Texas Men Return the Most NCAA Points, While Cal’s Streak Goes Into Serious Rebuild Mode

2025 Men’s NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships

• March 26-29, 2025
• Weyerhaeuser King County Aquatics Center, Federal Way, Washington
• Short Course Yards (25 yards)
• Live Results
• Final Results
• Live Recaps
  • Prelims: Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4
  • Finals: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4

See the women’s returning points breakdown.

While ‘returning points’ are just one piece of the NCAA puzzle, that one piece points strongly in favor of the defending champion Texas Longhorns.

The Texas men scored 332 individual points at last year’s NCAA Championship meet, and will return nearly three-quarters of those, with 254.5

By comparison, the runner-up Cal men, who finished just 19 points behind Texas at NCAAs (and had more individual scoring swims), return only 43 individual points. That’s only around 14% of their individual points.

That 63.1% return rate is very high on the men’s side, where the scoring tends to be dominated by more veteran swimmers. About 48.7% of this year’s NCAA Championship individual points were scored by seniors or 5th years. That’s much higher than the 43.1% of women’s points that are graduating.

Points Scored By Class:

• Freshman – 191
• Sophomore – 407.5
• Junior – 581
• Senior – 860
• 5th Year – 428.5

A note about the class data: the math is calculated based on what classes athletes were listed in on the official NCAA results file, and for returning points were adjusted where we were able to identify swimmers who will be returning.

Most notably, that includes returning Georgia Bulldog Luca Urlando, who scored 45 NCAA Championship points. While he was listed as a 5th year in the official results, because of redshirts from injuries, he has a year of eligibility remaining and is planning to use it next season. We have moved him to the junior class for the purposes of this analysis.

That also includes Texas’ David Johnston, who was listed as as senior at NCAAs but who plans to return next season after taking an Olympic redshirt ahead of NCAAs. He scored 30 points at NCAAs.

This was the last season for swimmers to use a 5th year of eligibility unless they were granted a redshirt season in one of the last four and competed in the 2020-2021 collegiate season, like Urlando.

They’ve both been listed as seniors in the data above and juniors in the data below.

Texas A&M’s Baylor Nelson is transferring to Texas, costing them 14.5 individual returning points.

The Florida men return the next-most individual points after Texas with 150, and Indiana returns 121 – though there are rumors of some high profile transfers for the Hoosiers next season that would help close that gap.

Arizona State also returns most of their individual points (76 points, 76%), and have likewise picked up a pair of All-American transfer from Florida (Adam Chaney and Andrew Taylor).

The Georgia Bulldogs are an intriguing team: they finished 7th at last year’s NCAA Championships with a 12 individual scoring swim count, but thanks to Urlando’s loophole, they return 71.33% of their individual points.

They do graduate a big name in 5th year Jake Magahey, who swam a good 800 free relay leg and scored 42 individual points, and senior relay contributor Reese Branzell, but they bring in Sean Green, a very similar swimmer, as a replacement.

The Cal men, meanwhile, rank only 7th in returning points. The Golden Bears have finished in the top 2 in the last 15 consecutive NCAA Championship meets, but they’ll have to pull a few rabbits out of their hat next season to keep that streak alive.

Their cross-Bay rivals from Stanford also got hit hard by graduation, losing about 77% of their individual points.

Don’t look now but the LSU Tigers return 100% of their NCAA Championship points, which is the 8th-most points of any team in the country.

Returning Points