17 NCAA Qualifying Standards Get Faster, 2 Get Slower in 2012

With the NCAA’s release of the 2011-2012 Division I NCAA Championship qualifying standards, we can now make some comparisons between this year’s times and last year’s times. See the table below for full comparisons. In all, 17 time standards got faster, while only two got slower (both 100 backstroke B standards).

The NCAA also decided to drastically cut the B standards in the distance freestyle events.  This would have affected the entries at NCAA’s last year in the following ways: Men’s 500 free (1 fewer entry) Men’s 1650 free (1 fewer entry) – Women’s 500 free (10 fewer entries) – Women’s 1650 free (2 fewer entries). As you can see, other than the women’s 500, this drop really just brought the standards more in line with what was already being practiced.

The women’s 400 IM was one of the few individual A-standards that was dropped, and the reason behind that made a lot of sense. If you compare 2011 NCAA’s to the 2010 results in that event, it took a time almost two-seconds faster to score points last year than it did the year before.

One of the more peculiar drops was the men’s 800 free relay A-final time getting 2.5 seconds faster. At last year’s NCAA Championship meet, only 16 teams even swam that relay, and with the Auburn DQ, there were only points awarded to 15 teams. Seems as an odd decision to make those standards tougher.

No event had both the A and the B time standard get faster from last year. Diving standards stayed the same.