By Jared Anderson on SwimSwam
Kevin Hallman contributed to this report.
The coming weeks will shake up the NCAA swimming rankings significantly – but in-season swims do give us some level of data with which to project the times it will take to be invited to the 2020 NCAA Championships.
The NCAA swimming & diving invite system is a complex and confusing process. You can get a refresher on the process here, but the upshot is that the invite line usually falls between 37th and 40th in each event for women, and between 28th and 31st for the men.
Methodology
SwimSwam’s Kevin Hallman ran some numbers on in-season swims across the NCAA, comparing to last year. Here’s a high-level look at the methodology for projecting this year’s cuts:
- Comparing the 30th-ranked swimmer in the NCAA in each event right now with the 30th-ranked swimmer in the NCAA as of this date one year ago.
- Finding the percentage difference between the 30th-ranked time in 2019 vs 2020
- Applying that percentage change to last year’s NCAA invite time
The data at this point actually shows that the 30th-ranked swimmer in 2019-2020 is slower than the 30th-ranked swimmer in 2018-2019 in 19 of 26 events. Maybe that’s a factor of teams taking less rest at mid-season invites; maybe it suggests the NCAA lost more talent than usual to graduation and redshirts, leaving the league thinner than it was last year. Either way, this particular mathematical model suggests NCAA invite times will actually be slower this year than they were last year in many events. That would be pretty surprising historically, but if you buy that the Olympic year has drained the NCAA of depth this season, there might be reason to believe it could happen.
For what it’s worth, in 2016, invite times did get slower in 8 of 13 men’s events, but only 2 of 13 women’s events.
Time Change (30th in NCAA) From Feb 2019 to Feb 2020
A negative in the ‘Change’ column means a time got faster. A negative in the ‘% difference’ column also implies a faster time in 2020. A positive number in either column means 30th in the event is actually slower compared to a year ago.
Women:
| Women | 2019 | 2020 | ||||
| Event | Name | 30th Place 2/12/2019 | Name | 30th Place | Change | % difference |
| 50 Free | Goeders, Anya | 22.33 | Tucker, Miranda | 22.26 | -0.07 | -0.31% |
| 100 Free | Moseley, Stanzi | 48.61 | Leehy, Mykenzie | 48.66 | 0.05 | 0.10% |
| 200 Free | Brown, Zarena | 1:45.51 | Dupre, Cora | 1:45.51 | 0 | 0.00% |
| 500 Free | Peplowski, Noelle | 4:42.10 | Cattermole, Sophie | 4:42.41 | 0.31 | 0.11% |
| 1650 Free | Sanderson, Kate | 16:17.76 | Nguyen, Claire | 16:18.98 | 1.22 | 0.12% |
| 100 Back | Tetzloff, Alyssa | 52.69 | Moroney, Megan | 52.77 | 0.08 | 0.15% |
| 200 Back | Unicomb, Jess | 1:54.27 | Ivey, Isabel | 1:54.11 | -0.16 | -0.14% |
| 100 Breast | Kucheran, Nina | 1:00.31 | Gresser, Hanna | 1:00.34 | 0.03 | 0.05% |
| 200 Breast | Raab, Allie | 2:10.53 | Pavlopoulou, Nicole | 2:10.86 | 0.33 | 0.25% |
| 100 Fly | Kraus, Alena | 52.52 | Nogaj, Paulina | 52.45 | -0.07 | -0.13% |
| 200 Fly | Jensen, Christie | 1:56.71 | Thomas, Luciana | 1:56.74 | 0.03 | 0.03% |
| 200 IM | Kovac, Bailey | 1:57.67 | Pavlopoulou, Nicole | 1:57.84 | 0.17 | 0.14% |
| 400 IM | Kukurugya, Hannah | 4:11.20 | Sumida, Maria Eduarda | 4:11.83 | 0.63 | 0.25% |
Men:
| Men | 2019 | 2020 | ||||
| Event | Name | 30th Place 2/12/2019 | Name | 30th Place | 30th place difference | % difference |
| 50 Free | Quah, Zheng | 19.61 | Miles, Corben | 19.62 | 0.01 | 0.05% |
| 100 Free | Barna, Andrej | 42.93 | Gwo, Albert | 43.1 | 0.17 | 0.40% |
| 200 Free | Yeadon, Zach | 1:34.70 | Quah, Zheng | 1:34.91 | 0.21 | 0.22% |
| 500 Free | Olszewski, Benjamin | 4:18.61 | Johansson, Victor | 4:18.22 | -0.39 | -0.15% |
| 1650 Free | Miller, Kevin | 15:05.38 | Dal Maso, Filippo | 15:07.24 | 1.86 | 0.21% |
| 100 Back | Jiang, Alvin | 46.64 | Harder, Ethan | 46.83 | 0.19 | 0.41% |
| 200 Back | Fantoni, Gabriel | 1:42.32 | Hein, Daniel | 1:42.62 | 0.3 | 0.29% |
| 100 Breast | ||||||