Swimulator Snapshot: Top the Same, But Movement Below Before Conference Champs | SwimSwam

By Robert Gibbs on SwimSwam

While it’s been one of the strangest college swimming seasons ever (ok, almost certainly the strangest ever), we are less than two days away before two of the Power 5 conferences get their meets underway, with the SEC and ACC women both starting their respective championships on Wednesday.

• Click here to experiment with Swimulator data on your own.

Before we show you the results, a few reminders and caveats:

1. Most importantly — these are projections, and not predictions. The Swimulator simply calculates what would happen if each swimmer or team replicated their season-best times, so far, in the finals of the NCAA Championship meet. Our latest SwimSwam Power Rankings (women/men coming tomorrow), are weighed more toward NCAA predictions.
2. The Swimulator pulls in data from USA Swimming’s NCAA results database. So, if meet results aren’t updated there, they won’t be included in the Swimulator rankings, either. Conversely, sometimes swims are included that shouldn’t be: Nyls Korstanje and Andrei Minakov aren’t competing this season, but converted times from long course meets in their homes countries, give NC State and Stanford about a 30-point bounce each. Arizona State as a whole isn’t competing this year, but Emma Nordin currently accounts for 4 for the Sun Devils due to the inclusion of some results from a December club meet.
3. You can tweak the settings to the Swimulator uses to determine rankings. For instance, in the rankings below, we’re using season top times, instead of average times.
4. Finally, the projected scores only take into account swimming events, not diving, so keep that in mind when looking at teams who regularly score a good chunk of points in the diving events.

Men

	Team	Points
1	Texas	605
2	Georgia	438.5
3	California	349
4	Texas A&M	316
5	NC State	209
6	Florida	197.5
7	Georgia Tech	188
9	Missouri	166
10	Alabama	148.5
11	Virginia	146.5
12	Louisville	132.5
13	Tennessee	102.5
14	Virginia Tech	96
15	UNC	76
16	Stanford	68.5
17	Arizona	42
18	Florida State	38
19	Notre Dame	36
20	LSU	33
21	Northwestern	32.5
22	Minnesota	32
23	Michigan	21.5
24	SMU	16.5
25	USC	12
26	Wisconsin	10
27	Pitt	9
27	Auburn	9
29	Ohio State	8
30	Indiana	7
31	Navy	6
31	Kentucky	6
33	UNLV	3
34	TCU	2
34	Purdue	2

The Cal Bears are now projected to score over 100 points more than they were last month, thanks largely to a few suited relay swims at the Cal v. USC meets last weekend. That point bump is enough move them past Texas A&M in the Swimulator projections. The Virginia Tech Hokies jumped up 4 spots, from 18th to 14th, after some strong relay swims and a 45.68 in the 100 fly by freshman Youssef Ramadan, which moves him up to the 9th in the nation in that event.

We’ve seen a little more racing by Big Ten teams over the last few weeks, but outside of a couple of 50-point 100 breaststrokes from Minnesota’s Max McHugh, there wasn’t much for them to collectively move the need, Stimulator-wise. Watch for a fast Big Ten Championships as teams finally show what they can do with some rest and fast suits this season.

Women

	Women
1	Virginia	465
2	Texas	384
3	California	366.5
4	NC State	350
5	Georgia	310
6	Tennessee	205.5
7	Kentucky	173
9	Alabama	169
10	Florida	142
11	Missouri	132
12	Stanford	115
13	Texas A&M	87
14	Virginia Tech	79
15	Arkansas	77
16	USC	74
17	Louisville	67
17	Michigan	67
19	Northwestern	65
20	UNC	50
21	UCLA	42
22	Wisconsin	29
23	Auburn	26
24	Florida State	18
25	Notre Dame	16
25	Ohio State	16
27	Akron	12
28	Buffalo	10
29	SMU	6
30	Houston	4
30	Arizona State	4
30	Miami (Ohio)	4

Just as on the men’s side, the top two women’s teams are the same as when we last looked at the Swimulator, and once again, Cal has surged, this time by an even larger margin. With some additional racing over the last few weeks, the Golden Bears have gone from a projected 168 points and a 9th-place finish to 366.5 points and a 3rd-place finish. The USC women jumped from unranked to 16th, thanks again to some great races against Cal, highlighted by an epic duel between USC’s Kaitlyn Dobler and Cal’s Ema Rajic two weeks ago.

Read the full story on SwimSwam: Swimulator Snapshot: Top the Same, But Movement Below Before Conference Champs