2021 ACC WOMEN’S CHAMPIONSHIPS
- When: Wednesday, February 17th – Saturday, February 20th, 2021
- Where: Greensboro Aquatic Center, Greensboro, NC
- Champion: University of Virginia (2x)
- Results
In the lead-up to NCAA conference meet season, we previewed all ten major conference meets and took a stab at predicting a team order. Now, we’re looking back at those picks to see how the final team standings shook out. Where were we wrong? Where were we right? Which teams over-performed and under-performed compared to expectations?
ACC Women
- Virginia
- NC State
- Louisville
- Virginia Tech
- UNC
- Notre Dame
- Florida State
- Duke
- Georgia Tech
- Miami (FL)
- Pitt
- Boston College
Actual Finish Order (With Change from our picks noted in parentheses)
- Virginia (-)
- NC State (-)
- Louisville (-)
- Virginia Tech (-)
- Notre Dame (+1)
- Duke (+2)
- Florida State (-)
- UNC (-3)
- Georgia Tech (-)
- Miami (FL) (-)
- Pitt (-)
- Boston College (-)
As the ACC has grown in major star power, it’s also become quite a bit more stratified. Virginia beat NC State by 171. NC State was more than 300 ahead of Louisville. Virginia Tech didn’t come within 170 of Louisville, and so on. So while we’ll never pass up an opportunity to pat ourselves on the back, these picks weren’t nearly as excruciating as some of the other conferences we previewed.
Still, there were a few wrinkles we did and didn’t see coming. UNC’s results were the big surprise, and that came mostly on account of a sizable portion of the team going into COVID-19 protocol and missing the meet. That explains UNC’s three-spot drop, as well as the one spot gained by Notre Dame and one of the spots gained by Duke.
Duke jumped one spot further, though, passing up Florida State from our predictions. That’s another spot where returning points from 2020 were a better-than-expected predictor: Duke returned about 122.5 more points than FSU, even though their 2020-2021 times had them trailing by about 49.5 in the Swimulator.
