The 32 Most Valuable Swimmers at 2015 Men’s NCAA’s: Part III

This is the third part of a three-part preview.  Miss part II?  Click here.  Miss part I?  Click here.

Part III:

The big day is finally here, so to warm up this morning, check out our Part III of our “32 Most Valuable Swimmers at Men’s NCAA’s”.  As a reminder, here’s an explanation of our rankings:

This isn’t a ranking of “which swimmer is fastest” or how a particular swimmer is going to do, it’s just how valuable/important that individual is to their respective team next week.  There are so many key athletes, and you could make a great argument to move most of these guys up or down a few spots.  We didn’t have a hard-and-fast method in choosing, and there weren’t many extreme calculations/metrics done (though some numbers were crunched) ; we wanted to move this away from being strictly a statistical measure of “worth”.  

Factors we considered:

-Estimated individual finishes/point totals.
-Relay value is critical.
-No divers.
-What happens to the team if that swimmer can’t compete?  Is the team completely at a loss without him?  Or does the team that have a reliable/fast “replacement”?  Note: I totally over-weighted this last year.  Will try to avoid that this time
-Slight weight towards the teams that are likely to finish higher in the rankings

To recap, here’s 32-21:

32. Matt McHugh – Ohio State
31. Peter John Stevens – Tennessee
30. Arthur Mendes – Auburn
29. Bradley Tandy – Arizona
28. Will Licon – Texas
27. Tom Kremer – Stanford
26. Sam Tierney – Missouri
25. Dan Wallace – Florida
24. Josh Prenot – Cal
23. Kevin Cordes – Arizona
22. Matias Koski – Georgia
21. Chuck “The Magic Man” Katis – Cal

20. Chase Kalisz – Georgia
19. Mitch D’Arrigo – Florida
18. Dylan Bosch – Michigan
17. Ryan Held – NC State
16. David Williams – NC State
15. Nic Fink – Georgia
14. Santo Condorelli  – USC
13. Joe Schooling – Texas
12. Kip Darmody – Texas
11. Bruno Ortiz – Michigan

Numbers 10-1:

10. Kyle Darmody – Auburn
1 A-final, 2 B-finals, 4 relays
2014 rank: 7th, 2013 rank: n/a

Darmody is a shoe-in for the top 10 for the second consecutive year.  While a majority of his individual swims weren’t worth writing home about last year (added a half-second in the 50, lost a swim-off to get into the B-final in the 100 back), the SwimMAC Carolina product turned some heads with his relay performances.  His splits: 18.37, 18.62, 18.67, 18.77, 41.48, 41.91, 1:34.44.  Not bad for a true freshman.

With Marcelo Chierighini gone, Darmody is far-and-away Auburn’s #1 sprinter, and if his SEC performance was any indication, he’s having no issues with carrying the load.  His splits last month: 18.60, 41.75, 41.88, 1:33.17 (!) across four timed final relays swims.

9. Seth Stubblefield – Cal
2 A-finals, 1 B-final, 4 relays
2014 rank: n/a, 2013 rank: 30^th

Note: This is the part where I admit I forgot to include Tyler Messerschmidt after I published part one of the article.  Probably would wedge him in between Tandy and Mendes.

After it looked like Tyler Messerschmidt was the guy the first part of the season, Stubblefield locked himself in as Cal’s number one sprinter towards the end of the 2013-14 season, anchoring three of the four short relays in near-nation-leading times, while also scoring more than 30 points individually.

The senior Plano, Texas native done nothing but further cement himself in that role in the last twelve months, including grabbing a U.S. National Team spot, swimming his fastest pre-NCAA splits virtually across the board, and proving he could still some some elite-level butterfly in a pinch by winning the 100 at Pac 12’s and splitting 45-low on the 400 medley relay.  With how surprisingly thin the Bears are in the sprint events, Cal needs Stubblefield to kick it up yet another notch this week if they’re looking to repeat.

8. John Murray – Texas
2 A-finals, 4 relays, 1 insane taper
2014 rank: n/a, 2013 rank: n/a

John Murray: the unquestioned winner of the 2014 NCAA’s “Monster Taper” award.  Seeded on the outside looking in in both sprint freestyles, Murray started off the meet with statement swims the opening session, dropping an 18.69 second leg on the 200 freestyle relay and a 19.07 flat-start 50.  He followed those performances up with a field-leading 18.36 (one of the fastest non-supersuited splits in history) and a 19.11 flat-start at night.

In the next two days, Murray proceeded to split the third-fastest 50 breaststroke leg on the 200 medley, break 42 seconds in the open 100 freestyle, and swim the fastest leg on the Longhorns’ 400 freestyle relay.

Texas has a borderline-unprecedented number of relay options as Robert Gibbs indicated in his great breakdown yesterday, but if Murray performs anything like last year, he’s the one sure-fire candidate to swim on four relays.  He falls slightly due to likely not scoring in his third event, but he makes up for it by being the x-factor on the Longhorns’ 200 medley relay, and his status as the undisputed top sprinter.

7. Kristian Gkolomeev – Alabama
2 A-finals, 4-5 relays
2014 rank: n/a, 2013 rank: n/a

Fun fact of the day: only ten schools have won a relay at NCAA’s since 1991.  And the top eight schools on those list are the eight most relevant schools from the last 15-20 years.  No, seriously:

Auburn (26 times)
Stanford (25)
Texas (23)
Cal (18)
Arizona (11)
Michigan (7)
Florida (4)
USC (3)
Tennessee (2… both in 1996)
Northwestern (1)

So to recap, only one non-traditional-power has won a relay since 1996… and they only did it one time (Northwestern in 2007).  Essentially—show me your shocked face—there has been almost zero parity in NCAA swimming in the last 20-25 years.

