The 2022 ACC Swimming & Diving Championships felt like the biggest, baddest, and most exciting ACC Championships ever. Based on records broken, especially on the women’s side, they were.
With Virginia, NC State, Louisville, and most recently Virginia Tech’s growth under Sergio Lopez leading the way, the current ACC feels like the deepest ACC Conference that we’ve seen in a while.
But I wanted to check to see if that was true – is the ACC actually deeper than it has ever been?
Based on one measure, that appears to be mostly true, but maybe not by the same margin as it might seem.
I ran through the 8th-ranked prelims times for each individual event, men and women, to see where the cutlines fell to earn A-Final Invites.
By-and-large the 8th place prelims time in individual events from 2022 were faster than any of the prior four years. In some cases – like the women’s 400 IM, it wasn’t even close – that race had a cutline more than four seconds faster than any in the last four.
But there were a few events that broke the trend. The men’s 400 IM and 1650 freestyles, for example, weren’t as fast as what we’ve previously seen, even with Mark Bernardino having a lot of success with the NC State men’s distance group in general. That probably reflects the general priorities of the teams – all four of the mentioned men’s rosters are really building with sprints and relays, which is probably why we see the 400 IM and 1650, specifically, suffering.
The women’s 1650 saw a similar trend.
Check out the data below.
Women ACC 8th-Place in Prelims: Last 4 Seasons
| Women | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 |
| 500 free | 4:45.06 | 4:46.26 | 4:46.02 | 4:44.21 |
| 200 IM | 1:56.55 | 1:57.83 | 1:57.43 | 1:59.10 |
| 50 free | 22.21 | 22.46 | 22.29 | 22.38 |
| 400 IM | 4:09.20 | 4:15.34 | 4:13.41 | 4:13.45 |
| 100 Fly | 52.31 | 52.41 | 52.4 | 52.57 |
| 200 Free | 1:46.23 | 1:47.24 | 1:46.17 | 1:46.13 |
| 200 Fly | 1:56.42 | 1:56.44 | 1:57.19 | 1:56.80 |
| 100 Back | 52.36 | 52.97 | 52.56 | 52.93 |
| 100 Breast | 1:00.02 | 59.92 | 1:00.16 | 1:00.10 |
| 1650 Free | 16:26.84 | 16:28.80 | 16:25.99 | 16:25.33 |
| 200 Back | 1:54.04 | 1:54.30 | 1:54.74 | 1:54.13 |
| 100 Free | 48.68 | 49.4 | 48.67 | 48.68 |
| 200 Breast | 2:09.20 | 2:10.12 | 2:11.00 | 2:11.50 |
Men ACC 8th-Place in Prelims: Last 4 Seasons
| Men | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 |
| 500 free | 4:16.14 | 4:17.82 | 4:18.06 | 4:17.83 |
| 200 IM | 1:44.49 | 1:44.98 | 1:45.29 | 1:44.34 |
| 50 free | 19.23 | 19.51 | 19.56 | 19.56 |
| 400 IM | 3:48.09 | 3:46.84 | 3:48.09 | 3:46.89 |
| 100 Fly | 45.84 | 46.17 | 46.21 | 45.99 |
| 200 Free | 1:34.02 | 1:34.99 | 1:34.72 | 1:34.63 |
| 200 Fly | 1:42.99 | 1:44.24 | 1:44.25 | 1:43.39 |
| 100 Back | 46.05 | 46.54 | 46.47 | 46.33 |
| 100 Breast | 52.68 | 52.47 | 53.05 | 53.16 |
| 1650 Free | 15:12.07 | 15:09.24 | 15:04.55 | 14:59.51 |
| 200 Back | 1:41.43 | 1:42.34 | 1:42.56 | 1:42.06 |
| 100 Free | 42.59 | 42.96 | 43.05 | 42.65 |
| 200 Breast | 1:54.60 | 1:54.14 | 1:55.96 | 1:55.52 |
I think another way of looking at ACC depth is the times needed to get into the B and C finals. IMO those times have gotten much much faster but I have not looked at the data. Just a general feeling.
Top 6 Team are as good as any Conference. Pittsburgh doesn’t belong with these teams. They should stick with the Western Pennsylvania Cup Cake Conference.
How are you gonna trash pitt when Boston College did worse 👀
This is one metric & a fair + good basic one to consider.
I haven’t attempted the math & [cough] don’t have a program that does it in minutes, but it’d be a deeper metric to just throw out all of the UVa, NCS, Lousville & VaTech results. Then throw out the top 4 B1G, SEC, Pac 12 swimmer & diver results. Then score the meet from #5 team finishers on down for all swims & diving results in the conferences as a meet.
My guess is ACC wins that meet for women running away & for men in a close race with the SEC. One huge story from the ACC meet was teams like Duke, Pitt & Boston College… Read more »
Don’t think you can say NC State isn’t putting a focus on distance when they placed 4 of the top 5 in the mile and all under 15 minutes.
They added another sub-15 miler on Saturday too
Think they are more referring to UVA, VT,, and Louisville. NCSU’s rise has been built off of their sprinting
How do 5th year seniors factor into this? If they were taken out, would your data show more consistency between 8th place times over the last four years?
I think 5th years are a pretty big reason for the speed this year in everything from ACCs to the extremely fast NCAA qualifying times.