We’ve gone through and scored the men’s psych sheets, as they sit now, for the 2013 NCAA Championship meet, and the results were shocking even to us.
See the full psych sheets here.
As seeded, the Michigan men have a 211-point advantage on anybody else in the country. I don’t think that anybody, even those who expect Michigan to win this meet, expect them to do it by over 200 points.
Of course, diving will play into this scenario somewhat, though thus far none of those top three teams by seed look as though they’ll have a huge diving influx (though Auburn is very much in the mix to do so, as are Indiana, Arizona, Stanford, and Texas, among others.)
These psych sheets seedings are really as much of a “cheat sheet” as anything else. We know that the results probably will only loosely resemble this psych sheet scoring. What this is most useful as, though, is a benchmark, of sorts, for the meet. Throughout both the men’s and women’s meets, we’ll provide updates on where each team is as compared to seed, which can help give us all an idea after days 1 and 2 of the championship meet where things are headed for day 3: the one that counts.
What we do know, for certain, is that Michigan isn’t going to win by 200 points. The Wolverines are probably going to come back to the field a little (though every meet, Mike Bottom keeps surprising us by pushing further-and-further), and the teams below them are going to get faster.
Cal, the defending champs, will get better. They’re only seeded for 176 individual points, as compared to 330 (nearly double) for Michigan. I don’t have to think to hard to count up about 200 individual points for the Golden Bears.
Florida should score more individual points than seeded as well, in the least because Marcin Cieslak (who was DQ’ed at SEC’s) will place higher than 14th in the 200 IM.
Stanford we know will get a huge diving contribution from Kristian Ipsen, which by itself should push them upwards of 220. Add to that what was clearly a group of untapered stars at Pac-12’s (David Nolan, Aaron Wayne especially) and they have all of the pieces to score over 300 points.
As of now, though, here the scoring is, in all of its glory.
| 1 | Michigan-MI | 510 |
| 2 | Florida-FL | 299 |
| 3 | California-PC | 290 |
| 4 | Auburn-SE | 269 |
| 5 | Southern Cali-CA | 259 |
| 6 | Arizona-AZ | 223 |
| 7 | Indiana-IN | 205 |
| 8 | Stanford University-Pc | 183 |
| 9 | Texas-ST | 151 |
| 10 | Florida St-Fl | 135 |
| 11 | Georgia-GA | 129 |
| 12 | Tennessee-SE | 114 |
| 13 | Ohio St-OH | 101 |
| 14 | NC State-NC | 95 |
| 15 | Louisville-KY | 59 |
| 16 | Wisconsin-WI | 56 |
| 17 | Penn St-MA | 55 |
| 18 | Virginia Tech-Va | 51 |
| 19 | Harvard-NE | 46 |
| 20 | Texas A&M-GU | 40 |
| 21 | Virginia-VA | 35 |
| 22 | Minnesota-MN | 35 |
| 23 | Missouri-MV | 32 |
| 24 | Brown-NE | 28 |
| 25 | UNC-NC | 23 |
| 26 | Purdue-IN | 21 |
| 27 | So. Methodist-NT | 19 |
| 28 | South Carolina-SC | 19 |
| 29 | Notre Dame-IN | 12 |
| 30 | Eastern Mich-MI | 12 |
| 31 | Dartmouth-NE | 12 |
| 32 | Mich State-MI | 11 |
| 33 | Princeton-NJ | 10 |
| 34 | LSU-LA | 10 |
| 35 | UNLV (M)-CA | 6 |
| 36 | Wyoming (M)-WY | 4 |
| 37 | Arizona St-AZ | 3 |
| 38 | Univ of Utah-UT | 2 |
| 39 | Alabama-SE | 1 |
Thank god they don’t swim this meet on paper. I’m quite certain that the pre meet scoring last year didnt properly predict the champion. Lots of factors involved in NCAA’s: who came down and how much for conf, who shaved, pressure of the meet, etc. looking forward to a great meet and bring there to cheer on my Golden Bears.
I agree that Cal’s sprinters look thin this year on both the Men’s and Women’s sides, but we shouldn’t forget how well their sprinters can taper/focus/rest for The Big Meet. I will illustrate below:
2012 Pac 12:
3 Univ of CA – Berkeley-PC ‘A’ 1:18.28 1:18.13 CONS 32
1) Messerschmidt, Tyler FR 2) Fleming, Shayne SO
3) Stubblefield, Seth FR 4) Gimondi, Fabio FR
20.01 39.20 (19.19) 58.47 (19.27) 1:18.13 (19.66)
2012 NCAA:
1 California 1:17.74 1:16.58 40
1) Messerschmidt, Tyler FR 2) r:+0.21 Fleming, Shayne SO
3) r:+0.26 Gimondi, Fabio FR 4) r:+0.09 Stubblefield, Seth FR
r:+0.76 19.37 38.31 (18.94)
57.58 (19.27) 1:16.58 (19.00)
2012 Pac 12:
3… Read more »
Cal freshman Jamey Lyon isn’t in the psych sheet despite going 14:58 at Pac12. I guess that means Cal is leaving him off their NCAA team in anticipation of their diver Collin Pollard qualifying?
