Both teams start this week. Men travel to Austin on Friday, Women head to Fayetteville for a Saturday meet. The men have 10 meets on their schedule before SEC's this year, up significantly from last year's slate.

Thoughts? Season predictions? Anyone planning to attend either meet?

The mens team is ridiculously young with 13 freshmen and RS freshmen. I have no idea where they will be this year in the SECs. For now I am not thinking about NCAAs at all. We were awful at NCAAs last year. It seems the team is going back a bit to its focus on sprints and relays. McLiney is back and he headlines the divers, who are otherwise unproven. One diver signee (Bedggood) is not on the roster.

The womens team had huge losses, but has some great talent coming in. We may still be the best breaststroke team in the NCAA. I will make an unscientific guess that we are in the hunt for the SEC title. Diving is a weakness. I am hoping for a pleasant surprise in sprints from one of the new arrivals.

For the women, more question marks than at any time since the 2010-11 season. That's not necessarily a bad thing though. Simply a ton of new faces. Having attended the pentathlon, look for Sarah Henry to have a big year. For someone that doesn't specialize in shorter distances, she looked quite impressive. Beryl and a few of the other freshman looked solid as well. We'll know a lot more after the first few dual meets and the invite (hard to believe it's only about a month away).

I have no idea what to expect out of the men. They lost a lot and are very young. May be somewhat of a rebuilding year for them. Glad they reeled in some breaststrokers though. Hope McLiney can take his SEC success to NCAA's this year.

Based on many previous classes heavy with freshmen - we won't see meaningful results for a while. Lots of newcomers swim slow for months while adjusting to the college regimen. I get worried when a newcomer swims really fast early - they might not continue to develop or have the speed we need when the championships come.

LOB - what happened to the male diver signed but not on the roster?

I would hazard a guess that the only reason someone we signed didn't make it over would be for either personal reasons or academic ones.

I was at the meet in Austin - watched through the 1M diving.

The meet was much worse for the Ags than the score reported. The scoring was very charitable. They "gave" the Ags the win in several events when the results show the horns would have finished 1-2 or 1-2-3 if they let actual times drive the results. This happens all the time of course in dual meets. The real score though would probably have been more like 195-70. Texas actually won all 15 events.

That doesn't mean there weren't some good swims by the Ags. Bolleter's 2nd in the 50 free was very good. He beat John Murray. Bolleter is an amazingly relaxed looking sprinter. Gonzalo Carazo's 200 IM was very solid. He is 17 years old and swam a 1:52. I didn't see Castillo's 200 breast - but his time was very good - and he didn't swim the 100 breast.

Texas looks like a top 3 team. Their divers, even without Hixon, are strong (McLiney didn't compete for the Ags - I heard injured). Texas' Brett Ringgold, a freshman, opened their 400 free relay with a 43.9. Beat Bolleter by 3 secs.

It is too early to say if the chasm between Texas and A&M is really this big right now. Too many of our swimmers are new, and we don't know how they will swim at the season end. Texas is just fast and deep everywhere.

Strong start for the women. NO live stream or live results, so just basing things off the twitter feed. Arkansas obviously isn't at their level depth wise but they have some SEC finalist quality (Mayfield, Daniels, Drolc, White among them) at the top of their lineup so a sweep of events was no guarantee. Solid debut for the freshmen group, a lot of good swims all around.

Also, just a quick review of last year's diving results shows Madison Hudkins didn't break the 300 point mark on 1m until the SEC meet. Her early performance bodes well for the rest of the season.

Looking at the women's times.....there were some very solid early season swims. Gastaldello's 100 back was impressive. Bosma's 50 was fast this early. Bratton's 50 back split was fastest in the field. Maybe she wants that A relay spot. Looks like Gelat is still looking for the speed she had this spring.