In anticipation of the 2021 Women’s NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships, we’ve scored out the psych sheets. But exactly how much does that tell us?
In an effort to see how teams typically perform relative to their seeded points, we’ve gone back over the past several years to come up with team-by-team averages of points gained or lost from seed.
Our chart below averages the 2019, 2018 and 2017 seasons, with each team’s gain/loss from seeded points listed. The 2020 meet is missing, as the actual NCAA meet itself was canceled amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Observations:
- Virginia is seeded 123.5 points ahead of the 2nd-seeded Stanford Cardinal. Stanford has had hit-and-miss NCAA Championship meets (-13 last year, +63.5 and +50.5 the two years before, -51.5 in 2017), but even with a typically-good taper, they’d need help from the Cavaliers. Virginia has outscored seed at every NCAA Championship meet in the Todd DeSorbo era.
- Auburn has not been great at the NCAA Championships. They lost 41.5 and 51 points versus seed in 2018 and 2019, and didn’t score a point in 2020. But, new head coach Ryan Wochomurka was better at Houston – the Cougars went +9 versus seed last year.
- Louisville consistently crushes their seed. They’re only seeded to finish 12th, but a typically-huge jump would pull them back into the top 10.
- Northwestern promoted Katie Robinson to head coach before the 2020-2021 season after Jeremy Kipp left for USC, and she nailed her first NCAA taper: the Wildcats were +71 last season.
- Ohio State’s women have won the last three Big Ten Championships, and in 2021, they figured out how to carry that forward to NCAAs: the Buckeyes went +97 from seed to actual scoring, the most of any team in the country.
- Tennessee has historically had difficulty carrying their taper through to SECs. In fact, in 2017, 2018, and 2019, they averaged -51 points: one of the worst in the NCAA. In 2021, though, they reversed that trend and went +8 (although Kentucky won SECs). With Tennessee appearing to go all-in for the conference title again this year, we’ll find out if they’ve figured things out with the double taper, or revert to their old trend.
A few notes on these numbers:
- The numbers are swimming points only – we’ve factored out diving, where no good version of a psych sheet exists.
- Points gained from seed are listed in green, while points lost from seed are listed in red.
- Obviously, there are plenty of outside factors that play into each of these numbers, and they aren’t a hard and fast predictor of future seasons’ outcomes. But we can at least identify multi-year trends as we try to diagnose why those trends exist.
- The biggest caveat here is that we’re calculating by total points – in order to lose significant points from seed, you also have to have a lot of seeded points. Same goes for the teams at the top, because you can’t move up 50+ points from seed without qualifying lots of individuals and some relays. So you’ll mostly see big-name teams at both extremes, if only because those are the teams with bigger NCAA groups and more ability to move up or down at the meet itself.
- Where zeroes are listed, a team had athletes at the NCAA meet and finished right on their psych sheet projection, even if that projection was zero. A blank space typically means a team had no swimmers or relays at NCAAs that year, and we didn’t factor that into their average as a zero.
- We’ve included the 2017 numbers just because we already have them, but the average is based on the most recent three NCAA Championship meets.
