Cal finally overtook Stanford, by 50 points, and on Saturday they will look to finish off their second-straight Pac 12 men’s championships.
Cal starts the day off big with the top two seeds coming into the meet in the 200 back (Jacob Pebley and Ryan Murphy), but again Stanford has an opportunity and enough swimmers to out-place their seeds and still take this meet – it’s far from a done deal. If David Nolan were to win the 200 back, that would go a long way, and the Cardinal have a chance to make up big points on Cal in the mile if Justin Buck and Drew Cosgarea can move up.
Also watch the men’s 100 free. USC’s Cristian Quintero has been unstoppable at this meet, but Utah’s Nick Soedel is hungry after having been DQ’ed in the prelims of the 100 free for each of the last two years for a false start.
Refresh the page often, as we’ll be recapping the races as they happen.
Day 3 finals recap, including current team scores, can be seen here.
PAC-12 MEN
- Dates: Wednesday, March 5th – Saturday, March 8th; Prelims 11AM/Finals 6PM (Diving February 26th-March 1st with women’s Pac-12s)
- Location: Federal Way, WA (Pacific Time Zone)
- Defending Champion: California (results)
- Live Results: Available
- Championship Central
200 Backstroke
Jacob Pebley takes the top seed for tonight over Stanford’s David Nolan. Pebely was out a bit more aggressive than Nolan, as he was 49.4 at the 100 split versus Nolan’s 50.1. You know Nolan has more in the tank tonight as his last 50 split was 24.8, .4 better than anyone else in the field.
Pebley finished at 1:41.35. Nolan was at 1:41.49.
Cal finds a way to fit two more into the A final with freshmen Ryan Murphy at third and Sven Campbell in seventh. Nolan is only joined by Will Gunderson in fifth.
USC’s Chase Bloch had a solid morning swim to earn a berth into the championship final, cutting over a second off his seed time to finish at 1:42.61 for fourth. Arizona’s Ellis Miller is sixth and Utah gets in there for eighth with Kristian Kron to round out the finalists.
Cal – 3 big/0 little
Stanford – 2 big/1 little
USC – 1 big/2 little
Arizona – 1 big/3 little
Utah – 1 big/0 little
ASU – 0 big/1 little
UCSB – 0 big/1 little
100 Freestyle
Nick Soedel has finally put it together in the 100 freestyle. After two years of false starts, Soedel was clean this morning to take the top seed in 41.97 for Utah.
Cal and USC each put three swimmers each in the top eight this morning. Cal went two, three and five with Tyler Messerschmidt, 42.44, Seth Stubblefield, 42.67, and Fabio Gimondi, 42.95. USC, who is the defending NCAA champion in the 400 freestyle relay, has Cristian Quintero, 42.85, Dimitri Colupaev, 43.25, and Santo Condorelli, 43.39 in at fourth, sixth and seventh.
Arizona fills out the heat with Brian Stevens. This is a big point swing for Cal here, with three up and Stanford with zero, this is where the Bears can make the push tonight.
Arizona’s Brad Tandy, who leads the nation in the 50 freestyle, is 12th after this morning at 43.73.
Cal – 3 big/0 little
Stanford – 0 big/1 little
USC – 3 big/2 little
Utah – 1 big/1 little
Arizona – 1 big/2 little
UCSB – 0 big/2 little
200 Breaststroke
Kevin Cordes always makes it looks easy. He finished his morning swim in 1:52.37, which is now the new PAC-12 Meet Record. He broke Gary Marshall’s 2005 record time of 1:52.71. Cordes was out in 54.68, then on the back end split 28.3, 29.3 – the fastest two in the field.
Cordes’ teammate Sam Rowan is fifth.
Cal’s Josh Prenot stands second after a 1:55.48 swim tonight. His teammate Ryan Studebaker had a very impressive swim this morning. He was seeded at 2:00.10, but shaved all the way down to 1:55.91 this morning. That should make the meet later this month, plus it sits him fourth overall this morning.
USC’s Morten Klarskov had a big swim himself, cutting nearly two seconds off his seed to finish at 1:55.87, good for the third seed tonight. His teammate Steven Stumph also cut a fractional amount of time to finish sixth this morning.
Stanford found two into the final with Max Williamson and Mason Shaw. Those two were critical to balance out Cal here, and somehow fight back after a disappointing 100 freestyle preliminaries.
Cal’s Chuck Katis, who looked very good in the 100 breast earlier in the meet, was a 1:56.87 which left him in the B-final by just .02 seconds.
Cal – 2 big/1 little
Stanford – 2 big/1 little
USC – 2 big/3 little
Arizona – 2 big/2 little
UCSB – 0 big/1 little
Stanford and Cal each put up three A finalists in this event. Cal graduated Tom Shields, and now the event is wide open for the taking, and there is a lot of young blood out there in the field. Cal plans to keep it in the family, as Will Hamilton cut three seconds from his seed to finish first at 1:43.70.
Tom Kremer of Stanford is right behind him at 1:44.70, just about a second drop from his seed time. Marcin Tarczynski and Long Gutierrez are nipping at his heels finishing third and fourth for the Cal efforts this morning. That was a two second drop for Gutierrez.
Stanford’s supporting crew came in at seventh and eighth this morning with Gray Umbach and Jimmy Yoder. The two of them had great swims; Umbach with a three second drop and Yoder at four.
