2013 Men's NCAA Swimming & Diving Division I Championships - Day 1
Today one of the fastest swim meets in the world kicks off in Indianapolis. First the good news, Michigan is favored to win. Heavily favored to win. If things hold according to seed, Michigan would win by over 200 points. That would be a massive beat down.
The bad news, however, is that the seeding rarely goes according to plan and we really only have room to go down.
More good news: Michigan has 17 swimmers invited to the meet, more than any other team. It would take a complete botched taper job by Mike Bottom to blow a 200 point lead. .
I think there are 2 keys for Michigan to win the meet. First, I believe the morning swims will be more important than the evening swims. With their depth, they can drop a seed line or 2 in the evening, but as long as they get into the A or B finals in the morning their final placing matters less (unless they DQ). [Top 8 make it into the “A” final, 9-16 make it to the “B” final] Second, the relays are important. The scoring for relays can lead to big swings in the point total. Michigan dominated the relays at Big Ten Championships and are poised to do really well at NCAA. Hold on to those points and victory is assured.
I predict Michigan wins by 100 points or so. This is still a comfortable margin. Our main competitors will be Florida, Cal, USC, and Auburn. So cheer hard against them.
Day 1 - Prelims begin at 11AM EDT, Finals begin at 7PM EDT
200 Free Relay UM seeded 2nd
500 Freestyle UM seeded 2nd 4th 14th 16th 17th
200 IM UM seeded 3rd 4th
50 Free UM seeded 5th 8th 17th
400 Medley Relay seeded 1st
If you want to watch it the prelims on all 3 days and today’s finals will be shown here:
http://www.ihigh.com/indianasportscorp/
Finals on Friday and Saturday will be shown on ESPN3 [DirecTV doesn’t have ESPN3 but I think we will otherwise be occupied on Friday at 7pm].
If your work blocks streaming like my old employer you can get real-time results here [currently shows the women, but the url suggests that they will change over later today]:
http://results.teamunify.com/nsss/results/NCAA/2013Men/
Also check out the free app called Meet Mobile. Search for meets (just type NCAA and you will get the Men’s and Women’s).
Edit: Fixed the Real Time Results link
March 28th, 2013 at 10:40 AM ^
Michigan has sprinters now? Good to see we are catching up with SEC speed. Also it appears there are no Vanderkaays on this year's roster. What's all this about?!
March 28th, 2013 at 11:09 AM ^
I believe Coach Bottom was brought in because he is a sprint freestyle specialist. What has surprised me a bit is that while the team has strongly focused on developing the sprinters, they have maintained the exceptional, deep distance program that Urbancek built.
March 28th, 2013 at 11:15 AM ^
Right you are. Miguel Ortiz just anchroed the 200 free relay in 18.79 - 3rd fastest split I think. Off to the races!
March 28th, 2013 at 11:55 AM ^
Holy CRAP! That's sickeningly fast.
The key in the 500 I feel will be those bottom three seeds, if they can get high up in the B heet, that helps a lot. In my day, I was an evening swimmer. Key to a good morning swim is an aggressive warm up.
Anyone know where I can get a winged swim cap? I know they keep those things pretty close to the vest, though.
March 28th, 2013 at 10:59 AM ^
Would be amazing if Michigan can win the national championship. Canham is looking like the Boston Garden with all the banners in it right now.
March 28th, 2013 at 11:04 AM ^
I agree that UM is the favorite, but Bottom tapered the UM guys a bit for Big Tens (except Whitaker it appears). Stanford, Cal, and even Georgia guys had facial hair at their respective conference championship meets.
Cal is going to be fast and they know how to win at NCAAs - I think UM will squeek out a win over them but 100 points seems like a lot to me - I would guess they win by 30-40.
Michigan has a couple sprinters now, but not like Auburn. UM will win on depth in the strokes and IM events - and like ehatch says, relays will be key! I wouldn't be surprised to see UM not win any relays though .... 2nd or 3rd in most of then will keep them in contention. If I'm not mistaken, the 1995 championship team didn't win a single relay.
I'm pumped for this meet - some events (400IM) are going to be incredibly fast! Go Blue!
March 28th, 2013 at 12:04 PM ^
How did I miss this? I knew we were good in the Big Ten, but I thought our conference was fairly small potatoes nationally
March 28th, 2013 at 12:04 PM ^
The link above is not updated for the Men's Meet. For the men's meet, live stats are available at:
http://www.ncaa.com/content/di-mens-swimming-diving-championship
Michigan had a good morning. Cal had a better morning. Michigan had some ups and downs, but overall swam to their estimated seed points. Cal clearly tapered well, If they hold this evening they will pick up 72 points from their seed points.
My 100 point prediction was grossly optimistic. It will be a dogfight between Michigan and Cal all the way to the end.
I missed a Cal swimmer on the psych sheets. They are "only" 59 points above seed. While still an outstanding day from them, it makes me feel a little safer.
Hail to the swimmers!
Not the ideal start to the evening. They swam faster than the morning, but dropped to 3rd. Meanwhile Cal moved up to 5th. All these little points will add up.
Also Vlad Morozov from USC swam a 17.86 split. Filthy.
Taking 1st and 5 total scoring points is good I hope for the 500.
The Mgoblue.com webpage links to this document:
http://www.usaswimming.org/_Rainbow/Documents/86d20ec1-31ca-4ec6-95d2-9…
Wow, looking at the seedings we are not doing so hot. Hopefully Cal won't keep jumping above their seedings.
Michigan 153, California 123.5, Auburn 112.5, Southern Cal 100, Texas 99, Florida 97.
A 29.5 point lead after 6 of 21 events...I will leave the analysis to the experts, but it is certainly encouraging.
Scores after Day 1.
1. Michigan 153
2. Cal 123.5
3. Auburn 112.5
4. USC 100
5. Texas 99
Cal had a net gain of 64.5 points out of the 220 points they need.