2016 Women’s NCAA Championships: Day 4 Up/Downs

For those unfamiliar with the terminology: “Up” means a swimmer who is in the A-final, as those swimmers cannot fall lower than 8th barring a DQ. “Down” will mean B-finalists, who are between 9th-16th place.

Note: Diving is expected to be completed by 3PM Eastern Time. We will update these up/downs then. These Up/Downs also don’t reflect the 1650, which will be swum this afternoon and in finals.

This year, we’re introducing a new angle on our traditional up/down rankings: and that’s the idea of “burned swims.” Basically, this will keep a tally of the number of swims that a team took (including scratches and DFS) to get to that number of up/downs. This is relevant because, for example, while Cal and Stanford didn’t have any finalists in the 500 free, they also only had one swimmer entered between the two of them.

This metric will help identify where teams are expecting surges in scoring and smooth-out the curves from particularly weak or strong events from a team. We’ll focus on tracking burned swims from the top 12 teams – on Friday, that means the top 12 teams based on psych sheet scoring .

Below, we’ve split out projections and actual results for each event, then at the end is a summary with just the core that you need to know. Scroll all the way down for that summary.

200 BACK:

Georgia will grab more points than expected in this event, with Kylie Stewart earning a place in the A final tonight. Both Cal and Stanford had a swimmer drop from their top 8 seed into the B final, but Cal still has Amy Bilquist in the top 8.

100 FREE:

The Trojans will pick up big points in this one. They got both Kasia Wilk and Anika Apostalon into the final. Georgia, Cal, and Stanford each have one in the final. Farida Osman, Lia Neal, and Olivia Smoliga will compete in one of the most anticipated races of the night.

200 BREAST:

Georgia wasn’t expected to get any points in this event based on the psych sheet, but they’ll get a boost thanks to Annie Zhu, who made it back in the top 8. Texas A&M also improved on their projection, getting both Bethany Galat and Esther Gonzalez into the final.

200 FLY:

Georgia and Cal each have 2 up in this race, so they’ll be fighting to get their hands on the wall first to outscore each other. Stanford will have Ella Eastin, who will battle with UGA’s Hali Flickinger and Louisville’s Kelsi Worrell for the title.

400 FREE RELAY:

If it comes down to it, Georgia, Cal, and Stanford will all be battling it out in the championship final of this relay with a team NCAA Championship on the line.

TOTAL:

We have an extremely close 3 team battle set up for the final night at the 2016 Women’s NCAA Championships. Cal, Stanford, and Georgia will fight to see who comes out on top. Georgia and Texas A&M have the most A finalists, with 5 ups each. Cal, however, has more finals swims overall with 4 ups and 3 downs. The Stanford Cardinal has 3 up and 3 down. The final scores will also depend heavily on the 1650 and platform diving.

Sorted by team score: