June 25th, 2013

Grading the Grades - The Class of 2012

Each year CollegeSwimming.com evaluates the ranks of each team's recruiting classes. Classes are scrutinized closely and given lots of weight by those who rank high and written off by those who rank low. Whatever the case, predicting the success of 17-18 year old men and women as they head off to the wonderful, wacky world of a college campus is speculative at best. Most times, however, that's of little concern. In a short-attention-span society, recruiting classes are easily forgotten or at the very least displaced as people look towards the next recruiting class (or even the Classes of 2015 or 2016). Few of the most ardent football fan can't recall what their team's class was ranked on Rivals.com a year ago and even fewer are in a position to evaluate that class down the road.

That where swimming is different. The proof is in the points. So this year, in the name of some self-accountability and before posting our rankings for the Class of 2013, we take a look back at last year's recruiting classes. On the whole, we were pretty pleased with our efforts. We had some big whiffs, of course. In some cases we over-estimated the impact of kids. We also undervalued the impact of kids in certain conferences, and of course in some cases, big time prospects just haven't panned out (yet). What it the kid or was it the program? Even that is too simple.

We wanted to measure the impact of a freshman class on a team's performance at NCAA's and at their own conference meet. Here's how we did it:

NCAA Points - Teams were first ranked according to the number of NCAA (individual and relay) points scored. This hurt us in cases where we over-estimated large classes (like Princeton) and under-ranked small classes that scored (like Indiana).
Conference Points - With so much difference between conferences we weren't able to use straight-up points. Conference points were normalized to account for:
- Scoring procedures - . The Ivy League and the Pac-12 women, for instance, were adjusted from 24-place scoring to 16-places.
- Conference Depth and Number of Teams - Some conferences, even if they're "good" are just easier to score at. Take the Big XII meet, for instance. With just three programs, freshman classes in the Big XII are going to score more points freshman classes in say the eight-team MPSF.
- Individual Quality - Even after accounting for conference depth, we didn't neglect quality. At the conference level, Oakland's Mitchell Alters and Michigan's Anders Nielsen both scored equivalent point totals for their respective teams. There is, of course, far more difference between the two than the 65 miles that separates their campuses. Nielsen scored his times in the Big Ten, this year's best conference, while Alters did his in the Summit League, ranked fifteenth this season.

All that said, here's a look at the men's classes. In every case there are variables we aren't privy to (or willing to share). Consequently, we want to give all credit to teams that out-performed our prediction and take all the blame for those that we over-estimated.

