Over the next few weeks, as the Long Course season closes out, new freshman are arriving on campus, and fans everywhere ramp up for another exciting NCAA Season, we will be running a team-by-team preview of the upcoming NCAA season. Starting with the no.12 teams and finishing with the defending National Championships (Texas men and Florida women) we will work our way down the top finishers from last year’s NCAA teams, and will also jump into some rising teams that we expect to break into the top tier this season. Click here to see the other men’s previews, and click here to see all of the previews for both Men and Women.
Key Losses: Gideon Louw (30 points, 4 NCAA Relays), Kelly Marx (32.5 NCAA Diving Points), Tyler McGill (21 points, 4 NCAA Relays), Michael Silva (3 NCAA Relays), Pascal Wollach (1 NCAA Point, 1 Relay), Jordan Anderson (1 NCAA Point, 1 Relay), Will Dove (1 NCAA Relay)
Key Additions: Nimrod Hayet (fly, IM), TJ Leon (sprint free), Chris Manning (sprint free), Henry Rodrigues (sprint free), Dakota Hodgson (distance free), Zane Groth (distance free)
2010-2011 Recap: A season after winning the men’s NCAA Championship, the Auburn men had a big slide-back season. As we discussed when we looked at the Auburn women, 2010 was the first year where Brett Hawke had complete control over the program, and was a bit of an adjustment season.
The shocking difference between 2009 and 2010 was in the relay results. In 2009, Auburn broke 4 NCAA relay records on their way to the title. In 2010, the story was a different one, as Auburn didn’t win a relay. Even more painful was the fact that the Tigers had two relays, the 400 free (DQ) and 200 medley, where they were the top seed after prelims, but still failed to pull in a first-place finish.
Auburn lost a significant class to graduation this season. Tyler McGill and Gideon Louw were each amongst the best in the nation for the Tigers in their specialties: McGill in the fly and sprint free events, and Louw in the sprint free events. Louw was a monster on the backend of relays, where he always seemed to push even faster than in his individual events.
But Auburn does still retain a strong core, including a few strong holdovers who contributed to the 2009 National Championship.
Obvious Strengths: The backstroke group might be the strongest part of their lineup next season, as they are absolutely loaded with young talent there. Despite losing Pascal Wollach, who led off their second-place 400 medley, there won’t be much of a drop-off there. Last season, Auburn had an astonishing 9 swimmers compete in the 100 back at NCAA’s, including 5 who were between 12th and 20th place. Of those 9, 7 return, paced by sophomore Tony Cox, who was the highest finishing Tiger at 12th place, and senior Jared White, who was 9th last year after prelims before sliding back to 15th in finals.
Auburn has a few other good ones coming back. Senior Kohlton Norys, who was a member of both NCAA record-setting free relays (200 and 400) in 2009, fell out of favor a bit last season as he didn’t crack the lineup on either relay for finals (though he swam prelims of the 200, before being replaced by Michael Silva in the finals). He just missed the B-final in the backstroke, where he was 19th, and should be looking to get back to his sprint form and return to more relay duty in 2011.
There will also be an impressive pair of breaststrokers returning this season. Adam (George) Klein scored big points for Auburn by finishing 5th in the 100 and 3rd in the 200 breaststrokes last season. This year, he will be chasing Scott Spann of Texas for titles in both of those events. Klein, the senior, will also play a big role in mentoring Stuart Ferguson, who had a great freshman campaign last year. Ferguson took 14th in the 100 in 53.65 at NCAA’s, but still needs a lot of work to developing a second event. In addition to that B-final, he was 4th to last in the 200 breaststroke (39th) and second to last in the 200 IM (48th, beating only Austen Thompson of Arizona who was DQ’ed) at NCAA’s.
Biggest Needs: Senior Adam Brown, from England, will take over for Louw as the anchor of the relays. Last year, Brown was 3rd in the 50 free (19.03) and 4th in the 100 (42.36). It will be up to Brown to hold the sprint free relays together, as both the 200 and 400 lost the other three NCAA finalist swimmers.
Auburn’s biggest need next season will be developing a butterflier. With McGill and 100 yard B-finalist Jordan Anderson both graduating, there is going to be a hole there. Beyond that, Auburn didn’t have any swimmers finish higher than 25th (McGill) at NCAA’s in the 200 fly last year.
The lack of scoring in the 200 fly points to a bigger issue surrounding Auburn. They have historically been a team that was built entirely around sprints, but these days, the top teams are becoming too good, too deep, and too versatile for anyone, even the mighty Auburn, to have such a narrow focus and hope to contend for National titles. Last season, Auburn had only two individual swimmers score in events 200 yards or longer–McGill in the 200 IM, Klein in the 200 breast–for a total of 22 points. These longer races make up exactly half (8 out of 16) of the individual events on the schedule, and with meet-winning scores in the 500‘s, that kind of deficit would leave a team short, even if they were to win the other 13 events including relays and diving.
