The following story will refer to “ups,” “mids” and “downs.” For those unfamiliar with swimming terminology, “up” refers to a swimmer qualified for the A final (places 1-8), “mid” to a swimmer in the B final (places 9-16) and “down” to a swimmer in the C final (places 17-24).
Heading into the finals of day 3 at the 2015 Pac-12 Championships, the University of California continues to press its advantage, leading all teams with 15 A final swims and 23 total scoring swims lined up.
That includes a 200 free that saw Cal put 5 into the A final: all four members of the recent American record-breaking relay (Missy Franklin, Liz Pelton, Cierra Runge and Caroline Piehl), plus Camille Cheng, who actually split faster than Piehl from the team’s B relay.
Between that and a 4-up 100 fly, Cal is starting to distance itself from Bay Area rivals Stanford, though the Cardinal are still a clear-cut second with 10 up and 18 scoring swims. Stanford will have its own superstar to challenge Cal’s 200 free gauntlet in freshman Simone Manuel, easily the nation’s best freshman and arguably the NCAA’s best overall freestyler.
One team to watch tonight will be UCLA, which put 4 swimmers up and earned 19 scoring swims, second-most overall. That should help the Bruins make a move on Arizona for fourth place. UCLA’s best shot at an event title might be the 100 breast, where Allison Wine continued her strong swimming this week with a 59.46 for the seconds qualifying spot this morning.
One more interesting note: keep an eye on the 100 breast tonight, which is the only event in which all 9 Pac-12 programs have qualified a scoring swimmer.
Finals begin at 6PM Pacific Time tonight. Stay tuned to SwimSwam.com for live, event-by-event coverage of all of tonight’s action.
Team Scores After Day 2:
- California – 500
- Stanford – 388.5
- USC – 299
- Arizona – 268
- UCLA 227.5
- Utah – 212
- Washington State – 160
- Arizona State – 157
- Oregon State – 156
Day 3 Ups/Mids/Downs
(Note: this does not include 3-meter diving)
| Up | Mid | Down | |
| California | 15 | 5 | 3 |
| Stanford | 10 | 4 | 4 |
| USC | 6 | 5 | 6 |
| UCLA | 4 | 6 | 9 |
| Arizona | 2 | 7 | 2 |
| Arizona State | 2 | 6 | 5 |
| Utah | 1 | 6 | 3 |
| Oregon State | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Washington State | 0 | 0 | 7 |
It’s funny that Cal’s “only” weakness is listed as breaststroke. We are forgetting diving, which could be the difference between an NCAA title or not. Love CAL, but going to be a tight squeeze between Georgia. Florida has surprised me with their new additions, Hali Flickinger of Georgia is on fire – the staff is finally realizing she’s more versatile than a 200 butterfly which was no surprise, and Stanford will absolutely kill it in the relays and many individual races.
A – Cal isn’t a juggernaut in diving, put don’t forget that they have an A-finalist from NCAA’s on their team – Kahley Rowell. She was 5th on Platform last year.
Kahley graduated last year.