The Swimulator‘s NCAA program rankings are now updated with the 2018 season’s data. The rankings now include data from the 2012 through the 2018 seasons. The Swimulator aggregates a program’s national-level team strength, improvement, and attrition into a single score to generate a single ranking score. They are meant to provide a single measure of a NCAA swimming program’s ability to recruit, develop, and maintain swimming talent. The final calculated score is based off of a team’s z-score in each of the three categories, strength, improvement, and attrition added together.
Top ten women’s programs
| Rank | Team | Combined Score | Strength Rank | Team Strength | Attrition Rank | Attrition Rate | Improvement Rank | Improvement % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nebraska | 389 | 44 | 401.8 | 51 | -0.124 | 2 | 0.91 |
| 2 | Georgia | 369 | 1 | 691.4 | 36 | -0.109 | 85 | 0.197 |
| 3 | NC State | 369 | 17 | 539.6 | 50 | -0.122 | 13 | 0.556 |
| 4 | Virginia | 355 | 6 | 624.8 | 34 | -0.108 | 63 | 0.29 |
| 5 | UNC | 345 | 10 | 577.6 | 57 | -0.129 | 30 | 0.424 |
| 6 | Stanford | 344 | 4 | 659.2 | 7 | -0.073 | 122 | 0.076 |
| 7 | Texas A&M | 332 | 3 | 660.4 | 118 | -0.182 | 40 | 0.379 |
| 8 | Missouri | 319 | 22 | 504.4 | 27 | -0.103 | 33 | 0.418 |
| 9 | LSU | 314 | 27 | 469.8 | 6 | -0.072 | 41 | 0.378 |
| 10 | Michigan | 305 | 14 | 549.2 | 82 | -0.154 | 25 | 0.441 |
Top ten men’s programs
| Rank | Team | Combined Score | Strength Rank | Team Strength | Attrition Rank | Attrition Rate | Improvement Rank | Improvement % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NC State | 382 | 4 | 575.8 | 36 | -0.147 | 4 | 0.705 |
| 2 | Florida | 374 | 1 | 635.0 | 26 | -0.135 | 29 | 0.432 |
| 3 | Missouri | 345 | 13 | 516.8 | 31 | -0.145 | 3 | 0.705 |
| 4 | Louisville | 334 | 8 | 536.8 | 18 | -0.125 | 18 | 0.509 |
| 5 | Texas | 327 | 2 | 615.0 | 29 | -0.142 | 45 | 0.312 |
| 6 | Michigan | 322 | 3 | 613.8 | 38 | -0.151 | 43 | 0.336 |
| 7 | Alabama | 308 | 16 | 495.4 | 3 | -0.072 | 46 | 0.29 |
| 8 | California | 305 | 7 | 563.4 | 27 | -0.14 | 39 | 0.365 |
| 9 | Georgia | 289 | 6 | 565.4 | 14 | -0.115 | 69 | 0.179 |
| 10 | Virginia | 260 | 18 | 488.8 | 79 | -0.2 | 8 | 0.652 |
NC State University – a program seemingly perpetually on the rise – tops all DI men’s programs. A more surprising University of Nebraska program with a long track record of improving their swimmers leads all women’s DI programs.
Kudos to NC State, University of Missouri, University of Virginia, University of Georgia, and the University of Michigan for placing top ten for both the men’s and women’s teams. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all four these teams share a women’s and men’s head coach: Braden Holloway at NC State, Greg Rhodenbaugh at Missouri, Todd DeSorbo for Virginia, Mike Bottom at Michigan, and Jack Bauerle at Georgia. All these coaches with the exception of DeSorbo – who moved over from NC State in 2017 to helm Virginia – helmed their programs over the whole 2012-2018 time period.
NC State was particularly impressive. Both their women’s and men’s teams ranked in the top three! Fittingly, their head coach, Braden Holloway, was named ACC coach of the year for the men’s team. While their women’s program hasn’t quite equaled the successes of their men’s team at the national level, I expect similarly impressive results from them in their near future.
On the DII side, Wingate tops the women’s list while perennial powerhouse Drury leads the men’s. Queens University of Charlotte and Lindenwood were the two programs besides Drury to have both their men’s and women’s teams rank top ten.
For DIII, the storied Kenyon College, owners of 34 men’s and 23 women’s national championships, tops both the men’s and women’s program rankings. They narrowly edged out Emory and Williams, who were also highly ranked on both the men’s and women’s sides.
Check out the site to see the complete rankings.
wpDiscuz
Forgot Georgia on the list for men and women in the top 10
Ah thanks, good catch. Just updated with their info.
How is the team strength measured?
I find each team’s top lineup, based off of all their swimmer’s top times, each year. Then I estimate how many points each swimmer’s time would score at an average nationals meet and average conference meet, then average the two. Its supposed account for both national-level and conference-level strength.
So a strong team in a weak conference will have a high average team strength?
It doesn’t depend on the conference the team is in. For conference-level strength, I use an average across all conferences in that NCAA division. So the comparison is to all teams in that division.
