WSwim upsets cal - Printable Version

WSwim upsets cal - Printable Version

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WSwim upsets cal - BostonCard - 02-15-2020

In a dual meet, we beat #2 Cal, which always makes my day.

BC

RE: WSwim upsets cal - Hulk01 - 02-16-2020

Not following the sport so far this year, though I recognize many of the young names.
But how can such a slaughter be an upset?
Expressed better, perhaps, how could devotees of the sport not see this coming?

Thanks for clarifying this for me.

RE: WSwim upsets cal - 82lsju - 02-16-2020

(02-15-2020, 07:46 PM)BostonCard Wrote: In a dual meet, we beat #2 Cal, which always makes my day.

BC

some details

https://gostanford.com/news/2020/2/15/womens-swimming-diving-senior-day-win.aspx

RE: WSwim upsets cal - Treefence - 02-16-2020

I'm a bit confused by the NCAA rankings, as they have Michigan ranked #1, however in the Minnesota invited, Cal finished 1st of 7 with 1135.5 points and Michigan finished 2nd with only 727.5 points. I think typically the NCAA rankings are very flawed, and SwimSwam typically has a more analytical based rankings system that projects tournament scoring ability, as apposed to year round head to head success. With Swimming and diving head to head scoring I believe is more a demonstration of a teams depth, but when it comes to Nationals it's a lot more about top end talent, since lower depth likely won't score any points. All that being said, we pretty well destroyed Cal in the meet, and more importantly we won 12 of 16 events. This is supposed to be a relatively down year compared to our last three since we've lost a lot of elite talent to graduation and swimmers going pro. Next year the incoming recruiting class includes a likely 2020 gold medalist in Regan Smith among others. If we are able to win the championship this year and keep the streak going, then who knows when it might end.

RE: WSwim upsets cal - M T - 02-16-2020

(02-16-2020, 05:09 AM)Hulk01 Wrote: Not following the sport so far this year, though I recognize many of the young names.
But how can such a slaughter be an upset?
Expressed better, perhaps, how could devotees of the sport not see this coming?

Thanks for clarifying this for me.

I believe ranking is based on how the team is expected to do at Nationals. One such prediction (without diving considered) is at SwimCloud. (Click on the small bar graph icon at the far right by each team to see the projected swimmers to go to the meet. Scroll down to the individual swimmers and click on their name to see much more detail. Click on the events on the right to see the best times this year per event.) At Stanford's site, you can see the team's best times so far. (I note that SwimCloud predicts that Stanford is the only team to max out (IIRC, 15) on the number of swimmers to be invited. There are also divers. Again, Stanford may have to leave a swimmer or diver at home.)

The way scoring works, and the swims that will score, and when swimmers peak, different teams could be each dominant in a dual meet, the conference championship, or the national championship. A team with a broad base of good swimmers could get a boost in a dual meet from the lower place finishes that won't get points at the conference level. Similarly, a team with a number of really good swimmers could get a boost from lower place finishes at a conference meet, when those swims aren't good enough to score at the NCAAs.

The other big factor is where the various swimmers peak. For top swimmers at somewhere like Stanford, most dual meets are just a chance to have a lighter load for a day and to work on speed (vs endurance) and maybe to try different race strategies. Good swimmers may swim events that aren't their best. The women's conference championships are week after next (Feb 26-29). Swimmers that won't be swimming at nationals will be peaking for that meet and so are in their taper. The NCAAs are nearly 3 weeks later (Mar 18-21). The swimmers aiming for that might be just starting their taper. The performances of swimmers that peaked for a conference championship would clearly have fallen off 3 weeks later. (Note, it has been decades since I've kept up with taper strategies. They may have changed.)

Further, there is a difference in events. This dual meet had 16 events. Last year's NCAAs had 21. Additional events are the 800 Free Relay, 400 Medley Relay, 400 Free Relay, 400 IM, Platform diving (1650 Free rather than 1000 Free)

For instance, Stanford won 33 straight PAC-12 men's swimming & diving championships from 1980-2012 but in 1980, 2011, 2012 Cal won the NCAA's and Stanford wasn't even the runner up. I certainly had the feeling that at the end of that streak, Stanford was peaking for the PAC-12 championships while Cal was swimming through them and peaking for NCAA.

Still, when I looked at this particular dual meet, I wonder where Cal's points will come from at NCAAs. Obviously they have a great swimmer in Abbey Weitzeil that will do well (if not win) the 50, 100, 200 free and help the four relays. Other than Weitzeil's 50 & 100 (she didn't swim the 200), the only events that Cal won were the 200 Free Relay and the 100 Fly. Weitzeil almost caught Stanford in the 200 Medley Relay (Stanford won by 0.08, swimming an amazing 21.05, 1.29 seconds faster (!!! on a 50) than Stanford's swimmer.

(By the way, this Wikipedia page on PAC-12 championships is missing many sports, if someone wants to help it along.)

RE: WSwim upsets cal - BostonCard - 02-20-2020

[tweet]https://twitter.com/stanfordwswim/status/1230239666260938752?s=20[/tweet]

We're #1!

BC

RE: WSwim upsets cal - M T - 02-21-2020

(02-16-2020, 12:22 PM)M T Wrote: I believe ranking is based on how the team is expected to do at Nationals. One such prediction (without diving considered) is at SwimCloud. [has Stanford #5 at nationals] ...

I was wrong. The CSCAA ranking at NCAA.com is based on dual meet performance. See CSCAA

The predictions seem quite confusing.
Back in December, SwimSwam gave Cal a slight edge over Stanford in their power ratings. But if you look at the Swimulator (based on current to-date times), Stanford is ranked 7th per top-times, but just edged out of first (by NC State) per average times. Swimcloud (above) still shows Stanford as #5.

Conference championships across the country are happening now, so swimmers' top times are going to improve during this 2 weeks. When all the dust settles and we see which events will be swum by which swimmers, it will become clearer. But it is clear now that no team is overwhelming dominant. One might run away with Nationals but I don't think it is quite yet clear.