorers and potential scorers in more events, as compared to Cal who is leaning heavily on Kahley Rowell in the platform.
On paper, Georgia has just under a 130-point advantage, plus whatever advantage they get in diving. That means that the Cal women have some catching up to do – because while Georgia lacks some of the star power they had when they won the title last year, the depth that they’ve developed is absolutely unbelievable. To illustrate that, we’ve included a count of the number of seeded scoring swims (including relays) in the far right-hand column.
Psych Scored Points | Number of Scoring Swims | |
1. Georgia | 514 (D) | 38 |
2. Cal | 386 (D) | 29 |
3. Stanford | 320 (D) | 20 |
4. Texas A&M | 317 (D) | 28 |
5. Florida | 268 | 23 |
6. USC | 255 (D) | 22 |
7. Virginia | 194 | 15 |
8. Tennessee | 174 (D) | 10 |
9. Arizona | 164 (D) | 12 |
10. Indiana | 120 | 12 |
11. Texas | 95 (D+) | 11 |
12. Minnesota | 83 (D+) | 13 |
13. UNC | 73 | 9 |
14. Louisville | 63 | 9 |
15. Wisconsin | 56 | 6 |
16. San Diego State | 54 | 6 |
17. Notre Dame | 51 | 5 |
18. Auburn | 43 | 8 |
19. Penn St. | 43 | 8 |
20. NC State | 34 | 4 |
21. Missouri | 30 (D) | 5 |
22. Wisconsin-Milwaukee | 30 | 3 |
23. Kentucky | 28 | 4 |
24. Florida St. | 27 | 7 |
25. Alabama | 26 | 6 |
26. SMU | 19 | 3 |
27. UNLV | 13 | 2 |
28. Denver | 11 | 2 |
29. UCLA | 10 (D) | 4 |
30. Florida Gulf Coast | 9 | 2 |
31. Oregon State | 9 | 2 |
32. Ohio State | 8 (D) | 3 |
33. Nevada | 7 | 2 |
34. Virginia Tech | 7 (D) | 2 |
35. UCSB | 6 | 2 |
36. Michigan | 5 | 3 |
37. Princeton | 4 | 2 |
38. LSU | 4 (D) | 2 |
39. Utah | 2 (D) | 3 |
40. Arkansas | 2 | 2 |
41. Kansas | 1 | 2 |
It sure looks like Cal has significant work to do to catch Georgia. Diving a wash at best for Cal between these two teams. We’ll see what the prognosis is for the Cal men during the PAC 12 championships but appears that no psych sheet posted on the PAC 12 web yet. I’m not a big fan of that PAC 12 swimming & diving web-site!
Pac 12 Men’s Psych Sheets:
http://results.teamunify.com/pnws2/
Thanks for the number crunching, Braden. The final 2013 team scores include diving, so wouldn’t a better psych sheet/actual results comparison be without diving added into final results? Also the Ds for schools with projected diving points haven’t be added.
duckduckgoose – that is certainly an interesting comparison as well. We’ll make sure to include in in the next couple of weeks. Here we did so to sort of highlight the overall changes between seeds and final standings, but there’s a lot that could also be learned from comparing swimming-to-swimming as well.
Thanks, Braden. I was looking for a quick and dirty way to quantify how many swimming points schools added thanks to taper when I noticed diving points were included in the final points total.
At what point do teams have to trim their roster? Are there any potential scorers that may not be at the meet?