Some of our top swimmers are missing from our team on the Swimulator. Why is that?
Usually this happens when a team doesn’t submit their roster correctly to USA Swimming and their swimmers don’t show up in USASwimming’s times database. If their times are missing there, they will be missing on Swimulator. What team is it? I can look into it.
This is very interesting. Thank you for posting and spending the hours putting the information together.
Are all columns equated equally in figuring the overall score? Is improvement based on best time per year, or at a specific meet? Is attrition rate calculated by people scoring or anyone on the roster in September?
Glad you liked it. All columns are equally weighted, but they are combined by using the z-score in each category. Improvement is calculated freshman to senior year and only uses the top three powerpoint swims from a given season. I’m using that to try and only factor taper times when calculating improvement data. Attrition is calculated by an non-senior who competed at least one meet and did not compete at all the next season.
Does attrition factor in redshirting? For instance, there may be someone who does not compete in an NCAA sanctioned meet for an entire season but it is because they are redshirting.
And does improvement take into account best times from high school? Or only college?
If someone took a redshirt first year, it wouldn’t be counted. If they missed a later season for injury, then that would count in the numbers.
Improvement is just calculated from the end of your freshman year on, so it does leave out improvement from high school to freshman year.
I can imagine that it would add a whole lot more work to your plate to get high school bests and calculate drops from those, but it seems to me that it would skew results a lot by not including those drops during freshman year.
From the explanation on the Swimulator site, it says the improvement is only measured from upperclassman. Why? That seems to be leaving out a huge data point.
Unfortunately USA Swimming shows college times separately from club times, so matching up the two data sets isn’t easy. Also, many high school swimmers do all their best swimming in high school meets, which are usually only tracked by that state’s athletic association.
“They are meant to provide a single measure of a NCAA swimming program’s ability to recruit, develop, and maintain swimming talent”. What am I missing? (I’m sure it’s something) Nebraska is ranked #1 (no offense to the Cornhuskers) but not known as a swimming power, so what does having them ranked #1 mean? Help me Mr. Wizard…..
This is a ranking of best programs not fastest teams. In the “how fast are they” category (team strength) Nebraska is ranked 44th, which is pretty reasonable for a mid tier Big 10 team. Their attrition was also unexceptional (ranked 51), but it was still in the top 25%.The stat that bumped them up to #1 was their large outlier in improvement. Swimmers at Nebraska get a lot faster year to year. A lot. 2.5 standard deviations above average. Apparently Morales (yes, that Pablo Morales) can coach ’em up, but can’t recruit.
Compared to, for example, second ranked Georgia. Their best stat was their team strength (ranked #1), but that was only 1.8 standard deviations above average. Less than Nebraska’s… Read more »
Sorry Andrew – you are lost in the weeds here. How can a program that scores 0 points in swimming at nationals rank #1 nationally?. This analysis doesn’t pass the common sense test. Improvement is an important measure, but if that improvement yields no results on the national stage, then it seems you are weighing it incorrectly.
Maybe so. There is a clear argument for weighting the team strength component more heavily. However I think it’s worth it to try and get at the experience of a typical swimmer in a program. Do swimmers have success (are they getting faster)? Do swimmers feel swimming on the team is worth their time (are they quitting)?
The more we focus on team success, the less we emphasize the experience of majority of swimmers. Most swimmers don’t score huge points at conference or nationals. Most swimmers don’t have full rides. If tons of swimmers are quitting or being pushed out, it doesn’t reflect highly on the experience of being a part of a particular team.
Team success is basically… Read more »
Not sure if this is the case with this analysis or not, but “improvement” needs to be normalized, otherwise it’s meaningless. In other words, it’s not meaningful to compare the relative improvement percentage of a woman that comes into a program with a 51 100 free time to someone that comes in with a 48 for obvious reasons – there’s so much more room for improvement when you are 5 secs behind the NCAA record than when you are already very close to it.
One would think so, but when I looked at that same question in the past, slow and fast swimmers tend to improve about the same amount. Faster swimmers tend to improve a bit less, but its a pretty minor effect. This article has some of the data: https://swimswam.com/how-much-faster-do-swimmers-get-in-college/
WOLF-
Pack!!!
Holloway did not win both men’s and women’s Coach of the Year in the ACC. The dude from L’ville won the women’s one. I would venture to say that Holloway had to have finished 3rd at best in the voting for the women’s one with DeSorbo finishing 2nd (thats a different discussion). He has probably won both in the past, but the article makes it sound like he won both this year. He did not. Just the men’s coach of the year, and deservedly so.
Good catch, I’ve updated. I was thinking of 2017 where Holloway won both men’s and women’s ACC coach of the year.
Can someone explain attrition ranking and why alabama is so high ranked?
Kevin wrote this in a comment higher up: “Attrition is calculated by an non-senior who competed at least one meet and did not compete at all the next season.” Almost no one leaves Alabama’s men’s team. For example, every single non senior on last year’s Alabama team was back this year. That’s not typical.