The pick’em contest is an excellent way to gauge the consensus of opinions on what the results of the men’s NCAA meet will be this weekend. I compiled some summary stats from the pick ’em contest. (Here’s an article on the individual events).
Texas is a strong favorite among readers with 89.3% putting them first. California is the favorite for second with 72% of readers picking them second. After those two teams there isn’t a majority pick for any place. A strong top two and then the a bunch of massed teams existed in the women’s picks (Stanford 1st, Cal 2nd, then everyone else) and that’s exactly what happened. The favorite for third is NC State with 47.2% placing them 3rd.
As with the women’s picks, there is some evidence of some people picking teams down the diagonal (i.e. just picking the next team on the list rather than thinking about their picks), so the percentages past about 6th place are a bit suspect as an indicator of people’s well thought out opinions. It appears a lot of people are wildly guessing at the lower places.
Pick’em Predictions
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | 7th | 8th | 9th | 10th | |
| Texas | 89.3% | 7.5% | 2.7% | 0.4% | 0.1% | |||||
| California | 6.0% | 72.0% | 15.4% | 4.8% | 0.9% | 0.3% | 0.1% | |||
| NC State | 3.7% | 15.1% | 47.2% | 29.8% | 3.8% | 0.4% | 0.2% | |||
| Florida | 1.0% | 4.7% | 31.2% | 49.3% | 10.2% | 1.8% | 0.3% | 0.1% | 0.3% | |
| Indiana | 0.3% | 1.9% | 10.3% | 48.9% | 19.1% | 10.5% | 4.0% | 2.8% | 0.7% | |
| Stanford | 0.3% | 0.8% | 2.4% | 14.2% | 30.7% | 22.4% | 10.9% | 6.8% | 2.9% | |
| Michigan | 0.1% | 0.3% | 1.5% | 2.0% | 5.0% | 9.2% | 9.5% | 17.1% | ||
| University of Georgia | 0.3% | 1.7% | 11.8% | 10.5% | 8.6% | 8.7% | 7.9% | 9.7% | ||
| Auburn | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.5% | 0.3% | 0.8% | 1.9% | 2.1% | 4.4% | ||
| Arizona | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.3% | 0.3% | 0.4% | 0.2% | ||||
| UNC | 0.1% | 0.1% | ||||||||
| Missouri | 0.1% | 1.1% | 1.9% | 2.6% | 2.9% | 6.0% | ||||
| Louisville | 0.3% | 5.8% | 21.0% | 26.7% | 14.9% | 8.4% | 6.3% | |||
| Arizona State | 0.3% | 0.4% | 2.6% | 4.9% | 11.3% | 18.5% | 15.0% | |||
| Alabama | 0.1% | 1.5% | 7.5% | 12.0% | 23.5% | 20.6% | 9.6% | |||
| Southern Cali | 0.4% | 2.0% | 5.9% | 11.0% | 16.9% | 21.4% | ||||
| Ohio St | 0.1% | 0.4% | 0.8% | 1.7% | 5.0% | |||||
| Wisconsin | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.1% | ||||||
| Tennessee | 0.4% | 0.4% | 0.6% | 0.5% | ||||||
| South Carolina | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.2% | |||||||
| Virginia Tech | 0.1% | 0.2% | ||||||||
| Texas A&M | 0.1% | 0.3% | ||||||||
| Harvard | 0.1% | 0.2% | ||||||||
| Minnesota | 0.2% |
Will be interesting. I picked Texas, Cal and NC State in that order. Hard to tell from one event but NC State looked awfully good on the 800 Free Relay. While not out of the question, I think Texas is too deep for them to get first but second is a decent possibility.
Also to the comments about Texas being blah in the 800 Free Relay, what? Haas gave the fastest ever split, Conger was very quick as well. They almost bettered their time from last year with two 33’s on the relay. Number 3 swim of all time. NC State was just that good. Spectacular relay. It was more balanced than Texas, why I give them an outside… Read more »
Who thinks Cal is going to finish 9th?
Those few people who put Harvard 9th and 10th are clearly expecting Dean Farris to score big in all his events.