The Alabama Crimson Tide (or NC State, really) could break that spell this year, and it would all come back to Gkolomeev.  The surprise, reigning 50 free co-champion has been on fire all season, headlined by convincing sprint freestyle wins at SEC’s against in field that included Kyle Darmody and Florida superstar freshman Caeleb Dressel. 

Dennis Pursley and his staff have put together four great sprint relays, three of which have a very good shot at winning this weekend, but the chances of one of those—the 200 medley—are completely dependent on whether or not they throw their best sprinter on it.  They have to choose either (a) have Gkolomeev drop the 100 fly and swim five relays, (b) keep Gkolomeev in the 100 fly, but have him anchor the 200 medley and punt the 800 free relay entirely, or (c) keep him off the 200 medley.  Frankly, the clear choice is (a), assuming Gkolomeev hasn’t suddenly learned how to finish a 100 fly.

6. Simonas Bilis – NC State
3 A-finals, 4 relays, 1 Wolfpack
2014 rank: n/a, 2013 rank: n/a

Bilis has a lot on his very, very broad Lithuanian shoulders this weekend for pretty much the same reasons we indicated for David Williams and Ryan Held in part II of this article.  The difference is that, as a top 5 seed in the 50 and the 100 and a top 10 seed in the 200, Bilis has a bit more pressure.

5. Cristian Quintero – USC
3 A-Finals, 3-4 relays, seemingly infinite gears
2014 rank: 12th, 2013 rank: n/a

Unprecedented range (splitting 18.8 while possible breaking 4:10), and never seems to run out of energy.  I was watching the 400 free relay with a couple of former USC swimmers at last year’s NCAA’s.  The Trojans had been shuffling their relays around a bit all week, and we were trying to get a handle on who Dave Salo was going with and in what order.  Quintero steps up to the blocks to lead off.  He had already swam on three other relays that week (including the brutal triple-200 on Friday, plus anchoring the 200 medley at the beginning of prelims), and finaled in three individuals events.

I remember asking out loud “okay, seriously, how much can Cristian possibly have in the tank at this point to lead off?”  One of the people sitting with me casually said something along the line of “ehh, it’s Cristian, so that’s a dumb question”.

Yep. 42.3 flat start.

TL;DR… This is the best team USC has had in decades, and Quintero is the one they’re counting on in their push for a team title.  But since he may not swim on either the 200 free or 200 medley relay given the meet order, we can’t put him any higher than #5.

4. Jack Conger – Texas
3 A-finals, 4 relays
2014 rank: 2^nd, 2013 rank: n/a

If this were a professional league where teams could trade swimmers (P.S., how awesome would that be?), and Eddie Reese calls every NCAA coach and offers him/her Conger for their best swimmer… Does anybody say no?  I mean, he dropped the 500 free (where he goes 4:13) and 200 back (where he was top 10 in the world in 2013, and even better in a short course pool) to focus on events he’s better at.  That’s… not normal.  Can’t put him first, though.  The ‘Horns are loaded with guys in each of his specialties.

There is one question (FYI, I’m about to actually write a swimming version one of my least favorite / most overblown sports media questions): How will he “handle the pressure” (ugh, that’s cliché) and the ups and downs this weekend?  Whichever way you look at it, he had massive [perhaps unfair] expectations coming into the biggest meet of his first season, and he didn’t handle some early turbulence particularly well (it was even visible from the stands).  Did you know he only ended up on two relays at NCAA’s?  Yes, Texas was absolutely loaded, but still… This is one of the fastest, most versatile swimmers in NCAA history, and he only ended up on two relays?  And he was the second-slowest leg on one of them?  That won’t be good enough this time around.

3. Ryan Murphy – Cal
3 A-finals, 4 relays
2014 rank: too low, 2013 rank: n/a

Remember where I put Murphy last year?  No?  Great, me neither.  Murphy is good for two wins (don’t jinx it) very-high-placing A-finals in the backstrokes, plus a possible spot in the 200 IM A-final.  That, and he can split sub-19 and sub-42.  What else needs to be said?

2. Caeleb Dressel – Florida
3 A-finals, 4 relays
2014 rank: n/a, 2013 rank: n/a

The most impactful freshman sprinter since Jimmy Feigen.  There was a lot of speculation on how Dressel would fair his freshman year coming into Gregg Troy’s program, but it’s safe to say he’s doing just fine (also, it’s not like Dressel is Florida’s first sprinter in recent years); comes into the meet as a top 3 seed in three events, and is far-and-away Florida’s #1 sprint freestyler and butterflyer.

How did he climb up to #2?  Dressel is in a similar situation that Bruno Ortiz was in for the Michigan Wolverines a year ago.  There’s nobody within his stratosphere on their roster (other than maybe Corey Main), and the Gators’ relays will go as far as he can possibly take them.

1. David Nolan – Stanford
3 A-Finals, 4 relay swims
2014 rank: 1^st, 2013 rank: 4^th

I didn’t have David this high in my head prior to Pac 12’s.  He was sitting at #5, actually.  Then he went 1:40.0 in the 200 IM.  And split 18.6.  And 1:32.8.  And 51.7 in a 100 breast.  And was 21.1/45.2/1:40.0 in the 50/100/200 back.  All in the same meet.  Unshaved (for all you truthers out there).  His versatility and ability to power through more than a dozen swims at full speed over three days is currently unparalleled in college swimming.

Stanford is in significantly better shape heading into this meet than they were a year ago any way you slice it, but it doesn’t change the fact that their success or failure this weekend is heavily weighted by Nolan’s results.  He’s truly their only NCAA-level breaststroke option, and will be needed to split under 18.5 and 1:32.5 for the Cardinal to get where they want to be on the 200 and 800 free relays.  A 1:39 in the 200 IM to open the meet would spark something, too.