Swimulator Conference Projections: Big 10

by Andrew Mering 10

January 11th, 2018 Big Ten, College, News

With more than half the season and all the mid season rest meets complete, it’s time to start looking ahead to conference meets. Today: the Big 10 (ACC).

To project the meets, I’ve used SwimSwam’s Swimulator (available on the front page). This tool creates scores out a meet using top times so far this season (it can also do average times), while respecting plausible event combinations and trying to maximize each team’s points. It does not include diving. To get an idea of how we can expect these projected scores to change at the real meet, I compared last year’s projection as of today’s date to the real conference score at last year’s championship meet.

Big 10 Men

Michigan leads the 2018 projection over Indiana by 256 points. Indiana should be able to make up most of that gap with divers (Indiana out scored Michigan’s divers by 221 last year and return a large percentage of their diving points). Last year Michigan beat their projected swim points by 172, whereas Indiana scored 48 fewer points than their January 10th projection. If that trend is repeated this year Michigan will win, but right now the meet appears close.

The top individual scorers in the projection all come from Michigan and Indiana. The top ones are Felix Auboech of Michigan with 92 points, Blake Peironi of Indiana with 88 points, Vini Lanza of Indiana with 88 points, and Jacob Montague of Michigan with 88 points. Michigan and Indiana have 6 swimmers beyond those 4 with 80+ projected points. The highest projected individual from another team is Conner McHugh of Minnesota with 71.

2018 Projection 2017 Real Conf Score 2017 Real Conf minus Diving 2017 Projection as of 1/10/17 Diff Projection vs Real
Michigan 1444 1382 1361 1189 172
Indiana 1188 1504 1262 1310 -48
Ohio St 972 1382 1101 1065 36
Minnesota 690 879 753 898 -145
Wisconsin 644 763 748 732 16
Iowa 541 424 393 365 28
Purdue 487 721 475 354 121
Michigan St 424 273 270 408 -138
Penn St 399 554 483 479 4
Northwestern 283 349 299 346 -47

Big 10 Women

The Michigan women appear to be strong favorites based on the current projected scores. They lead second and third place Ohio State and Indiana by about 400 points and gained points vs seed last year. Ohio State and Indiana are virtually tied for second. History indicates Indiana as the slight favorite of the two. Last year, Indiana netted 85 points vs seed over Ohio State and out scored them on the boards by about 70 points.

The projected individual scorers are led by Siobhan Haughy of Michigan with a perfect 96 points, Meg Bailey of Ohio State with 89 points, Beata Nelson of Wisconsin with 88 points, and Clara Smiddy of Michigan with 85 points.

2018 Projection 2017 Real Conf Score 2017 Real Conf minus Diving 2017 Projection as of 1/10/17 Diff Projection vs Real
Michigan 1332 1287 1162 1110 52
Ohio St 942 837 799 829 -30
Indiana 940 1125 1020 965 55
Minnesota 782 1086 823 848 -25
Wisconsin 729 1101.5 1041.5 861 180.5
Purdue 541 656 522 438 84
Northwestern 431 534 461 416 45
Nebraska 413 385 268 279 -11
Rutgers 357 446 330 304 26
Penn St 345 453 448 411 37
Iowa 282 357 310 411 -101
Michigan St 223 195.5 190.5 183 7.5
Illinois 189 197 196 253 -57

If you want to look at the event by event projections or more detailed swimmer points projections, follow the links to the full Swimulator projections.  Articles on other D1 conferences are forthcoming (here’s the ACC, and some D3 conferences). In the meantime, if you want to know the projections for other conferences feel free to run your own custom projection here.

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ctweymou
6 years ago

It looks like the Simulator is also missing a few key swimmers from IU. Namely James Beckman and Armand Apa. Beckman is top 10 in the backstroke events and Apa is top 5 in the 100 breaststroke.

No way IU loses. My opinion anyway but of course I am biased.

Right Dude Here
6 years ago

If they do this for all power five schools, it’ll be four great articles and one “Duh!”

Hannah
6 years ago

Ohio State and Indiana’s scores from last year are flipped. Indiana should have 1125 and Ohio State should have 837. The scores minus diving are also flipped.

swimmom
6 years ago

Go Blue!

SUNY Cal
Reply to  swimmom
6 years ago

Michigan woman win BIG!!!!! Won’t even be close, as they have unbelievable depth in many events!!

IU swim
6 years ago

You didn’t add in the SIM the IU 800 free relay

SwimFriend
6 years ago

Swimulator has Samy and Hassan scoring in the 100 back for IU; they are the same person.

Admin
Reply to  SwimFriend
6 years ago

Thanks, fixed.