Coming off of the program’s most successful season in over a decade, North Carolina State has announced their 2014-2015 schedule that they hope will wind up in Atlanta with an ACC title.
The season will begin for the third-straight year with the All-North Carolina Invitational on October 3rd and 4th at the Greensboro Aquatic Center. That meet will again be without the North Carolina Tarheels’ participation, so NC State should be the favorites for the second-straight season.
The North Carolina State men started out last season dual meet schedule with a rough pair of defeats to ACC rivals Virginia Tech (by 72 points) and Florida State (by 26 points).
This year’s schedule will again see Florida State early, but there is no Virginia Tech duel on the schedule. That means that the top two teams from last year’s ACC men’s championship, which was a spectacular down-to-the-wire team battle, won’t face off until the ACC Championships – which will be run February 18th-21st (women’s swimming & diving, men’s diving) and February 25th-28th (men’s swimming).
In the meantime, the Wolfpack will only have a couple of meets at home in Raleigh on a road-warrior schedule. That includes non-traditional Big Ten opponent Minnesota, who will come down for a two-day duel on January 23rd and 24th. That’s a return trip form NC State’s voyage to Minneapolis last year, where they were swept. A week later, NC State will face in-state rivals UNC in a big rivalry battle.
Other interesting opponents on the season include Georgia Tech, Virginia, Princeton, and Villanova, the latter two of which are new names on the NC State schedule for early January. Princeton, with a second-straight impressive recruiting class, will be hungry to emulate the Wolfpack’s upstart success of the last few years.
All roads lead to the 2015 NCAA Championships, which for the women will be back in Greensboro on March 19th-21st, and for the men will be in Iowa City, Iowa from March 26th-28th. Interestingly, the ACC is not taking advantage of Greensboro hosting the NCAA Championships and having their women get an extra racing experience in there, but for NC State that should be of little concern as they are able to swim at the facility very frequently anyway.
Another sign of NC State’s increasing prominence in college swimming is that the women earned an invite to the SMU-hosted Dallas Morning Classic.
This is a meet, for no particular reason other than perhaps the excitement generated by the atmosphere, always produces times that far exceed expectations given their timing. This year, SMU will be trying to recapture the same atmosphere that they’ve had for so long at the old Perkins Natatorium, which is being replaced.
See the full schedule below:
DATE, MEET, LOCATION, TIME
Oct. 3 & 4 All North Carolina Invite (NCSU: host) Greensboro, NC Fri pm, Sat am, pm
Oct. 17 & 18 Dallas Morning Classic (women only) Dallas, Texas all day
Oct. 18 Georgia Raleigh, NC 11:00 am
Oct. 25 Florida State/Georgia Tech *Atlanta, GA 11:00 am
Nov. 1 Diving Quad Meet Greensboro, NC TBA
(NC State, Clemson, JMU, UNC)
Nov. 15 Virginia* Charlottesville, VA TBA
Nov. 20-22 Nike Cup Invite Chapel Hill, NC prelims/finals
Dec. 4-6 Winter National Championships Greensboro, NC prelims/finals
Dec. 16-21 Diving NationalsColumbus, OH prelims/finals
Jan. 3-5 Tennessee Diving Invite Knoxville, TN TBA
Jan. 9 PrincetonPrinceton, NJ5:00 pm
Jan. 10Villanova Philadelphia, PA 11:00 am
Jan. 23 & 24 Minnesota Raleigh, NC 5:00 pm (F)/10:00 am (S)
Jan. 31 North Carolina* Raleigh, NC 1:00 pm
February 18-21 Women’s ACC Championships Atlanta, GA all day
(women swim/dive, men dive)
February 25-28 Men’s ACC Championships Atlanta, GA all day
(men swim)
March 19-21 NCAA Championships Greensboro, NC all day
(women swim/dive)
March 26-28 NCAA Championships Iowa City, Iowa all day
(men swim/dive)
* Conference Meet
Home Meets in Bold