Who Returns the Most Points? Looking Ahead to 2020 D1 Men’s Champs

2019 MEN’S NCAA SWIMMING & DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS

• Wednesday, March 27 – Saturday, March 30
• Lee & Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center, Austin, Texas
• Live results

Cal won the NCAA title last weekend, and they were good enough that they look like early favorites for next year too.

Cal returns 279 individual points, the most of and team and 103 more than next best Texas. Michigan are 3rd best with 91.

However, next year’s meet won’t be swum by the same field as this year’s meet. The seniors will be gone and replaced by a new class of freshmen. Freshmen aren’t a one-to-one replacement for a graduating senior class. This year, 40% of all individual points were scored by seniors. 13% of points were scored by freshmen.

Freshmen under performing the older classes is a consistent year-to-year trend, so a disproportionate amount of the departing points will be filled by return swimmers. That means we can get a reasonable guess about what will happen at next year’s meet by removing the seniors and rescoring the meet.

In this rescoring without seniors Cal still have the most points with 373. Texas are a bit closer to Cal with 288, but still have a significant hill to climb, especially considering that Cal are adding Hugo Gonzalez next fall. Texas are expecting a strong recruiting class, but it’s very difficult to win men’s NCAAs on the back of freshmen (see: 13% of points this year by freshmen).

If Texas pull out a win next year, their path to the title will have to look very similar to Cal’s this year. Last year, Cal had a highly regarded freshmen class that put up the second most points among freshmen classes at NCAA’s (they scored 87.5, Texas were first with 104). This year that class was the highest scoring class of any age at the entire meet with 178 points.

This year Texas had a very-highly regarded freshmen class. They scored the most points of any freshman class at the meet (46), but scored significantly fewer points than the overall top classes at the meet. If the Texas freshmen can more than double their total next year like the Cal sophomores did this year, that will go a long way to narrowing the gap.

Another ray of hope for the Longhorns: Austin Katz and Sam Pomajevich were way under their freshman year point totals this year. Katz scored 17 after scoring 35 last year. Pomajevich scored 0 after putting up 24 last year. While that type of performance isn’t the best sign for their long term prospects, both have been big points guys before. A big break out isn’t required for them to pick up a lot of points, just a return to freshman form.

Working in Cal’s favor: Texas’s top two returners by individual points are their divers Jordan Windle and Grayson Campbell. That means Texas’s large diving advantage should carry over into next year, but it also means that the top two returning athletes on Texas’s team aren’t useful on relays. Texas’s top returning swimmer by individual points is Drew Kibler who scored 25 points this year (it’s worth noting that Kibler is one of the largest beneficiaries of the no seniors rescoring, there he scored 45.5 points. The stage is set for a big sophomore year from Kibler). Cal return 7 swimmers that scored 25 or more points this season. That rises to 8 under the no seniors rescoring.

After the top two teams, the picture muddies. Michigan return the third most no seniors points with 139, but much of their returning strength is in distance events which doesn’t bode well for their relays.

Next are Florida and Indiana with 133.5 returning no seniors points each. They are followed by NC State with 108, Ohio State and Georgia with 102, Stanford with 100, Louisville with 99, and Arizona with 96. Any of those teams are a breakout performance or great freshmen class from 3rd next year.

It is remarkable how quickly the new coaching staff at Florida have gotten that program back on track. This year they returned 16 individual points. Next year they will return 80. They had an exceptional freshmen class this year (41 individual points, 6 individual qualifiers); however, three of their top four scorers this year were non freshmen, so the improvement wasn’t entirely due to strong recruiting. Florida returned fewer points this year than Notre Dame, LSU, South Carolina, and Miami. Next year they could be 3rd.

Returning Points by Team

Individual Breakdown

California

Texas

Indiana

NC State

Louisville

Florida

Alabama

Harvard

Ohio State

Virginia

Missouri

Tennessee

Michigan

Florida St

Stanford

Arizona

TA&M

Georgia

Minnesota

Southern Cali

Arizona St

Miami

Purdue

Georgia Tech

Kentucky

LSU

South Carolina

Hawaii

Duke

Penn State

Columbia

Virginia Tech

Denver

Wisconsin

Notre Dame

Princeton

Auburn

Navy

UNC

Utah

West Virginia

Iowa

Pittsburgh

East Carolina

UNLV