Texas and Georgia NCAA Swimmers Fight to Finish in Top Four

Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

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By David Rieder.

With only one session remaining at the women’s NCAA championships, there’s really not a whole lot left to be determined in the team race. Stanford, despite a rough go of it in the 200 back where neither Janet Hu or Ally Howe made the A-final, has the team title locked up, and Cal is securely in second.

The Texas A&M Aggies entered the day with a 39-point lead over Georgia for third and only extended that lead in prelims, placing four swimmers plus a relay in A-finals and finishing as the biggest over-achiever of the session. If all seeds hold in finals, the Aggies will out-score their psych sheet projections by some 31 points.

Want some team drama? Check out fourth and fifth place, which will come down to the Georgia Bulldogs and Texas Longhorns. Yes, Carol Capitani will have to get by her old squad and her mentor, Jack Bauerle, to take home one of the trophies awarded to the top four teams.

Texas beat Georgia in a dual meet earlier this season, snapping a 103-meet home winning streak, and now the championship rematch has come down to the wire. Texas was actually projected in fourth coming into the day and held serve throughout much of the morning, putting four swimmers into championship finals and two in the consols, while Georgia went two up and three down.

But things changed a bit in the final event of the session, as Georgia picked up the top seed in the women’s 400 free relay, setting up the Olivia Smoliga/Chantal Van Landeghem-led squad for a shot at ending the meet with a title, while Texas finished ninth, a quarter-second away from their shot at A-final points.

Texas can’t move up in the relay, but neither can Georgia, and the Bulldogs also have the ninth and tenth seeds in the 200 fly, another case of little potential for improvement. If all were to hold, Georgia would beat Texas, 258 to 245—but, surely, something will change.

Check out how all teams performed in the morning relative to their psych sheet seedings , courtesy of Price Fishback.

Team	Current Score	Day 4 Psych Sheet	Day 4 Prelims Seeds	+/-	New Projected Score
(1) Stanford	374.5	164	139	-25	513.5
(2) Cal	255	116	104	-12	359
(3) Texas A&M	209	64	+31	+31	304
(4) Georgia	170	69	88	+13	258
(5) Texas	168	71	77	+6	245
(6) Louisville	141.5	56	51	-5	192.5
(7) NC State	117	57	71	+14	188
(8) USC	117	100	64	-36	181
(9) Michigan	111	54	66	+12	177
(10) Minn.	134	33	41	+8	175
(11) Indiana	125	45	32	-13	157
(12) Virginia	88	59	62	+3	150
(13) Missouri	116	5	12	-7	128
(14) Kentucky	61	22	48	+26	109
(15) Wisc.	59	47	44	-3	103

The Bulldogs and Longhorns should finish some 50 points ahead of sixth place, where there’s a tight bunch between Louisville, NC State, USC, Michigan and Minnesota. However, the above chart does not reflect Brooke Zeiger scratching the 1650, so the Golden Gophers figure to move down.

Louisville has been a consistent improver this week—mostly thanks to Mallory Comerford—while NC State has bounced back nicely from a rough start to the meet in the 800 free relay and 50 free. But the USC Trojans continued to struggle, underperforming by 36 points in prelims, and that team has fallen from a projected third-place finish at the start of the meet to an eighth-place projection now.

In the 11-15 range, Indiana could recoup some of those lost points in the final if Lilly King moves up from her fourth seed in the 200 breast, and Minnesota is definitely vulnerable after Zeiger’s scratch. Wisconsin, however, might have enough to hold off Arizona for 15th, even with Cierra Runge joining Zeiger as a scratch from the 1650.

Kentucky put up a dynamite three up-one down morning, positioning the Wildcats for a 14th-place finish at meet’s end. Of course, all of those individual finalists came in the 200 back, where Asia Seidt, Danielle Galyer and Ali Galyer made it into the top heat, and Bridgette Alexander will swim in the consols.

Check out a full list of ups and downs below.

Ups/downs in individual events:
Cal 4/4
Texas 4/2
Texas A&M 4/2
Stanford 3/2
Kentucky 3/1
Georgia 2/3
Indiana 2/1
NC State 2/1
Virginia 2/1
Louisville 2/0
Michigan 1/2
USC 1/2
Minnesota 1/1
UMBC 1/0
Missouri 0/3
UNC 0/2
ASU 0/1
Auburn 0/1
Denver 0/1
UCLA 0/1
VT 0/1

Ups/downs in 400 free relay:
A-final: Georgia, Stanford, USC, NC State, Cal, Texas A&M, Louisville, Wisconsin
B-final: Texas, Michigan, UNC, Auburn, Virginia, Arizona, Tennessee, UCLA

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