Courtesy: CSCAA
The College Swimming and Diving Coaches Association of America (CSCAA) released its Division III Swimming & Diving Top 25 Poll today. The Emory University men and Kenyon College women remain at the top of the polls.
Emory tallied ten first-place votes and 296 total points, keeping them in first. Kenyon (286 points) took the remaining top votes and moved up two spots to second. Johns Hopkins (272) is third. Chicago (267) and MIT (249) climbed one place each to round out the top five. Bates (50), Bowdoin (24), and Swarthmore (16) made their way into the rankings this month at 22nd, 24th and 25th, respectively. In all, twenty-seven men’s teams received votes.
The Kenyon women were the unanimous favorite among the committee, earning the maximum of 300 points. Emory (285), Denison (279) and Johns Hopkins (262) remain 2nd, 3rd and 4th – the same positions as January. NYU (254) jumped one spot, putting them back in the top five this month. UC Santa Cruz (24) entered the poll this month at 24th. Thirty-one women’s teams received votes.
You can find a complete list of the rankings at: www.cscaa.org/top25
The rankings are voted on by CSCAA-member coaches and select media. The committee ranks the top 25 teams in the nation based on dual meet strength.
The men’s committee chair is Sean Tedesco (USMMA). Regional chairs include: Brad Bowser (Rowan, Northeast South), Paul Bennett (WPI, Northeast North), Brent Summers (Willamette, Midwest South) and Keith Crawford (Rose Hulman, Central).
The women’s committee chair is Jake Taber (Hope). Regional chairs include: Ben Delia (Franklin & Marshall, Northeast South), Brad Burnham (Bowdoin, Northeast North), Jon Duncan (Southwestern, Midwest South) and Justin Zook (St. Kates, Central).
The final poll is scheduled for release on March 4.
Division III Men
| Rk | Prv | Team | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Emory | 296 |
| 2 | 4 | Kenyon | 286 |
| 2 | 3 | Johns Hopkins | 272 |
| 4 | 5 | Chicago | 267 |
| 5 | 6 | MIT | 249 |
| 6 | 2 | Denison | 242 |
| 7 | 8 | NYU | 222 |
| 8 | 10 | Carnegie Mellon | 214 |
| 9 | 12 | Pomona-Pitzer | 207 |
| 10 | 11 | Williams | 192 |
| 11 | 13 | Tufts | 176 |
| 12 | 7 | WashU | 168 |
| 13 | 9 | Claremont-Mudd-Scripps | 146 |
| 14 | 19 | Rowan | 138 |
| 15 | 14 | Calvin | 135 |
| 16 | 15 | TCNJ | 133 |
| 17 | 22 | Amherst | 105 |
| 18 | 16 | Franklin & Marshall | 94 |
| 19 | 21 | SUNY Geneseo | 81 |
| 20 | 17 | Case Western Reserve | 74 |
| 21 | 18 | Hope | 63 |
| 22 | NR | Bates | 50 |
| 23 | 24 | Caltech | 32 |
| 24 | NR | Bowdoin | 24 |
| 25 | NR | Swarthmore | 16 |
Also Receiving Votes
UW-Stevens Point (13), SUNY Brockport (5)
Division III Women
| Rk | Prv | Team | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Kenyon | 300 |
| 2 | 2 | Emory | 285 |
| 3 | 3 | Denison | 279 |
| 4 | 4 | Johns Hopkins | 262 |
| 5 | 6 | NYU | 254 |
| 6 | 5 | Tufts | 235 |
| 7 | 7 | Chicago | 222 |
| 8 | 9 | MIT | 214 |
| 9 | 8 | Pomona-Pitzer | 210 |
| 10 | 10 | Williams | 199 |
| 11 | 11 | Claremont-Mudd-Scripps | 174 |
| 12 | 12 | WashU | 160 |
| 13 | 13 | Bates | 153 |
| 14 | 14 | Carnegie Mellon | 148 |
| 15 | 15 | Saint Kate’s | 144 |
| 16 | 16 | Hope | 115 |
| 17 | 17 | Trinity (TX) | 95 |
| 18 | 18 | Wheaton (MA) | 93 |
| 19 | 20 | Case Western Reserve | 88 |
| 20 | 19 | Swarthmore | 76 |