If our embedded chart with the colors isn’t loading, here’s a more basic version of the data:
| Team | Average (Last 3 Years) | 2021 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 |
| Louisville | 61.17 | 54.5 | 70.5 | 58.5 | 63.5 |
| Stanford | 33.67 | -13 | 63.5 | 50.5 | -51.5 |
| Ohio State | 28.33 | 97 | 5 | -17 | -7 |
| Virginia | 19.50 | 16.5 | 41 | 1 | -40 |
| Arizona | 18.33 | 1.5 | 37.5 | 16 | -10.5 |
| Minnesota | 15.50 | 0 | 50.5 | -4 | -29 |
| Northwestern | 15.17 | 39 | 6.5 | 0 | 8 |
| UNC | 14.67 | 71 | -22 | -5 | -25 |
| Duke | 13.67 | 2 | 41 | -2 | 0 |
| Wisconsin | 8.67 | 30 | 10 | -14 | -32 |
| Penn State | 8.00 | 10 | 6 | 7 | |
| FGCU | 5.00 | 5 | 4 | ||
| Eastern Michigan | 4.75 | -8.5 | 18 | ||
| Purdue | 4.50 | 0 | 0 | 13.5 | -5 |
| Virginia Tech | 4.33 | 17 | 5 | -9 | 2 |
| San Diego State | 4.00 | 3 | 9 | 0 | 0 |
| South Carolina | 3.75 | 8 | -0.5 | 0 | |
| Notre Dame | 3.67 | 11 | -4 | 4 | 2 |
| Arizona State | 3.50 | 6 | 1 | -7 | |
| Houston | 3.00 | 9 | 0 | 0 | |
| Denver | 2.50 | 0 | 5 | 3 | |
| Indiana | 2.33 | 36 | -25.5 | -3.5 | 32 |
| Michigan | 1.67 | 15.5 | 19 | -29.5 | -9 |
| Nebraska | 1.33 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oakland | 1.00 | 1 | 0 | ||
| Wyoming | 0.00 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Miami | 0.00 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Georgia Tech | 0.00 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Akron | -0.33 | 3 | -8 | 4 | |
| West Virginia | -1.00 | 0 | -2 | ||
| LSU | -2.17 | 0 | -6.5 | 0 | 0 |
| Hawaii | -2.25 | -8 | 3.5 | ||
| Navy | -2.33 | -8 | 1 | 0 | |
| Rutgers | -2.50 | -5 | 0 | 0 | |
| UCLA | -2.67 | -10 | 0 | 2 | -12 |
| California | -3.00 | -60 | 44.5 | 6.5 | -33 |
| Yale | -3.00 | -6 | 0 | ||
| Florida State | -3.17 | -2 | 5 | -12.5 | -3 |
| Alabama | -6.33 | -26.5 | 10 | -2.5 | 0.5 |
| Arkansas | -6.33 | -19 | 0 | 0 | |
| Texas A&M | -10.17 | 30.5 | -22 | -39 | 84.5 |
| Missouri | -11.00 | -38 | -18 | 23 | 91 |
| Kentucky | -15.00 | -36 | -1.5 | -7.5 | 47 |
| Texas | -19.33 | -44 | -31.5 | 17.5 | 15 |
| Georgia | -20.67 | -68 | -28 | 34 | 44.5 |
| Florida | -24.67 | -23.5 | -49.5 | -1 | |
| NC State | -25.17 | -21 | -55 | 0.5 | -29 |
| Tennessee | -31.67 | 8 | -76 | -27 | -50 |
| USC | -36.50 | -30 | -21.5 | -58 | -75 |
| Auburn | -46.25 | -51 | -41.5 | 11 |
10 of 11 SEC teams are in the negitive, South Carolina being the only team positive. 9 of the bottom 12 are SEC. The SEC Championships have most every team and everyone tapered, partial at least. Very difficult to double taper that quickly. Doesn’t explain Texas, who could win their conference with the bottom half of their swimmers.
No one has mentioned that the very elite swimmers can make NCAAs without much if any rest and may swim events they did not swim at conference (see Brooke Forde). Those people will most likely drop time at NCAAs in comparison to people that either had to rest to win conference or rest to make the meet. This data is inherently skewed to favor the schools that already have the top swimmers.
DeSorbo effect!!!
So Louisville, Stanford,and Ohio state have even better Desorbos?
^^^ found the stock broker ^^^
I’m not sure if this has been posted here, an NPR article/audio regarding a math professor who studies the swimmers at Virginia and identifies changes necessary to maximize performance. One of his points is something I’ve detected for a long time, that many swimmers do not flip at the ideal distance from the wall to maximize velocity, nor have their feet the proper width during the push: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/12/1085542427/uva-professor-swimmer-math-faster
A standard deviation on these values would be nice to throw in aswell. Because a school with an average of +5 or -5 but a StDev of 30-40pts is much more of a wild card than the average would make you think.
Interesting carol/Texas get a lot of flack for underperforming at NCAAs. But they have averaged better than a lot of schools that people praise: Tennessee, Georgia, NC state. Not saying they’re doing great but feel like they get a weird amount of hate for it
I think part of the flack comes from not being able to translate highly ranked recruits into big point scorers for Texas over the last number of years. Was great to see things come together last year and hopefully keeps up this year and years to come!
“In anticipation of the 2021 Women’s….” that’s great in retrospect but I think 2022’s will be faster! 🙂