Filling out the heat includes Cary Wright from USC and Arizona State’s Alex Coci. Wright time trialed this event on Thursday, and finished at 1:43.48, which would have put him up as the top seed. He was 1:44.52 this morning, so if he can swim like he did on Thursday, he’s got a shot to take this event as well.
Cal – 3 big/1 little
Stanford – 3 big/1 little
USC – 1 big/2 little
ASU – 1 big/1 little
UCSB – 0 big/1 little
Arizona – 0 big/2 little
1650 Freestyle
This is event will go on this afternoon as a timed final event. The top eight will compete at finals tonight.
Thanks CalBearFan…..I should have known about diving. As usual, the NCAA’s are gong to be exciting with breakthroughs and disappointments. Cal winning both Men and Women PAC12 is great. Hope they do not plateau in the “Big Ones” later this month!
Hope this is not a repeat post for me on my second try. I am very pleased with Cal’s performances to date. What I do not understand is WHEN are the diving points (mostly all Stanford’s) included in the point totals. I read somewhere that one diving session was a week ago. So how many more points will Stanford get in diving on Saturday?
All of the men’s diving took place last week during the women’s meet. Swimswam has reported the score to include all of the diving up front. Sites like HyTek results and Meet Mobile add the diving scores in when they take place in the actual order of events. So, using swimswams score, Cal has a 50 point edge heading into tonight with all diving accounted for. There will be no more added. Make sense?
pretty weak conference today in the 200 breast, fly and 1650. they need to step it up tonight! not sure Stanford’s relay tonight will beat 2013 Bolles free relay?
It’s deceptive. Pacs is easily the conference that takes the least rest and plays the most games heading into March. Zona is too cool for school here, and will be pretty strong in a few weeks(with killer relays and high-end guys), USC is similar but able to swim fast tired due to Salo’s skills, although I expected way more out of some you get guys on that squad. Cal is pulling their weight this year, as usual, while tired. Stanford is making the meet look slow, compared to normal, because of their change in plans since two years ago. Traditionally, Stanford would roll with a huge day 3 lineup. Every event would be solid with the 1650 stacked, I mean… Read more »
*young
Stumph is really confusing at this meet – 26.0 relay split at the start and then 26.0 flat start starting a 200, to a solid time as well. Wonder if he was getting over sickness
So looks like 12/3 for the Bears and 10/5 for the Cardinal? And Cal seeded 1st in the relay, Stanford 6th. Looks like they’ve got it if all goes according to plan.
liquid assets – I assume you’re including 1650 seeds there? We’ve got 11/2 and 7/4 without the 1650.
Without the mile Cal has 4 more up swims than Stanford going into tonight, not to mention a 50 point lead…. So how exactly is Stanford going to overcome a 50 point deficit with 4 less up swimmers and take the meet?
Stanfurd were you referring to my comment? If so, it looks like I worded it ambiguously unintentionally, i.e. Stanford was the last team mentioned in the previous sentence. What I meant to convey was that it looks like Cal’s got it, not Stanford.
Yeah I was including the 1650, although I did forget about Hinshaw so that will be one more for Cal.
I like his new screen name. Can’t count the 1650 up/downs yet, unless we are making educated guesses, in which case I’d give Cal 13/3(depends on if burns is a scorer, which I’m too lazy to check until I get home), and Stan 9/6. Plus the whole relay thang, where a 2:55+ is a possibility for the Cardinal. Gonna hope for their sake they can set the order correctly, because there is one big-gun that can go 42.0 with a rolling start, but shouldn’t be led off when he is swimming flat as he is. Let the others try to catch a ride on someone’s hip and let the anchor get some momentum, and you’re looking at 2:53-2:54. We’ll see… Read more »
Whose new screen name? I’ve been liquidassets for years, although I was thinking of doing a Cal-related name temporarily for NCAAs.
By the way, I just noticed, that was a 5.5 second drop from seed time for Cal freshman Campbell in the 2Back!
Oh, I just saw the typo for “liquidasses” lol! My boyfriend just pointed it out to me! I can’t believe it was an autocorrect so that one’s all on me! sorry about that 😉
Just being a ‘hard asset’ over here, or a ‘dumb asset.’ And I was about to apologize as well for ass(et)uming you were a guy, which, upon typing this, I realize that your ‘boyfriend’ comment still doesn’t clear up. Man I’m on an offensive roll here 😉
Sven was roughly as fast, maybe 1:44, last year. Tough to get those 200s stroke going on the last day of the meet. Perhaps he should have time-trailed it day 0, but I don’t know the restrictions on such a move.
2:55+? I know Stanford didn’t put anyone up in the 100 free today, but come on. Kremer is certainly capable of a 42 low (like he did yesterday), we know Hallowell has been 43.6 last year, and between Stephens and Black, would 43 mids with rolling starts even be a stretch? Putting Black first, I’m predicting 43.7, 43.5, 43.3, 42.2, adding up to a 2:52.8.
Ok. Was trying to help. *shrugs*
This is starting to piss me off. Cal with 3(would have been 4 w/Tyrell) up and Stanford with 2 down in 1650. The only time I am way off about swimming is in my optimistic defense of Stanford. Damn, I guess I never really took off those cardinal-colored glasses I was raised wearing.
Someone convince me Stanford has a chance at top 8 in relays in anything other than the 800 FR at NCAA’s.
Did Cal’s Katis swim the 200 breast?
He did – 9th place overall in 1:56.87, so he’ll lead the B final barring any scratches.
Go Bears!!!