NCAA Day 3 Ups/Downs: 100 Fly a Big Points Race for Virginia and Michigan

2021 NCAA WOMEN’S SWIMMING & DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS

• When: Wednesday, March 17 – Saturday, March 20, 2021
• Where: Greensboro Aquatic Center / Greensboro, NC (Eastern Time Zone)
• Prelims 10 AM / Finals 6 PM (Local Time)
• Short course yards (SCY) format
• Defending champion: Stanford (3x) – 2019 results
• Streaming: ESPN3
• Championship Central
• Psych Sheets
• Live Results – Swimming
• Live Results – Diving

For those unfamiliar with swimming terminology, the concept of “Ups” and “Downs” is a good way to track which teams performed best at prelims. In prelims, swimmers qualify for one of two finals heats: the top 8 finishers make the A final, and places 9 through 16 make the B final. In finals, swimmers are locked into their respective final, meaning a swimmer in the B heat (spots 9-16) can only place as high as 9th or as low as 16th, even if they put up the fastest or slowest time of any heat in the final.

With that in mind, we’ll be tracking “Ups” and “Downs” after each prelims session to help project team scoring opportunities for that night’s finals. “Up” refers to swimmers in the A final, and “Down” to swimmers in the B final.

UVA continued to dominate on day 3 of the women’s Division I NCAA Championships, getting one swimmer into the ‘A’ finals of each event and 2 in the ‘A’ finals of the 100 fly and 200 free. Texas also had a particularly productive prelims session, qualifying one swimmer in every ‘A’ final except the 100 breast where they have one swimmer in the ‘B’ final.

After Thursday’s finals session, the top 3 schools are slightly behind the team standings we predicted. Texas, Michigan, Kentucky, and Louisville, however, are scoring higher than expected. Most drastically, our psych sheets prediction figured Louisville would be at 14 points after the 400 medley relay but they actually scored a total of 62 points.

If we score this prelims session, Michigan, Virginia, Kentucky, Louisville and UNC are slated to score much higher than expected. The cardinals specifically seem to be performing much stronger in the water than the psych sheets predicted. Using our scored prelims Louisville would have a total of 67 points after tonight’s individual events, more than double what we had them down for.

In the 100 fly ‘A’ final, both Virginia has top seed Kate Douglass and #8 Lexi Cuomo while Michigan has Maggie MacNeil, who tied the NCAA record in the event in 2019, and #6 Olivia Carter. This is the only race tonight where two schools each have two swimmers in the ‘A’ final and there is no doubt that it will make a significant difference in team standings. After last night, Michigan was in 9th place overall.

Virginia is looking to extend their lead over NC State, which was of 60 points last night, while NC State is projected to narrowly fend off Cal.

Day 3 Ups/Downs

Day 3 Prelims Scoring

Here’s the points breakdown if the swimmers maintain their places from the morning. Note that these do not include diving or tonight’s relays.

Scored Prelims + Actual Scores