Conference Championship Overview - Men's Events

• Here are the performances at conference championships, ranked by aggregate SRS, for all swimmers who totaled four or more SRS points.

• We included prelim and final swims. As far as we are concerned, if your prelim swim was so fast that it racked up SRS points, it should go into your total.

• These numbers do not include relays. As such, athletes who played a critical role in relays are probably undervalued.

The gap in total SRS separating Chicago’s Cooper Costello and Carnegie Mellon’s Brayden Morford is just 0.22 SRS points—between two swimmers who together amassed more than 30 SRS points this weekend. The 0.7% difference falls in Mr. Costello’s favor, so if there were such a thing as a Conference Championship Weekend MVP award, we’d give it to him. Both Mr. Costello and Mr. Morford were brilliant, and we can expect another showdown at nationals.

The next big story is Denison. Follow the link for more on Big Red—the post went up before Saturday’s finals. They went on to break even more records that night.

NCAC, Saturday, men's events

• Event 31 Men 100 Yard IM, Patrick Daly - conference record, pool record, team record

• Event 37 Men 200 Yard Breaststroke, Elijah Venos - conference record, pool record

• Event 42 Men 400 Yard Freestyle Relay - pool record, team record

You get the idea. No men’s team has more athletes with 4+ SRS points from this weekend than Denison (nine athletes total). And no men’s team has more athletes with at least one SRS point from these meets—22 athletes, with the next closest team, Emory, at 18. What else is there to say? There is no guarantee they will win nationals; the only certainty is that if they don’t, it will be an upset.

The closest team to them, of course, is Emory—and they are actually within striking distance. Emory has eight athletes with 4+ SRS points this weekend, compared to Denison’s nine. This is especially relevant because Emory is without Crow Thorsen, one of the very best swimmers in Division III. A season-long SRS total would account for Crow Thorsen’s swims, which are no longer available to the Eagles. Since these numbers are drawn solely from the past week, they more accurately reflect how well Emory is swimming right now—and the results are impressive.

Still, when you move beyond the head count and look at aggregate SRS points, well, you get this::

That’s a healthier lead for Denison. Keep in mind these totals do not include relays, which makes Washington & Lee’s ranking all the more impressive. W&L has the fourth-ranked 800 Free Relay in Division III and the eighth-ranked 400 Free Relay.

Rowan also boasts outstanding relay teams, including the sixth-ranked 800 Free Relay in DIII. And again, that isn’t even factored into their Team Total SRS from this weekend. As a state school from New Jersey, they aren’t alone on the table—perennial contender TCNJ seems to have absorbed the loss of TCNJ GOAT James McChesney at the end of last season. TCNJ remains a force to be reckoned with.

From a conference perspective, three conferences account for nine of the top ten teams, with the only exception being W&L from the Old Dominion. Otherwise, as usual, the UAAs remain the strongest conference in men’s Division III swimming, with five of the top ten teams from this past weekend. They are followed by the NCAC and the NJAC.

What was the single greatest swim from last weekend?

That honor belongs to Djordje Dragojlovic of Kenyon, who swam the 100 Free in 43.14. It took me longer than that to type this sentence.

By the way, another reason we lean toward Cooper Costello for the (as yet nonexistent) Conference Championship Weekend MVP: he is the only athlete with two swims from this weekend ranked in the single-event SRS top five.

One last note—yes, all the usual teams are well represented among the top performances this weekend. But here is the full list of teams with athletes swimming fast enough to earn SRS points. It’s a nice long list, and for the moment, it’s making us slightly less bummed about the future of Division III swimming. (And when we extend this list to cover two weekends - for the NEWMAC, NESCAC men, and others - this list will continue to grow.)

• Baldwin-Wallace

• Berry

• Bridgewater

• Centre

• Colorado College

• DePauw

• Franklin

• Illinois Tech

• John Carroll

• Mary Washington

• Montclair State

• Oberlin

• Roanoke

• Rochester

• Roger Williams

• Rose-Hulman

• Salisbury

• Sewanee

• UC Santa Cruz

• USMMA

• Wabash

• Wilmington