For those of you who are picking NCAA’s for the purposes of personal pleasure, public ridicule, or Podium Pursuit, don’t overlook the Michigan men’s 800 free relay. It would be easy to do, as they are not on the most current revision of the psych sheets, but they were originally seeded 4th upon first release of the official, cut psych sheets that we posted.
Since then, Michigan has- for undisclosed reasons- scratched freshman Conor Jaeger from the meet entirely. Since he was the 3rd leg of the qualifying relay (swum at Big Ten’s in 6:20.11), the relay was forced to scratch as well. Michigan does still plan to enter a relay comprised of otherwise-qualified swimmers, however, and they have several viable candidates to join the core of Kyle Whitaker, Dan Madwed, and Hassan Abdel-Khalik. Freshman Sean Ryan (1:36.8) and sophomore Ryan Feeley (1:36.22) both swam lifetime bests at Big Ten’s, and would be great fits for this relay. Both swimmers are entered in the 200 free earlier in the session, and the decision as to who replaces Jaeger might wait until coach Mike Bottom sees if either finals in that race.
My money is on Feeley, who has NCAA experience in addition to the faster seed time, to take the spot. Either way, Michigan is still easily a top-5 candidate in this race, if not top 3.