2012-2013 College Swimming Previews: Smith, Cordes New Leaders for #4 Arizona Men

Key Losses: Austen Thompson (39 NCAA Points), Cory Chitwood (29 NCAA Points, 1 NCAA Relay), Adam Small (7 NCAA Points, 4 NCAA Relays), Kelley Wyman (4 NCAA Relays), Cameron Owen (3 NCAA Relays – 2 Prelims only), Kevin Munsch (7 NCAA Points), Ben Grado (38 NCAA Diving Points), Andres Guerra (NCAA Diving Qualifier)

Key Additions: Nimrod Shapira (return from redshirt, Freestyle); Andrew Porter (CA – IM), Andrew Sorvero (MD – Breaststroke), Kelly Moodie (Japan – Middle Distance Freestyle), Ian Burns (CA – Sprint Fly/Free)

2011-2012 Lookback: Year one under new head coach Eric Hansen was a success for the Arizona men’s program. After a huge showing at the mid-season Texas Invitational, the Wildcats rolled into NCAA’s with some rumblings arising about potential NCAA Championship aspirations.

They didn’t quite get there, finishing only 4th in the meet (about 30 points back of Stanford for a top-three finish). Largely, though not exclusively, that was because they peaked mid-season in many instances. The now-graduated Cory Chitwood, for example, had the fastest 200 IM time in the country, but had to settle for a B-Final win in Federal Way.

What we did learn, though, is that Hansen and his staff (including the master Rick Demont) has every tool to get these guys swimming fast. Now, it’s all about figuring out the timing to get that to happen in March. If the Wildcats can get guys swimming that fast in December, after only 4 months or so of training, figuring out how to nail those results at the right time after 8 should be even better.

Big Losses From Last Year: The challenge is that Hansen will be trying to make these adjustment with a new group of stars and leaders (the loss of Chitwood’s leadership can’t be undervalued: as one of his teammates put it last season, “When Cory talks, everybody listens”.)

In fact, after a year that was very heavy with underclassmen nation-wide on the men’s side of the pool, Texas is really the only other team that took the kind of hit that Arizona did from graduation. That includes losing three individual National Champions from last season (Thompson, Chitwood, and Grado). They’ve graduated 120 of their NCAA individual points, plus roughly half of their relay positions.

New Stars Emerge: On the other hand, Arizona has a pair of new superstars emerging, both of whom are on the Olympic radar headed toward 2016: Giles Smith and Kevin Cordes.

Smith, a junior this season, was in his first season with the Wildcats last year after transferring from Tennessee. He swam very under-the-radar as a freshman with the Volunteers despite coming out of high school as the National High School Record holder in the 50 free. In 2012, though, he exploded in a big way. The 50 free was no longer his specialty, but in the 100 fly he bucked-the-team’s-trend by blowing through the 46-second barrier and touching in 45.77 for 2nd overall at NCAA’s. It’s going to be tough for anyone to catch Tom Shields in this event, but there’s only about three other guys who are in the conversation for second-place in that event this year.

With the loss of Adam Small and Kelley Wyman, the Wildcats also need Smith to step up in the free relays this season.

In the 100 fly, he’ll be backed up by transfer Woody Joye. The season was a bit tumultuous for Joye after transferring mid-season from Texas, but he still managed to hit a 46.60 best time at NCAA’s, finish 7th in the country in the 200 IM, and lead-off the Wildcats’ 6th-place 800 free relay with a 1:34.7: their fastest split. All-in-all, a rousing success given the circumstances.

The other star is Cordes, who seems to fit the mold of the prototypical short course breaststroker of the future: tall (Cordes is at least 6’5), strong, athletic and with shoulders like a linebacker, much like a former dominant NCAA swimmer Damir Dugonjic. Last year at NCAA’s, he was 3rd in the 200 breast and was the champion in the 100 in 51.71.

His tear, though, went beyond short course as during the summer, he destroyed the 17-18 National Age Group breaststroke records in long course (he already had them in yards) and finished 3rd in a very crowded 100 breaststroke final at the Olympic Trials.

On the medley relays, he was a huge piece to the Wildcats: for example, in the 400 medley, he split a 50.6 in finals: half-a-second ahead of Louisville’s Carlos Almeida, and more than a second better than anyone else in the country. Combined with Smith, the Wildcats have a killer middle-section of their medleys headed into next season.

Bookending the Medleys: Last year, Arizona finished 2nd in the 400 medley relay and 1st in the 200 medley relay, and unlike their free relays these squads will stay mostly in-tact.

On the backstrokes, they will have Mitchell Friedemann. He was 6th at NCAA’s in the 100 back and is the kind of swimmer that every great team needs: he’s consistent, he can swim a stroke, and he is also a very good freestyler who can contribute on four relays. He was a 45.86 mid-season backstroke at the UT Invite, and in the 50 back can go a 21.2 – which is as fast as anybody in the country.

He will be joined in the backstroke group byMichael Sheppard, who was a 47.34 last year in the 100 and a very impressive 1:41.51 in the 200 backstroke. He ended up 15th at last year’s NCAA Championships, though with the 8th-best time in the country.

Finding New Freestylers: The one spot where Arizona will be searching for a new medley piece is the freestyles, as their two top pure-sprinters, Kelley Wyman and Adam Small, both finished off their eligibility.

