NCAA Major Conference Midseason Rankings

With all the mid season taper meets in the books, here’s a look at current conference ranks in the top D1 conferences. Using the Swimulator conference tool, I ran a simulations based on this seasons top times and last seasons top times as of 12/31/15 for the ACC, Big 10 Big 12, Pac 12, and SEC. Then I compared those to team’s actual scores at their conference meets.

The conference meet scores are often much larger because they include diving and several of these conferences score through 24 places instead of the 16 places used in Swimulator’s meets.

While the current top time rankings may over rate or under rate lots of teams, teams tend to follow similar approaches year to year to their in season meets. If a team was low ranked at this point last season but made a big jump at their conference meet last year, there’s a good chance it happens again. For example, the NC State men trail Louisville in this year’s ACC rankings by 26 points (594 to 568), but last year they trailed Louisville by 78 points (624 to 546) and ended up winning their conference by 334 points. Therefore, despite trailing currently, I think NC State is clearly the favorite to defend their ACC title.

On the other hand, the Tennessee women narrowly lost to Texas A&M at SEC’s last year (1166-1139). At mid season last year the Tennessee women were ranked 4th with 407 points, but currently they are 9th with 191 points. While they will probably move up the standings again at conference, contending to win this year would be a big surprise.

Here are the complete tables for each conference, men and women. The title links to the current year simulation if you want to look at the event by event break down. If there are any conferences not listed here you are interested in, try running your own simulations.

ACC Men:

Big 12 Men:

Big 10 Men:

Pac 12 Men:

SEC Men:

ACC Women:

Big 12 Women:

Big 10 Women:

Pac 12 Women:

SEC Women: