First Annual SwimSwam NCAA Division I Men’s Preseason Picks

In our addition to our new power rankings format, we’re trying out something else new this year: NCAA pre-season predictions.

Followers of sports like baseball or football will be familiar with writers from major sports publications making their preseason predictions about Most Valuable Players, World Series or Super Bowl champions, and the like.  We know swimming fans enjoy making their predictions about upcoming events, or even whole seasons, just as much as any other fans out there, so we decided to share own predictions about the upcoming NCAA season with our readers.

We’re not quite still in the college swimming preseason as some teams have started competition, but even some of the major Division I squads haven’t yet had their first official meet, so we figured it’s still early enough to call these “preseason” picks.

We polled our staff, did our research, and came up with our six-months-out best guesses as to who would be standing atop the awards podium for each event at the 2018 NCAA Division I championships, and without any further ado, below are our choices by writer:

If our collective crystal ball is correct, here will be some of the highlights of the 2018 Men’s NCAA championships:

• Florida’s Caeleb Dressel will complete his four-year sweep of the 50 free, and he’ll earn wins in the 100 free and the 100 fly once again.  Dressel’s wins in the 50 and 100 free were our only unanimous picks.
• John Shebat of Texas and Felix Auboeck of Michigan will be our other multiple-event winners, with Shebat sweeping the backstrokes and Auboeck the distance events.
• Another Gator, Mark Szaranek will win the 200 IM outright after tying with Will Licon last year.
• The 400 IM is a bit murkier; Gunnar Bentz of Georiga and Abrahm DeVine of Stanford were tied among our picks until Bentz broke his collarbone last week.  While he may recover and swim at NCAAs, we decided to err on the side of caution: two of the Bentz votes went to Seliskar and one went to DeVine, meaning those two swimmers are now tied.
• With Licon gone from the breaststroke events as well, both of those races look wide open, with Connor Hoppe (Cal) and Carlos Claverie (Louisville) earning the most votes among our writers.
• Texas’s Townley Haas will win his third-straight title in the 200 free, remaining undefeated in the event in which he is the fastest man ever.
• Joseph Schooling‘s quest to reclaim his 200 fly title will prove unsuccessful, as five of our eight writers think Cal’s Zheng Quah will take that race after an impressive showing in limited college swimming last season.
• The five relay titles will be split between NC State and Cal, as the Longhorns’ lack of a top-notch breaststroker dooms their medley relay chances, and Cal reclaims the 200 free relay title behind the likes of freshman Ryan Hoffer.

Now, again, the above descriptions are only best guesses as the season gets going.  Surely some swimmers will emerge, others may take some steps back, and other picks in March are going to look a lot different than they do now.  In the meantime, leave a comment and let us know what you think is going to happen.