Swimulator Snapshot: Top the Same, But Movement Below Before Conference Champs

by Robert Gibbs 0

February 15th, 2021 College, News

While it’s been one of the strangest college swimming seasons ever (ok, almost certainly the strangest ever), we are less than two days away before two of the Power 5 conferences get their meets underway, with the SEC and ACC women both starting their respective championships on Wednesday.

Before we show you the results, a few reminders and caveats:

  1. Most importantly — these are projections, and not predictions. The Swimulator simply calculates what would happen if each swimmer or team replicated their season-best times, so far, in the finals of the NCAA Championship meet. Our latest SwimSwam Power Rankings (women/men coming tomorrow), are weighed more toward NCAA predictions.
  2. The Swimulator pulls in data from USA Swimming’s NCAA results database. So, if meet results aren’t updated there, they won’t be included in the Swimulator rankings, either. Conversely, sometimes swims are included that shouldn’t be: Nyls Korstanje and Andrei Minakov aren’t competing this season, but converted times from long course meets in their homes countries, give NC State and Stanford about a 30-point bounce each. Arizona State as a whole isn’t competing this year, but Emma Nordin currently accounts for 4 for the Sun Devils due to the inclusion of some results from a December club meet.
  3. You can tweak the settings to the Swimulator uses to determine rankings. For instance, in the rankings below, we’re using season top times, instead of average times.
  4. Finally, the projected scores only take into account swimming events, not diving, so keep that in mind when looking at teams who regularly score a good chunk of points in the diving events.

Men

Team Points
1 Texas 605
2 Georgia 438.5
3 California 349
4 Texas A&M 316
5 NC State 209
6 Florida 197.5
7 Georgia Tech 188
9 Missouri 166
10 Alabama 148.5
11 Virginia 146.5
12 Louisville 132.5
13 Tennessee 102.5
14 Virginia Tech 96
15 UNC 76
16 Stanford 68.5
17 Arizona 42
18 Florida State 38
19 Notre Dame 36
20 LSU 33
21 Northwestern 32.5
22 Minnesota 32
23 Michigan 21.5
24 SMU 16.5
25 USC 12
26 Wisconsin 10
27 Pitt 9
27 Auburn 9
29 Ohio State 8
30 Indiana 7
31 Navy 6
31 Kentucky 6
33 UNLV 3
34 TCU 2
34 Purdue 2

The Cal Bears are now projected to score over 100 points more than they were last month, thanks largely to a few suited relay swims at the Cal v. USC meets last weekend. That point bump is enough move them past Texas A&M in the Swimulator projections. The Virginia Tech Hokies jumped up 4 spots, from 18th to 14th, after some strong relay swims and a 45.68 in the 100 fly by freshman Youssef Ramadan, which moves him up to the 9th in the nation in that event.

We’ve seen a little more racing by Big Ten teams over the last few weeks, but outside of a couple of 50-point 100 breaststrokes from Minnesota’s Max McHugh, there wasn’t much for them to collectively move the need, Stimulator-wise. Watch for a fast Big Ten Championships as teams finally show what they can do with some rest and fast suits this season.

Women

Women
1 Virginia 465
2 Texas 384
3 California 366.5
4 NC State 350
5 Georgia 310
6 Tennessee 205.5
7 Kentucky 173
9 Alabama 169
10 Florida 142
11 Missouri 132
12 Stanford 115
13 Texas A&M 87
14 Virginia Tech 79
15 Arkansas 77
16 USC 74
17 Louisville 67
17 Michigan 67
19 Northwestern 65
20 UNC 50
21 UCLA 42
22 Wisconsin 29
23 Auburn 26
24 Florida State 18
25 Notre Dame 16
25 Ohio State 16
27 Akron 12
28 Buffalo 10
29 SMU 6
30 Houston 4
30 Arizona State 4
30 Miami (Ohio) 4

Just as on the men’s side, the top two women’s teams are the same as when we last looked at the Swimulator, and once again, Cal has surged, this time by an even larger margin. With some additional racing over the last few weeks, the Golden Bears have gone from a projected 168 points and a 9th-place finish to 366.5 points and a 3rd-place finish. The USC women jumped from unranked to 16th, thanks again to some great races against Cal, highlighted by an epic duel between USC’s Kaitlyn Dobler and Cal’s Ema Rajic two weeks ago.

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