By Madeline Folsom on SwimSwam
With the summer international season mostly wrapping up, we are starting to shift our focus to the 2026-2027 NCAA Swimming and Diving season.
When it comes to predicting NCAA finishes for this year, one of the major components is the number of points each team will return from the 2026 NCAA Championships. While these numbers don’t tell the whole story, they give us a good starting point for predictions before the season begins.
The University of Virginia women picked up their 6th straight NCAA title in 2026, and that streak doesn’t seem likely to come to a close this year with the women returning the most points from the 2026 NCAA Championships before factoring in their additional points from transfers.
A few important notes before we get started:
This data comes directly from our 2026 NCAA Championship box score article courtesy of Andrew Mering. Class and returning scoring comes from an athlete’s listed official class in the NCAA results, which means there might be a few hiccups from swimmers who have a redshirt year, but were categorized as seniors. If you notice any feel free to let us know in the comments. We have gone in and removed “returning” points from teams who lost athletes to transfers. We have not added those points to their new school’s total. We did our best to account for all transfers, but might have missed some. For example, Teagan O’Dell was the biggest name transfer from the 2026 season. She scored 46 points at the NCAA Championships for Cal. That number has been removed from Cal’s total, but it was not added to Virginia’s. The NCAA and local/federal courts are currently battling over 5th year eligibility for the 2026-2027 season for athletes who graduated high school in 2022. For the purposes of this article, we are not including them in the returning points.The first thing we like to look at is the total scoring by each class at the 2026 NCAA Championships.
As usual, the seniors were the highest scoring class, bringing in 700.5 of the total 2,480 points or 28.25%. The sophomores were the next highest scoring class, bringing in 673.5 points, or 27.16% of the total points scored.
With most 5th years graduating following the 2025 season, there were only 21 points scored by 5th years at the 2026 Championships, less than one percent (0.85%) of the total. The freshmen, predictably, had the lowest score of the four primary classes, bringing in 498 points for 20.08% of the total.
Points Scored By Class
Class Total Percent Freshmen 498 20.08% Sophomores 673.5 27.16% Juniors 587 23.67% Seniors 700.5 28.25% 5th Years 21 0.85%When looking at the graduating points data, there are a few top-five teams who are returning 100% of their points from the 2026 Championships including 3rd place finishers Texas and 5th place finishers Tennessee.
Of the top five teams, the runner-up Stanford Cardinal have the lowest returning percentage in the top 5 with only 31% of their 235.5 individual points returning after they lost a few big names including Torri Huske.
While percentages tell part of the story, the actual point totals are far more telling. While Virginia is only returning 77% of their individual points from the 2026 meet, that number comes out to 301 total points, 65 more than Texas, who is returning the next most points with 234.5.
Despite losing O’Dell, Cal returns the 4th most points of any team with 127 total, and the addition of Rylee Erisman will be huge for their relays and point totals as they look to improve their 4th place finish from 2026. Indiana returns 92% of their total points and adds transfer Anita Bottazzo to their roster for this year and could move into a top-five spot. Stanford is the only team in the top 10 that isn’t returning at least half of their points this season. The next lowest percentage team is Louisville at 65.9%. They finished 8th in 2026 and sit in 9th for the returning points rankings. After head coach Chase Kreitler resigned from the program, Pitt’s only returning point scorer Sydney Gring transferred to NC State and the Panthers will return zero individual points for the 2027 NCAA championshipsReturning Points
Returning Points Rank Team Total Individual Points 2026 Returning Points Percentage of Individual Points Returning 1 UVA 389 301 77.38% 2 Texas 234.5 234.5 100.00% 3 Tennessee 167.5 167.5 100.00% 4 California 187 127 67.91% 5 Indiana 128 118 92.19% 6 Michigan 152 102 67.11% 7 NC State 98.5 87.5 88.83% 8 Stanford 235.5 74.5 31.63% 9 Louisville 108.5 71.5 65.90% 10 Florida 89.5 61 68.16% 11 Ohio State 61 48 78.69% 12 Wisconsin 40.5 40.5 100.00% 13 Georgia 39 36 92.31% 14 Minnesota 55 34 61.82% 15 UNC 27 27 100.00% 16 Kansas 25 25 100.00% 17 Arkansas 23.5 23.5 100.00% 18 USC 26 15 57.69% 19 Alabama 32.5 14.5 44.62% 20 Auburn 11 11 100.00% 21 Purdue 35 9 25.71% 21 Akron 9 9 100.00% 21 Nevada 9 9 100.00% 24 ND 7 7 100.00% 25 Nebraska 24 6 25.00% 26 Texas A&M 9.5 3 31.58% 26 Rutgers 4 3 75.00% 28 Indiana State 2 2 100.00% 28 Princeton 2 2 100.00% 30 Washington St. 3 1 33.33% 31 PITT 41 0 0.00% 31 Miami (FL) 48 0 0.00% 31 South Carolina 37 0 0.00% 31 UCLA 35 0 0.00% 31 LSU 5 0 0.00% 31 Duke 25 0 0.00% 31 Arizona 5 0 0.00% 31 Florida St 16 0 0.00% 31 Cincinnati 11 0 0.00% 31 Penn 6 0 0.00% 31 VT 6 0 0.00% 31 SIU 4 0 0.00% 31 Fresno State 2 0 0.00% 31 East Carolina 2 0 0.00% 31 UCSD 1 0 0.00% 31 North Texas 1 0 0.00%Read the full story on SwimSwam: Virginia Women Primed For 7th NCAA Title With Most Returning Points From 2026
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