Reviewing SwimSwam’s 2024 NCAA Event Predictions – Women’s Edition

2024 WOMEN’S NCAA SWIMMING AND DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS

• March 20-23, 2024
• Gabrielsen Natatorium, Athens, Georgia
• Short Course Yards (25 yards)
• Meet Central
• Psych Sheets
• SwimSwam Preview Index
• Live Results

The NCAA Championships are arguably the most unpredictable meets of the year, but we do our best to forecast what’s to come in each event before chaos takes over on two Wednesday nights every March.

At the women’s meet, we went 6/8 in picking ‘A’ finalists (or top eight finishers) in 11 of the 18 events, while we went 7/8 in five events.

That leaves one where we went a tough 5/8, and another where we were perfect…which has a caveat.

In the 200 medley relay, the first event of the meet, we predicted the eight fastest teams correctly, but NC State was disqualified for an early takeoff. Since a DQ of this nature is impossible to predict, we’re counting this an 8/8 win, because we need at least one.

Below, find our top eight picks in each event, along with where the swimmer/relay team ended up finishing. We’ve also included who finished in the top eight we didn’t predict under “Moving In,” and the number in the bottom right of each event indicates how well we did in picking the top eight.

• See all of our picks at the SwimSwam Preview Index here.

200 Medley Relay

800 Free Relay

500 Free

200 IM

50 Free

200 Free Relay

400 IM

100 Fly

200 Free

100 Breast

100 Back

400 Medley Relay

1650 Free

200 Back

100 Free

200 Breast

200 Fly

400 Free Relay

TAKEAWAYS

• The 1650 free being the toughest event to predict is no surprise given that it’s a race swimmers only race a handful of times throughout a season, sometimes only once before NCAAs at their conference championship meets. On top of that, it’s a race where taper makes a massive difference over 16 minutes, give or take. If a swimmer goes all-in on taper at SECs, it’s not outside the realm of possibility they add 10+ seconds at NCAAs.
• We went 15/18 in terms of picking winners, though of course most of the events had massive favorites. Ten of those 15 winning picks came from either the Virginia relays or one of the Walsh sisters, and two more were Bella Sims.
• The winners we missed were Florida in the 800 free relay, Jasmine Nocentini in the 100 breast and Phoebe Bacon in the 200 back.
• The team underestimated the most was Stanford, which had four swimmers make the ‘A’ final of an event we didn’t predict: Lucy Bell (200 IM), Gigi Johnson (100 fly), Kayla Wilson (200 free) and Lillie Nordmann (200 fly). They also got bumped up to eighth in the 200 medley relay after NC State’s DQ.
• Virginia also had its depth underestimated with four swimmers cracking the top eight we didn’t pick: Cavan Gormsen (500 free), Maxine Parker (50 free), Anna Keating (200 breast) and Tess Howley (200 fly).
• There was no team clearly overestimated or who obviously missed their taper based on the event predictions. Texas, Ohio State, Stanford, USC, Cal, Virginia, ASU, Louisville, Tennessee and Michigan all had multiple swims miss the top eight that we predicted to hit.
• Overall, we’re looking at 114 of 144 top-eight finishers correctly picked (or 30/144 misses), a 79.16% batting average.