Hansen could get a little creative here if he wanted to, and let Joye swim the butterfly leg and move Smith to the anchor. That makes sense moreso in the 400 than the 200, but only if Joye is showing sub-46 speed.

In addition, the Wildcats will see the return of Nimrod Shapira Bar-Or after a one-year Olympic redshirt. It can’t be understated how important he will be to this team next season, both in the freestyle and butterfly races. In the 100, he has a 42.37 that replaces anything that they graduated; he also has a 1:33.50 in the 200 free and could contend for an NCAA title individually. He’s also been a 4:19 in the 500.

In the butterfly races, he gives the Wildcats a third stud: he has a 46.44 in the 100 and 1:43.71 in the 200 fly.

Alternatively, he will look to junior Tommy Gutman and senior Nick Popov to pose big pieces in the free relays. They were both right around 20-seconds in the 50 free last year, and Popov was a 43.6 in the 100 at the UT Invite.

Rest of the Breaststroke Group: Even with the graduation of Thompsen and Munsch, Arizona still has a very good 1-2 breaststroke punch, with Carl Mickelson having finished 4th at NCAA’s last year in both the 100 (season best of 51.86 in prelims) and 200 (1:52.18).

Junior Kevin Steel could step up and contribute this season as well as a third piece, certainly at the Pac-12 level at least. He was a 53.56 in the 100 at last year’s Pac 12 Championship meet, though that was about the same as he was as a freshman (.02 faster). He did, however, drop four seconds in his 200 breast, showing that he improved as an all-around swimmer.

All-in-all, this breaststroke group was one spot where Arizona really hit their best times at the end of the year almost across-the-board: encouraging for this season.

Freshman Class: Arizona didn’t have a huge class of recruits coming in, but they did have a few really intriguing names. Take for example Ian Burns from the Santa Clara Swim Club. His best 100 fly is 49.86 – a respectable result for a D-1 recruit. It was done when he was only 14 and a freshman in high school, an incredible result. He stalled out a bit in that event, but his sprint freestyles continued to improve. His best 100 free of 45.69 was done in the middle of his junior year of high school and he started really turning things in the right direction again at the end of last year with a 21.20 in the 50 free at the California Central Coast Section Championships in May.

If Hansen can get him back to that point where he was one of the best butterfliers in the country for his age, this could be one of the big turnaround stories in college swimming over the next few years.

The biggest get of this class is Kelly Moodie. He is a Canadian/Japanese dual citizen, but has been living in Japan and swimming at the St. Mary’s International School where his father has been the coach since 1990. The program is one of the best in Asia, and also produced the Ortiz brothers that star at Michigan.

The long course times show how special he could be though: he’s got a 1:50.98 in the 200 free and a 3:56.09 in the 400 free, and has shown maybe even better skills in short course meters. There are few freshman in the class who can put up those kind of times already; he’ll join Arizona’s Matt Barber, who was 16th at NCAA’s in the 500 last season (he was as fast as a 4:16.55) in the middle-distance training group.

Moodie has already drawn comparisons to another former Wildcat, Jean Basson, for his body position and technique. That’s high praise considering that Basson is a former 500 free NCAA Champion.

The Wildcats have also added a pair of Andrews: Andrew Sovero and Andrew Porter. Sovero is from Baltimore, and went to the same McDonogh High School as did Giles Smith. He has a single event where he’s phenomenal, and that’s the 100 breast where he was a 54.77 at Winter Juniors last season. Other than that, he’s got a 2:03 in the 200, and should stay very tight to his home events.

Porter is more versatile, with his best events being the IM’s. Specifically, he has a 1:47.51 in the 200 IM and a 3:53.52 in the 400. The Wildcats can really use that depth in their IM group, especially in the 400 where Sam Rowan (3:45.79) is the only returning swimmer who was under four minutes last season.

He’s also been a 49.6 in the 100 fly, making that his best stroke individually.

Rounding out the class is Alan Winder, who is a “sprint anything” type with bests of 45.5 in the 100 free, 51.0 in the 100 back, and 49.0 in the 100 fly. Project him as a sprint freestyle/butterfly type like Giles Smith.

Diving: The Wildcats lost a big one inBen Grado, who shocked the country by winning the platform NCAA Championship last season.

But the Wildcats under new head diving coach Omar Ojeda has already earned a reputation, and brought in some great recruits. That includes Rafael Quintero from Puerto Rico, who was the 2011 U.S. Junior National Champion on the platform, and is a bona-fied star.

They’ve also added Dominic Ricotta out of Houston, two-time Arizona State Champion Hayden Sells, all of whom will join promising sophomore Carter Craft to reload this Arizona diving crew. It’s hard to judge how well divers will develop without seeing them dive, but this class has all of the talent to keep Arizona diving on the rise.

2012-2013 Outlook: This Arizona team still has National Championship contenders on the roster, without a doubt, despite their graduations. They do, however, look a little bit thinner this season.

They’ll be counting on the freshman Moodie to come up to speed in a hurry to help counteract some of those losses. With last year’s #5 team Michigan looking extremely well-rounded, talented, and loaded with sprinters, though, Hansen needs to figure out early who is going to step up and fill in his free relays. Shapira Bar-Or will take them a long way in that regard, but they will need someone else to join him.

If he can do that, another top-4 finish is possible. If not, a fight with Auburn for 5th and 6th is more likely.