Kentucky Takes Early Lead After Diving Portion of Men’s SEC Championship Meet

2021 SEC MEN’S SWIMMING & DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS

• Tuesday, February 23 – Friday, February 26, 2021
• Columbia, MO – University of Missouri
• Prelims/Finals: 10 AM/5 PM Tues, 10 AM/6 PM Weds-Fri (Central Standard Time)
• Defending Champion: Florida (8x) (results)
• Live results
• Live Video – SEC Network
• Championship Central

Because of the concerns over COVID-19 this season, the SEC held their men’s and women’s diving championships last week, at a separate site, as compared to their usual “all-together” format for men’s and women’s swimming & diving.

The Pac-12 and ACC have been using a similar format for years, separating men’s diving from men’s swimming (albeit not necessarily with the “diving-only site), but the concept is new to the SEC.

This gives teams a better sense of what their swimming programs need to do in order to hit their desired placement overall in the meet.

The Kentucky men entered the most divers in the meet, 5, and also scored the most diving points at the meet, 256. Recall that the Kentucky women came away with the team title from last week’s meet (although they did not score the most diving points there).

The SEC men are not expected to compete for the team title after graduating 189 individual points from a 7th-place finish at last year’s meet, but a big performance by their divers could help them battle to climb the ladder.

2021 SEC Men’s Diving Scoring

The SEC allows teams to enter 22 athletes in the meet, in any combination of swimmers and divers, with each swimmer and diver counting as 1 athlete. The Kentucky men used the most divers at 5 to achieve their league-high scoring, but the tradeoff appears to be worth it: all 5 Kentucky divers scored, and only 15 Kentucky swimmers finished in the points at last year’s SEC Championship meet.

The number of entries a team uses on diving matters to a point. Georgia and South Carolina will be able to enter more swimmers in the meet than Kentucky and Tennessee will, but it’s pretty rare that a team scores all 22 of its entries at a conference championship meet. Last year, the champion Florida Gators came closest with 21 scorers, while Alabama had 19, Georgia 18, and Texas A&M 16.

With a guaranteed point from a legal platform finish left on the board, those teams probably won’t see a net-advantage in the swimming portion, though it’s possible.

Among the conference title contenders, which on paper includes Florida, Georgia, A&M, and Missouri, the Aggies scored the most points, thanks in large part to the conference champion Kurtis Matthew’s win on the 3-meter and runner-up finish on the 1-meter.

On the flip-side of that coin, the A&M men also was the only of those four teams that saw a decrease in diving points from 2020 to 2021.

2020 vs. 2021 SEC Men’s Diving

Auburn saw the biggest overall decrease in scoring thanks in large part to the absence of Conner Pruitt. Pruitt last season as a sophomore led the Auburn men with 77 individual points (tied with senior swimmer Santiago Grassi), but he didn’t compete in this year’s events. The Tigers still scored big points thanks to Logan Andrews and Skip Donald, however.

South Carolina also lost big points, as their best diver from last year Anton Down-Jenkins was competing for UNC, where he was named the Diver of the ACC Championships over the weekend.