Earlier this month, SwimSwam reader ‘snarky’ proposed a “rule of thumb” that because about 25% of swimmers improve at NCAAs (it’s actually way more than that at the women’s meet – between 37 and 54% of swims beat seed), he uses the 16th place in the psych sheets as a rule-of-thumb for top 8 qualifying.
This made me curious if he was right. While we obviously love running the deep data on who might or mightn’t qualify, sometimes these in-your-head math rules of thumb can be useful to make a quick analysis.
So I charted out the times it took to qualify for 8th place and 16th place at this year’s NCAA Division I, and looked for the closest seed time to those spots to see where they were.
| 2022 Time for 8th | Closest Seed | 2022 Time for 16th | Closest Seed | |
| 500 free | 4:38.76 | 9th | 4:40.78 | 21st |
| 200 IM | 1:54.57 | 7th | 1:55.90 | 21st |
| 50 free | 21.72 | 8th/9th | 21.99 | 26th |
| 400 IM | 4:05.47 | 11th | 4:08.55 | 23rd |
| 100 Fly | 51.04 | 8th | 51.79 | 19th |
| 200 Free | 1:43.53 | 9th | 1:44.93 | 29th |
| 100 Breast | 58.19 | 9th | 59.29 | 21st |
| 100 Back | 51.19 | 8th | 51.83 | 21st |
| 200 Back | 1:51.20 | 10th | 1:53.21 | 20th |
| 100 Free | 47.55 | 9th | 48.14 | 25th |
| 200 Breast | 2:07.05 | 15th | 2:08.14 | 22nd |
| 200 Fly | 1:53.37 | 9th | 1:54.83 | 19th |
As it turns out, for both 8th and 16th place, the closest seed time rank is remarkably-consistent.
Setting aside a couple of outliers (200 breast top 8, 200 free top 16), the range for 8th place events was generally 7th-11th, with 7 out of the 12 events having the 8th or 9th seed time coming in be closest to the 8th-best swimmer in prelims.
For top 16, the closest seed was generally in a 19-26 range, with 6/12 events being the 19th-21st seed.
We’d have to go back through a lot more data to make this “rule of thumb” more predictive, but spot-checking a few other years, it’s in the right ballpark, generally, in multiple years. In 2019, the A-final marks were maybe a spot or two lower based on psych on average, but the B-final marks were in pretty much the same range.
So if you’re looking for a good rule-of-thumb on the time that it will take to make the A final, shoot for about the 9th or 10th best seed time to make the A final, and about the 22nd or 23rd seed time to make the B final.
200 free may be indicative of another pattern, the sprint freestyles all ranged high. top 8 was consistent at pretty much 9, but top 16 had the 3 highest ranges: 50(26th), 100(25th), 200(29th).
If you apply this to the CSCAA National Invite, it is also a good indicator of what it would take to make it back at night. It’s obviously not exact, but it gives you a good idea going into the meet what you would need to make an A or B final.
Interesting that butterfly and especially the 200 has a pretty low seed. Would think it would be the highest along with the 400IM/500free
Enough with the talking. It’s habanero time.
WHOO STATS!