Final score Psych vs. Real

2021 NCAA WOMEN SWIMMING AND DIVING CHAMPIONSHIP

In a difficult year for swimmers, like everyone around the world, the NCAA Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships have progressed to the end, successfully completing a national champion with at least minimal direct disqualifications from COVID.

Aside from some notable exceptions, like Maggie MacNeil’s top 100 of all time, 48.89, there were far more “better not for life” than “best for life” at this year’s meeting, even in comparison with the normal years. There are many theories as to why, and they will be dissected in the coming weeks to be learned, but there is still a relative measure of how the teams fared compared to everyone else through the “change in points” metrics.

Some teams really stood out in front of the field in this regard. Among them is champion Virginia, who scored 16.5 points against the seed. This is not the larger positive number, but entering a competition like the team sowed to score more, and still get points against the seed, is difficult to do – and this was demonstrated by Virginia’s surprising margin of victory of 137 points.

Many of these points came as a result of a Alex Walsh under-seed in the 200 free (she didn’t swim in that ACC race), where it was clear she was going up. But adding points in the net, even with just one relay victory, is a good result for the Cavaliers.

Further down the standings, the UNC women, who finished 11th, scored an impressive 71 points against the seed. There were high hopes for Tar Heel’s faithful that Mark Gangloff would relive a difficult program, and he did it faster than most expected.

In the 2019 National Championship, the last one before Gangloff was signed, UNC women came in 42nd with just 2 points. This year, they jumped to 11th place with 144 points (many of which were from freshman diver Aranza Vazquez).

For UNC to do this well, especially after a disastrous ACC championship, where several of its best swimmers were left at home as part of COVID’s contact tracking protocols, it was a great story of the encounter. Specifically Grace Countie, who did swimming in ACCs, was +28 on their individual seeds – more than any other individual swimmer in the competition.

Tennessee women, who historically fought NCAAs versus seed, actually had a positive real-vs-seed day on the last day of the encounter to finish just -2 over the original projection. According to their standard, it is good progress.

Louisville women, historically among the best teams in this ranking, continued to build that reputation with a score of +53.5 vs. seed, which was the second best behind North Carolina. More superlatives for ACC, which had the first two teams in the final standings.

Two other things that stand out:

• The top 10 finish order would have been the same with or without a dip, and
• Cal’s DQ relay, where they touched the wall as the third fastest team, didn’t hurt them in the end. They were 55 points behind Texas in the final whistle, and that relay cost only 32 points.

Below, see which teams did the most on seed on day 4 and then on the match in its entirety.

Data from day 4

Full Meet Psych vs. Seed Data