| 21 | 21 | Amherst | 63 |
| 22 | 23 | SUNY Geneseo | 33 |
| 23 | 24 | Calvin | 32 |
| 24 | NR | UC Santa Cruz | 24 |
| 25 | 22 | Washington & Lee | 15 |
Also Receiving Votes
Albion(13), Bowdoin (7), Colby (3), Gettysburg (2), Franklin & Marshall (1), DePauw (1)
Men’s Regional Rankings:
Central: 1. Kenyon 2. Chicago 3. Denison 4. Calvin 5. Case Western 6. Hope 7. UW-Stevens Point 8. Gustavus Adolphus 9. UW-Eau Claire 10. Carthage
Northeast-North: 1. MIT 2. New York University 3. Williams 4. Tufts 5. Amherst 6. Bates 7. Bowdoin 8. Colby 9. U.S. Merchant Marine Academy 10. U.S. Coast Guard Academy
Northeast-South: 1. Carnegie Mellon 2. Rowan 3. TCNJ 4. Franklin & Marshall 5. SUNY-Geneseo 6. Swarthmore 7. Gettysburg 8. RIT 9. Ithaca 10. Stevens
West Midwest: 1. Emory 2. Johns Hopkins 3. Pomona-Pitzer Colleges 4. Washington University (MO) 5. Claremont-Mudd-Scripps 6. California Institute of Technology 7. California Lutheran 8. UC-Santa Cruz 9. Whitworth 10. Birmingham Southern
Women’s Regional Rankings:
Central: 1. Kenyon 2. Denison 3. Chicago 4. Saint Catherine 5. Hope 6. Case Western 7. Calvin 8. Albion 9. DePauw 10. Wooster
Northeast-North: 1.New York University 2. Tufts 3. MIT 4. Williams 5. Bates 6. Wheaton College (MA) 7. Amherst 8. Bowdoin 9. Colby 10. WPI
Northeast-South: 1. Carnegie Mellon 2. Swarthmore 3. SUNY-Geneseo 4. Gettysburg 5. Franklin & Marshall 6. Ursinus 7. Rowan 8. TCNJ 9. Drew 10. Rochester
West Midwest: 1. Emory 2. Johns Hopkins 3. Pomona-Pitzer Colleges 4. Claremont-Mudd-Scripps 5. Washington University 6. Trinity University (TX) 7. UC-Santa Cruz 8. Washington & Lee 9. Mary Washington 10. Rhodes
Men’s Poll Committee
Justin Anderson, Mary Washington; Erica Belcher, NYU; Paul Bennett, WPI; Brad Bowser, Rowan; Peter Casares, Bates; Jennifer Cournoyer, Norwich; Keith Crawford, Rose Hulman; Paul Dotterweich, SUNY Geneseo; David Dow, TCNJ; Rob Harrington, Wooster; Gwynn Harrison, Bridgewater; Sarah James, Southwestern; Michael Kroll, Buffalo State; Pat Smith, Westminster; Brent Summers, Willamette; Sean Tedesco, U.S. Merchant Marine Academy; Jason Weber, Chicago; Seth Weidmann, Carthage; Braden Keith, SwimSwam; David Rieder, Swimming World.
Women’s Poll Committee
Greg Brown, Gettysburg; Brad Burnham, Bowdoin; Jay Daniels, Kalamazoo; Ben Delia, Franklin & Marshall; Jon Duncan, Southwestern; Paul Flinchbauch, Berry; John Geissinger, Hamilton; Katie McArdle, Dickinson; Chris Mhyre, Puget Sound; Shannon O’Brien, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Anne Ryder, Wisconsin-Eau Claire; Meg Sisson French, MIT; Jake Taber, Hope; Mike Tubb, Susquehanna; Jason Weber, Chicago; Toby Wilcox, Birmingham Southern; Justin Zook, St. Kate’s; Braden Keith, SwimSwam; David Rieder, Swimming World.
About the CSCAA
Founded in 1922, the College Swimming and Diving Coaches Association of America (CSCAA) – the first organization of college coaches in America -is a professional organization of college swimming and diving coaches dedicated to serving and providing leadership for the advancement of the sport of swimming & diving at the collegiate level.
Kristin Cornish joining mid-way thru the season to JHU is quite helpful. (1:49 / 4:48 / 16:25 free)
still don’t think they break into top 3, but maybe
Chicago’s diving will keep them out of the top 5.