Actual Rank	Predicted Class	Team	NCAA Points	Adj Conf Points	Verdict
1	1	Georgia	93.5	233	On Target - With seven of the top twenty including Chase Kalisz, Matias Koski, and Tynan Stewart scoring points at NCAA's this was an easy pick and they stay #1 despite Yousef Alaskari's struggles.
2	3	California	78.5	151	Slight Out-perform - Stockpiling talent in a way that could win Pac-12's. That's what we said then, but they were even better than that with Jacob Pebley and Josh Prenot 71 NCAA points.
3	8	Michigan	69.5	141	Slight Out-Perform - Dylan Bosch joined too late for our rankings. He pushed them up two spots in our retrospective rankings, but regardless, the rest of the group grew up fast.
4	2	Stanford	61	113	Over-estimated Slightly - Tom Kremer was the 4th leading NCAA scorer. Danny Thomson lived up to his billing while Gray Umbach was a relay scorers. Stanford's Relay DQ's wouldn't have affected their ranking since there weren't any freshman on the DQ's.
5	12	Florida	33.5	134	Underestimated - We should know better, but Missing Pawel Werner hurt our ranking. He sure helped the Gator relays though.
6	7	Texas	31	89	On Target - Off by one, but we'll take it. Imri Ganiel not swimming hurt our rankings, but not the UT relays - not with Dax Hill's breaststroke or John Murray's emergence.
7	4	Southern California	27	57	Over-Estimated - We were counting on Morten Klarskov a bit more. Ted Singley is still a NCAA guy in our book, but not having Swanston, or Abramyan on the Pac-12 team hurt.
8	21	Tennessee	23	66	Way Off - We didn't have Aberg Ledjstrom on our list, but thankfully the Vols did. The class wasn't big on SEC points, but considering the transition, the Vols win.
9	19	Auburn	15	87	Way Off - Jordan Jones wasn't a NCAA scorer like we thought he'd be, but he will be. Arthur Mendes came on too late for our rankings.
10	11	Virginia	11	151	On Target - Performed as predicted which means a lot better than the previous class.
11	25	North Carolina State	10.5	99	Out-Performed - We missed foreigner Simonas Bilis, completely, but Christian McCurdy had a breakthrough year.
12	NR	UNLV	5	110.25	Complete Whiff - Six conference scorers got UNLV on this list, but getting their relay to score moved them up to the 12th-best class overall.
13	14	Virginia Tech	3	62	On Target - Joseph Bonk and Michal Szuba make NCAA's, and Hokies follow with a potentially better class.
14	24	Indiana	1.5	29	Out-Performed - We stand by our choice. Only Tanner Kurz scored at Big Ten's and NCAA's, but if we're going to be consistent using NCAA points first, we got be consistent, so we're off by ten.
15	NR	South Carolina	1	17	Out Performed - Same as Indiana
16	5	Princeton	0	244.5	SWING . . . and a miss - This was an optimistic pick on our part. We valued the depth of their class more than we should have, but one of those breaststrokers should have scored at the big meet..
17	NR	West Virginia	0	168.5	Complete Whiff - We missed completely. Their frosh actually scored better than this, but scores were devalued because of a thin Big XII.
18	6	Harvard	0	163.5	SWING . . . and a miss - See Princeton above. They made a big impact at the conference level, but zero NCAA points drop them.
19	9	North Carolina	0	138	Big Over-Estimation - We overestimated them by a lot - but the fact that they had eight ACC scorers bodes well.
20	NR	Brigham Young	0	132	Complete Whiff - Sorensen, Palmer, Jenkins are major MPSF scorers.
21	NR	Oakland	0	123.5	Draw - Oakland, WKU, W&M, ECU and Dartmouth all came out well based on their conference point totals. Would have been tough for us to predict with that level of certainty, but kudos to them for great freshman classes that made a real impact on their team.
22	NR	Western Kentucky	0	119.25
23	NR	William & Mary	0	114
24	NR	East Carolina	0	111.25
25	NR	Dartmouth	0	108

The Rest of Our Top-25 (i.e. teams we over-estimated)
26	25	Yale	Off by one, we'll take that.
36	20	Louisville	We over-estimated the men and under-estimated the women.
38	13	Navy	Turned out to be a good Conference Team for the Midshipmen, but we over-ranked them.
72	25	Notre Dame	They had their best NCAA's ever so I doubt they mind. Bogac Ayhan got some valuable NCAA experience.
77	10	Wisconsin	Freshmen John Bushman and Ryan O'Donnell didn't score at NCAA's, but how about that sophomore class?
83	15	Iowa	We were counting on David Ernstsson and Roman Trussov scoring at NCAA's. At least Ernstsson made the meet.
87	22	Louisiana State	We probably over-estimated the Alexander Linge's impact. We think Gabriel Rooker 's got more to prove still.
90	16	Northwestern	Grant Halsall and Van Donkersgoed didn't have the breakouts we were aiming for. Hopefully a good sophomore campaign.
99	23	Florida State	Over-estimated Derek Pridemore's impact. Robert Graves opting for the Air Force Academy didn't help.
102	18	Ohio State	Wow, were we off. We were counting on Josh Fleagle making NCAA's and Andrew Brower making Big 10's. Bet OSU was too.