The Georgia Tech last chance meet, also known as the 2014 Yellow Jacket Championship Qualifier, continued to stir the men’s NCAA Championship qualifying pot on Saturday, with several more invite-worthy swims going in the books during finals.
In the finals of the men’s 200 back, Ohio State’s Steven Zimmerman swam a 1:41.66 to all-but-guarantee his spot at NCAA’s. He was 31st in the country with his time from the Big Ten Championships, but in finals he moved up to about 21st, and it doesn’t seem like there’s enough guys who will be time trialing this race around the country on Sunday to bump out that time.
The fastest swimmer from prelims, Patrick Myers of UNC, improved his time by another .07 seconds. We mentioned after prelims that he needed to be a little faster to really feel comfortable, and a little faster he was, improving by one spot in the national rankings, and then losing a spot to Stanford’s David Nolan and another to Zimmerman, to sit 27th in the country (with an expected 28/29 cut line).
He dodged a big bullet when the Pac-12 men’s 200 back was pretty slow, though there’s still a few last chance opportunities that he could be bumped out. For now, though, he’s in good shape. We’ll keep our readers updated to whether or not that situation changes with any time trials or last chance swims.
Indiana’s Tanner Kurz was a 53.56 in the 100 breaststroke, which was a three-tenths improvement upon his season best but still leaves him out of an NCAA individual bid. Florida State’s Jared Pike took 2nd in that race in 53.63, and Penn State freshman Andy Schuehler took 3rd in 53.68.
Purdue’s Danny Tucker, who over the summer was a U.S. Open Champion, is now in serious danger of not qualifying for the NCAA Championships as a junior in any individual events. He was a 43.69 in the 100 free, which was shy of his best time for the season.
And finally, joining the group of swimmers who dropped big time, but still might come up short, is Ohio State senior Alex Miller. He knocked two seconds off of his previous season best in the 500 free to swim a 4:18.64, but that will move him into just a tie for 33rd place. The cutoff to get an invite in this men’s 500 free looks like it could fall as much as a full second faster than last year. Miller’s time would have been in if this were 2013.
Note: in the 200 fly, where Georgia Tech’s Nico van Duijn swam an automatic qualifying time in prelims, he scratched the final with his spot secure.
Full, live meet results available here.
When do coaches have to submit pre-selection preferences to the NCAA?
Thanks, Braden. Hope you’re having fun with all these conference meets and subsequent posts. Really appreciate this site and forum to talk swim talk :-). Enjoy these next few weeks – and I hope you get your rest, too! Cheers –
Incredible effort OLE 99! Thanks for analyzing and posting! Quick question: does Cal’s Fleming make it with his 19.40 D-relay lead-off of the 4×100 free relay from last night?
SwimmingIsGood – He’s currently in a four-way tie for 22nd. Which means that unless there’s a bunch of crazy last-chance swims today, he should be in.
Kevin Cordes does not swim the 400 IM… I think you mean Chase Kalisz
Yeah, looks like its a lookup error (no pun intended) with Excel on that happens if a guy has the same ranking for multiple events. I used a sumif formula with swimmers adjusted ranking for the display of their qualification event. The ranking is correct, but its adding the mathematical event number of the 100 breast and 200 breast, which happens to be the mathematical event number for the 400 IM. I’ll fix it a bit later.
Quick calculation this morning… assuming my event selection assumptions hold, I get through line 30 exactly. It’s early (or at least it would be if it weren’t for the time change), so no promise of perfection.
1 Bosch, Dylan MICH 1 200 Butterfly SCY Male
2 Chierighini, Marcelo AUB 1 100 Freestyle SCY Male
3 Cordes, Kevin ARIZ 1 400 Individual Medley SCY Male
4 De Lucca, Joao LOU 1 200 Freestyle SCY Male
5 Jaeger, Connor MICH 1 1650 Freestyle SCY Male
6 Kalisz, Chase UGA 1 400 Individual Medley SCY Male
7 Ress, Eric IND 1 200 Backstroke SCY Male
8 Ryan, Shane PSU 1 100 Backstroke SCY Male
9… Read more »
Same list sorted by school….
full_name_computed team_code Best Rank Event… Read more »
Cordes, Kevin ARIZ 1 400 Individual Medley SCY Male
Smith, Giles ARIZ 1 100 Butterfly SCY Male
Tandy, Brad ARIZ 1 50 Freestyle SCY Male
Friedemann, Mitchell ARIZ 4 100 Backstroke SCY Male
Meyer, Michael ARIZ 6 400 Individual Medley SCY Male
Barber, Matt ARIZ 7 500 Freestyle SCY Male
Steel, Kevin ARIZ 10 100 Breaststroke SCY Male
Porter, Andrew ARIZ 17 100 Butterfly SCY Male
Rowan, Sam ARIZ 24 200 Breaststroke SCY Male
Sheppard, Shep ARIZ 30 200 Backstroke SCY Male
Coci, Alex ASU 12 200 Butterfly SCY Male
Chierighini, Marcelo AUB 1 100 Freestyle SCY Male
OLE 99
I was wondering what website you had used when calculating the cut off line for NCAAs. The USA Swimming and College swimming website are slightly different in the 400 individual medley. College swimming has not updated Michigan’s Ryutaro Kamiya who would sit at 16th. Would that make any changes of your predictions who are in and out of that event?
RU sure? shouldn’t there be at least 18 rows filled up with new swimmers in each event?