I don’t think they’d do that. Teams over qualify all the time; you just end up having to leave some people home. http://swimswam.com/ncaa-mens-pre-cut-psych-sheets-revealed/ notes that Lyon was scratched for some reason.
Yup, because not enough points to be had in the distance event – I guess sprinters (and relay swimmers, and everyone else) rules the (swim) world.
It sure looks that way.
But as of now they are not overqualified, and cannot overqualify unless they were to successfully appeal for Gimondi or something. It would seem he is either ill, injured, or they were anticipating dropping a swimmer anyway in favor of a diver (presumably your brother?).
Not sure if this is why, but remember that under new rules they can take relay only swimmers, but they have to pay and they factor into the cap. I am almost certain they will add Gimondi to the roster for relay duty.
Lyon dropped 22 seconds at PAC 12 or something like that and would still be ranked 20th I believe. While a great swim and something to be quite proud of, it is highly unlikely that another 8-15 sec drop is in the tank for him at this point. Lyon will be a big asset to Cal next year. With Giomondi not getting in Cal has to take folks that give them the best shot of scoring points – they may in fact mean taking Giomondi for relays. I predicted from the start of the season that Cal would take a diver and depending on how Pollard does at the meet in Colorado Springs he may very well be on the… Read more »
In a sense, Cal is overqualified right now. Three of Cal’s relay swimmers (Gimodi, Nick Dillinger, and Michael Haney) failed to qualify as individuals, but all have been on Cal’s A relays all season. Potentially add in diver(s) (Pollard and/or Selby), and Cal is at 19.5 or 20, with a Lyon scratch.
Studebaker and Lyon unexpectedly qualified via exhibitions. Lyon is the only walk-on among the Cal freshmen. Scott Haeberle shaved and suited for the Stanford meet and didn’t travel to Pac-12s. Several other Cal swimmers swam in Federal Way as non-scorers. Sucks for the guys who got it done as individuals at Pac-12s, but Durden’s job is to bring the 18 individuals to NCAAs who give Cal the highest… Read more »
Just to be clear….Lyon was NOT a walk-on at Cal – he was recruited by the team and took an offical recruiting trip. He is not ill, academically ineligible or left off for any sort of “discipline related” reason. He also had a B-cut in the 500, but it was not quite fast enough it was believed to make enough of a point difference in that program to the NCAA point total bottom line – just to set the record straight.
defending champ and record holder, Grodzki, is going to have to get it done in the morning this year in the mile. Also Andrew Gemmel will be swimming in the morning. It’s a shame because it would have been a great race with McBroom, Jaeger, Grodzki, Gemmel and possibly Grothe challenging.
Looks like there is no reason for Michigan not to run away with this meet but somehow I think the margin will be closed some; having said that it seems it would be a “choke” if Michigan doesn’t win by a 120 points or more.
Michigan might win, but they won’t win by more than 100 points. Mark my words. There are too many other good programs that will creep up on them.
Last time a team won by more than 100 points was Auburn in ’07 by 169. Since 1990, the greatest margin of victory was by Stanford in 1992, when they won by 276. I believe the olympic trials interfered with NCAA’s that year. Smallest margin of victory was by Texas in ’02, when they won by 11 points. Average margin of victory since ’90 has been 107.4 points, with the media margin of victory being 86 points.
As much as I would like you to be right being a Michigan fan, this is going to be a tough battle for first. Look at last year’s Cal PAC 12 and NCAA results… huge time drops. This should be a good Cal and Michigan battle. Florida will be very close behind.
If anyone remembers the past two years, they will remember that CAL swims a lot faster at NCAAs and Michigan does not. If that holds true, and I have no reason to suspect that it will change this year, not only will Michigan not win big, they won’t even win. We live in a “in the moment” society; don’t get overly excited about all the fast swimming at the conference meets–the best schools fast swimming is coming at NCAAs.
This is definitly a better Michigan team than past years and 200+ points is a lot to make up. The Thursday Prelim session will be a huge confidence booster for whichever team gets it going early. Michigan SHOULD be good on day 1. This is going to be a fun meet.
Word.