Georgia Women and Auburn Men Still Top the Polls; Teams Show Little Movement in Top 25 Spots

PITTSBURGH, PA, February 10. THE College Swim Coaches Association of America (CSCAA) announced its most recent dual meet poll this week, with no changes in the teams on top, though the Men’s leader – Auburn – is not a unanimous pick this week, relinquishing one #1 vote this week to former leader Stanford.

The Georgia Bulldog women remain unanimous leaders.

The Georgia women and Auburn men have all but clinched the 2004-5 Dual Meet Poll titles as the best Division I college dual meet teams in the country. There is only one more poll left for the dual meet season—Feb. 21, 2005. The pollster will decide after that poll which teams will be crowned as the title of Dual Meet Champions for the 2004-5 season.

Tapers are well underway at this point in the season as literally the entirety of Division I Swimming and Diving prepares for the Conference Championships! It should be an exciting championship season. With some of the available slots already taken Division I swimmers and divers are poised for performance to help their team score points at the Conference Meet and possibly make it to the BIG MEET- the NCAA CHAMPIONSHIPS in March.

As of this last weekend, after automatic qualifiers there are only 211 women’s slots and 205 men’s slots left remaining to be filled for the “March Mania” NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships. Those numbers assume that all of the swimmers who have already achieved NCAA A-cut times will attend.

However, at this point in the season no diving slots have been filled for the meet. Divers must all qualify at Zone Qualifying Meets held on the same weekend across the country. Of the 211 slots left on the women’s side 41 women will dive in their respective Zone Qualifying Meets, March 10-12 and vie for an invitation to the NCAA Championships. For the men, there are 35 slots open for divers. They will also compete March 10-12 for those 35 slots and a shot at the Championships in March.

The CSCAA Dual Meet Poll is an indication of a team’s ability to win dual meets during the season and is not a predictor of any team’s end-of-the-season placement at the NCAA Championships– although for most of the ranked teams there is a high correlation between their dual meet strength and the school’s ability to score at the Championship meets in March.

There will be nine (9) dual meet polls this year produced every two to three weeks throughout the college swimming season, which is one of the NCAA’s longest continuous seasons of any of the NCAA sponsored sports. The swimming season begins in September and ends in late March for most of the NCAA schools that sponsor the sport.

This season’s NCAA Championships “March Mania”, college swimming’s version of “March Madness” will take place March 17-18-19, 2005 at Purdue University in Indiana for the women. The men’s championship will take place the following week March 24-25-26, 2005 at the University of Minnesota.

The College Swimming Coaches’ Association (CSCAA) has sponsored the dual meet poll for 20 plus years now. The CSCAA dual meet Champions will be crowned at the conclusion of the dual meet season in early March, 2005

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