5 Women’s Teams That Really Hit Their Tapers at NCAAs

Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

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Hitting your taper as a team is what doing well at NCAAs is all about.

One of the keys to winning any swimming championship, or improving the stock of your program for future recruits, is being able to do better than your seeds and that’s done by having your entire team hit their taper.

While California is seen as the early favorite based on psych sheet scoring, there’s still plenty of swimming to be done to decide the final champion.

University of Arizona economist Price Fishback has taken a look back at the past five years to see which teams have had the biggest seeding moves at the NCAA Division I Women’s Championships.

1. 2010 Arizona

In one of the craziest meets in recent history, that included plenty of administrative disqualifications and an epic final-day comeback by Florida for the team win, the Arizona Wildcats moved up to fourth with 359.5 points. That was nearly 200 points better than the team’s seeds. Keyed by an NCAA title-winning 58.06 in the women’s 100-yard breaststroke from Annie Chandler (now Swimming World’s own Annie Grevers), the Wildcats had one its best team performances ever that did not end in a team title. In fact, Arizona has historically been one of the better positive movers in the past five years, regularly improving upon their seeded times.

2. 2010 Florida

Although the Gators were unable to beat their seeds by as much as the Wildcats did that year, head coach Gregg Troy still walked away with a surprising NCAA team title after moving up nearly 100 points from the Gators’ seeds to win with 382 points. Beating their seeds is exactly what it took from Florida as they pulled off an epic last-day effort to vault past Stanford (379.5) to win the team title by a mere 2.5 points. Looking at the numbers, of the 38 opportunities that Florida had to score points during the meet, 32 of them occurred in the championship finals with just six swims coming from consols.

3. 2012 Texas A&M

Head coach Steve Bultman’s Texas A&M Aggies had always been known as a pretty decent program, but had often toiled in the shadow of Texas in the Big 12 Conference. But, in the team’s final year in the Big 12 before moving on to the Southeastern Conference, it finished sixth overall with 262 points compared to a ninth-place effort by Texas (201). The Aggies moved up from their seeds by nearly 100 points, with Breeja Larson definitely providing the spark needed to light the Aggie fire. Larson set an American and NCAA record in the 100-yard breast with a 57.71, breaking a 2006 mark set by Tara Kirk.

4. 2015 Georgia

California may have sent Missy Franklin off into the professional-swimming sunset with a team title by way of 513 points, but a beleaguered Georgia Bulldog squad shook off all sorts of controversy to add more than 80 points from its seeds to finish second with 452 points. The squad had to overcome a regular-season ban to head coach Jack Bauerle for some technical violations regarding star Chase Kalisz’s academics. The Bulldogs pushed away all those issues and had one of the best team performances of any in 2015.

5. 2014 Stanford

Although Georgia was clearly the superior team, winning the meet with 528 points, the Stanford Cardinal under head coach Greg Meehan continued to remain in the national-title conversation with a second-place finish with 402.5 points. That’s more than 80 points better than its psych sheet seeds. Stanford, which had gone “all in” as an athletics department with everyone adopting the moniker of Nerd Nation, came out of nowhere to finish second. A team that had just eight returning point-scorers from an eighth-place finish, raced its way to four relay victories as well as picking up individual titles by way of Maya DiRado in the 200 and 400 IM as well as Felicia Lee in the 100 fly.

NCAA Division I Women's Championships Psych Sheet Scoring Differences

Here's how women's teams have historically done compared to their seeds in the past five years at the NCAA Division I Women's Championships. Special thanks to University of Arizona's Price Fishback for this wonderful contribution.

TEAM	Diff 2015	Diff 2014	Diff 2013	Diff 2012	Diff 2011	Diff 2010
Alabama	-8	-15		1	-7	0
Arkansas	-5	.	4	4	9	-17
Arizona State	15	8	12	56	24	17
Auburn	-1	18	-12	38	-9	-2
Arizona	37.5	0	94	29	88	183.5
California	8	72	47	74.5	98	95
Denver	18	10	-3		11
Duke		1			39	8
Florida Gulf Coast	19.5	13
Florida	-65	-32	-41	-16	17	98
Florida State	19	-8	-5			-5
Georgia	83	16	73	-12	71.5	-33.5
Illinois State	12	15
Indiana	3	-6	-8	11	-35.5	17
Iowa	5			9	13
Kansas	-7	1				12
Kentucky	45	11			10	9
Louisville	37	-10	7	-1	1	5
LSU	7	11	3	-41	-46	5
Michigan	-49	18	2	13	-18	37
Miami (Fla)	42	38	33	3	67
Minnesota	36	49.5	-51	18	62	2
Missouri	56	-20	28	-5	20	5
North Carolina	30.5	-32	59	-2	-39	-25
North Carolina State	16	12	2	12
Notre Dame	21	-5	16	20		-1
Ohio State	-1	0	-3	19	12	28
Oregion State	2	-2			.
Princeton		8	-5		.	5
Penn State	25	-3	-15	-31	-2	-10
Purdue	17	33	44	-11	18	32
San Diego State	-37	-26		3		5
SMU	3	18	2	-60	-4	13
Southern California	2	-6	9	68.5	45	53
South Carolina				33	0	-36
Stanford	53	83.5	8	52	29	-43.5
Texas A&M	11	-12	-47.5	98	-21	85
Tennessee	-5	49	57.5	2	-55	-23.5
Texas	65	40	50	43	-18	-104.5
UCLA	11	28	38	0	10	19.5
Virginia	-65	-73	-17	-2	-10	-67
Virginia Tech	20	27	11	35		-12
Wisconsin	-26	18	40	-24	26	-18

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