Distance Distance Revolution: Hawke attacked this weakness in a big way with the recruiting class that is coming in, beginning with Dakota Hodgson of Tennessee and Zane Groth of Nevada, who behind Georgia’s Will Freeman are the second-and-third-best distance recruits in the class. Hodgson has 2010 bests of 15:12/4:21 in the 1650 and 500 freestyles, which put him in a great position to score in those events as a freshman. Grother has a 15:11 in the mile, but has a little work to do in the 500, where his senior-year best was a 4:24. That’s not a bad problem to have when coming to Auburn, of course, because Hawke certainly knows how to get some speed into anyone’s stroke, even a distance swimmer.
Also in this class is Nimrod Hayet, who is an Israeli national that went to high school in New Jersey. Hayet is very versatile, and is a good breaststroker and butterflier, where he was a sectional champion in the 200-yard version of both events. I believe his future, and the future of where Auburn needs him the most, is as a butterflier/IM’er. He’s got short course bests of 48.2/1:47.9 as a senior, along with a 1:50.2 IM. While I think CollegeSwimming overrates him a bit as the number 2 swimmer in the class, he is certainly very good and will develop into a NCAA-level swimmer sooner rather than later for Auburn. This is especially true in the IM where his versatility indicates he should be able to drop a lot of time.
Roots: But this is not to say that Auburn has forgotten its roots as the top sprint institution in the country. They have brought in what is arguably the best sprinting class in the country. Their freshman group includes some of the best in a sprint class which, world-wide, is significantly better than last season’s. TJ Leon was overshadowed this past season by USC-bound Vlad Morozov, but was the only other prep swimmer last season to go sub-20 in a 50 free (19.96). He also has times of 44.6 and 48.6 (textile) in the 100 freestyle and butterfly, respectively. When he gets under the tutelage of Hawke, he could immediately score at NCAA’s in the 50, and will inject some youth into the Auburn relays.
Along with Leon, the second best American sprinter, Auburn also added the second best Canadian sprinter, Chris Manning, and the best international sprinter, Henry Rodrigues. Manning has converted times from SCM of 20.84/46.23. Rodrigues, who might be the real prize of this class, is a Brazilian who is coming to Auburn presumably to train with future Olympic teammate Cesar Cielo. At the 2010 World Cup stop in Rio earlier this month, Rodrigues went a 48.25 in SCM, which converts to around a 43.2 in yards, and that’s at the beginning of the season. If Rodrigues can advance off of that time this season, and adjust well to the shorter yards races, he can definitely be a scorer in the sprints as a freshman. He is also an immediate impact (in a huge way) in the 200 IM. Early in this short course season, he has gone a 1:42.2 (converted from SCM), which would have won NCAA’s by a second last season. He’s going to be the foundation of the next wave of Auburn superstars.
American Swing: The 500 pound gorilla in the room whenever talking about the Auburn men is their reliance on foreign recruits, which many see as a slight to American swimmers who deserve the scholarship money. Auburn built National Championships around foreign swimmers like Fred Bosquet of France, Cesar Cielo of Brazil, and Matt Targett of Australia. The reality, however, isn’t as bad as some make it out to be. On the Auburn roster of 31, only 5 athletes are listed as internationals. The sophomore class doesn’t have any foreign athletes. Out of the 5 listed, 1 (Hayet) swam high school in the US, and 1 is a diver. These numbers show a definite swing back towards the home shores for Auburn.
Take Your Marx: Speaking of divers, Auburn lost a good one last year in Kelly Marx. Marx actually ended up being Auburn’s highest individual scorer (excluding relays) at NCAA’s last season. Marx will be missed in a big way, but coming in to take his spot on the squad will be John Santeiu from Michigan. Santeiu is a Michigan State Champ on the 1-meter, a Junior Nationals finalist in the 8-meter, and recently placed 12th on the 1-meter at the USA-Diving Winter Nationals. He should at least qualify for NCAA’s as a freshman, and could develop into a B-finalist by his junior year. Sophomore Thad Ellis just barely missed qualifying for NCAA’s last season, and could get there this year. Auburn is unlikely to score any NCAA points in diving this season.
2011 Outlook: The Auburn men are one of the few swimming programs in the country where there is a huge amount of pressure to perform from the Athletic Department. As silly as it sounds given that a 6th place finish is no small feat, it was a huge drop-off from their NCAA title the year before. The recruiting class coming in will be good enough to stop the leak for now, and in year two under Hawke, things should settle down a bit. There won’t be a huge jump in placing this year, but the Tigers are certainly back on the upward slope of the long climb to the top.
Henrique Rodrigues is a 200 IMer, finalled in Pan Pacs. Been rumored to be going to Auburn for a while actually. He will help for sure. Still no word on if Cielo goes back to Auburn though. Wasn’t too thrilled with his Pan Pacific results.
Saw that too, about Cielo being unhappy. Wonder if he won’t transfer if Cielo does. He’s obviously his own superstar in the making, but hard to say that Cielo being at Auburn wasn’t a huge factor in him heading there.