I thought JHU men had a chance to shake things up this year and win, but idk, Emory is deep as the damn ocean this year. I can’t even keep track of all the good swimmers on that team. They’re A-tier guys all got cuts in the fall and are focused purely on NCAAs, but they’ve had a wave of more B-tier people throw down more (likely/projected) cuts recently, and we haven’t even done UAAs yet. And I think JHU is done competing between now and NCAA, so their roster is locked in as is, and I think too thin to win. I still think we might have a meet that is in the margins of a relay DQ, which… Read more »
JHU has one more meet on Feb 19th, but for the most part their roster is set.
If you run the database today Hopkins will have 17 swimmers in at NCAAs in individual events. 13 of those swimmers (13!) are on the 7 line or higher.
Arena is on the 10 line (3:57.21 4IM), McGough is on the 11 (1:50.10 2IM), and Surprenant is on the 12 (1:48.93 2fly). I think that Fitch will probably swim the 50 free instead of the 2fly (same day as the 100 back), so Surprenant is really on the 11 line (and Seymour 1:47.63 is on the 4 not the 5).
Hughes is on the 14 line (1:38.99 2free) but he is… Read more »
Good analysis! I do not think Arena, McGough, or Suprenant will qualify with those times. There’s a chance, but the 4IM and 2fly are slower than qual time in 2020, and the 2IM is like .05 faster, so I assume none will make it this time. So yeah hard to bet on a team with “only” 13-14 entrants when I can pretty much assume Emory will hit 18 this year with the talent that they have.
Andrew Karpenko should be ranked higher.
Oops, I meant Swarthmore.
Eh
Three things that make D3 rankings difficult:
4) A lot of schools don’t care at all about how fast they go in dual meets.
NESCAC swimmer here: can confirm our conference is hard to rank because everyone has different attitudes towards suiting up midseason. Normally Williams wouldn’t be on here because they wouldn’t have suited up yet.
NESCAC is hard to judge given most of the Northeast has been locked down more than the rest of the country.
Braden, what are your rankings?
That’s kind of a loaded question. The way they structure the D2 and D3 votes, there’s only so much flexibility in how you vote. First they come up with a ranking by region. Then national voters must keep teams within their regional order. So like, Kenyon men had to be ahead of Denison men (and they should be, but they had to be), as an example.
So our votes aren’t really our own. For those who aren’t involved in the regional polls, there’s really only a 1 or 2 spot variation you can have in the teams.
So my votes look a lot like the final outcome, like it or not.
That definitely helps but wow the Northeast Women’s rankings are so off base. Williams is too low, Wheaton is too high, and Bowdoin beat Bates head to head. Amherst is a little hard to place given no head to heads with the group but their times and margin of victory over other teams these teams have been against they should be ahead of Bates/Bowdoin/Wheaton. Seems to me like people are just looking at the fastest times of the season and calling it a day, which benefits the teams that do mid season invites.
If you can hang on for like another 6 weeks, there will be a meet to sort it all out.
Bates will beat Bowdoin at NESCACs. They’re close in a duel meet setting but not a conference one. On an NCAA level it’s harder to say. Colby, which got a lot of votes here, lost to Middlebury in a duel meet. They will probably lose to them at conference. But Colby will crush Middlebury at NCAA (if any Middlebury swimmers even make it) because Colby has two nationally ranked swimmers and Middlebury has none.
Rankings after conferences this weekend would be more enlightening.
so, WE DO NOT CARE
D3 swimmers: “we want more D3 stuff!!!!!”
D3 swimmers after D3 stuff is published: “NONE OF THIS MATTERS WE DON’T CARE”
The lack of self awareness in the comments of every D3 article is astounding.
Don’t act like the “rankings don’t matter!” comment that misunderstands the CSCAA poll isn’t a classic mainstay on every division’s ranking articles.
Geneseo is too high
It appears that the committee finally stopped ranking Denison’s men based on historical NCAA performances. Their team has severely underperformed this year (Exhibit A being the fact they only have one swimmer breaking 1:40 in the 200 free), and I don’t see any way their team gets top 5 at NCAAs this year. It’s about time the committee ranks them appropriately.
Denison is faster than Kenyon in all 5 relays so far and 9 of 13 individual events. Yet Kenyon ranked #2 and you somehow think Denison won’t be top 5. #GoodJob
The CSCAA rankings are about who would win in a dual meet and Kenyon men beat Denison men 208.5-91.5.