Write For California

Share this post

Cal Men's Swim claims team lead with two NCAA Titles and a dozen finalists on Day 3

writeforcalifornia.com

Cal Men's Swim claims team lead with two NCAA Titles and a dozen finalists on Day 3

A strong prelim session on Saturday can effectively seal the 7th team championship in program history

Ruey Yen
Mar 26, 2022
1
24
Share this post

Cal Men's Swim claims team lead with two NCAA Titles and a dozen finalists on Day 3

writeforcalifornia.com

California Golden Bears opened and closed Night 3 of the 2022 NCAA Men’s Swimming and Diving in style, with a pair of somewhat unexpected NCAA titles. By the end of 14 out of 21 event, Cal Bears can be found atop the team standings!

Team Standings through 14 events:

  1. Cal 320.5

  2. Texas 313

  3. Florida 272

  4. NC State 214

  5. Indiana 183

  6. Arizona State 167

  7. Stanford 159

  8. Georgia 150

If you come back to this post by around 9 AM PT on Saturday, it should be updated with all the results from the prelim session of Day 4 (Final day). By the psych sheet, Cal Bears should be able to get enough swimmers into Saturday night’s A and B Finals to essentially clinch (barring some disasterous DQ’s) the program’s 7th NCAA Team Title, as well as Cal Athletic’s 99th Team National Championships.

Below is what had happened on Friday, Day 3 for Cal to surge to the lead. All of the A-Finals with Cal swimmers are embedded with their YouTube videos. They are worth spending a few minutes to watch (or rewatch) to get the sense of just how much all of the competitors, including Cal Bears, wanted to perform well in this meet.

For those interested in the specific splits, you can also find the meet results here.

400y IM

Hugo Gonzalez is your fastest 400y IM swimmer in history!!!!

With a time of 3:32.88, Gonzalez beat the old record by more 0.5 seconds! I should note that the NCAA competitions done in Short Yard Courses are different from that of the Olympics in Long Meter Courses.

In his final year of eligibility, the 2x Spanish “Calympian” had finally lived up to the lofty expectation since he transfered to Cal from Auburn years ago.

Check out all of the top 400y IM times in history, three of them were set in the same swim above. One also find two other familiar names in “Calympians” Josh Prenot and Andrew Seliskar.

Twitter avatar for @SwimmingStats
Swimming Stats @SwimmingStats
During the third day of the 2022 Men’s NCAA Division I in Atlanta (short course yards), Cal’s Hugo González won the men’s 400 IM with a 3:32.88. He is the first swimmer to ever crack the 3:33 barrier.
Image
12:08 AM ∙ Mar 26, 2022
27Likes7Retweets

Of course, Hugo Gonzaelez put himself in a position to win this even with a great prelim swim. He laid down a new Cal record of 3:34.88 in the morning, to get the following reaction from his Cal training partner and US “Calympian” Tom Shields.

Twitter avatar for @beefyTshields
Tom Shields @beefyTshields
Sometimes you have to wait a long time to find redemption, proud of Hugo
Twitter avatar for @calmenswim
Cal Men's Swim & Dive @calmenswim
BOOM! Hugo Gonzalez breaks the Cal record in 400 IM qualifying - 3:34.88!! 🔥🔥 https://t.co/f0GHYEHXAe
5:41 PM ∙ Mar 25, 2022
76Likes1Retweet

While he ended up leading the race wire-to-wire, Hugo Gonzalez was only slightly ahead of Texas’ Carson Foster before turning up the jet in the 3rd breaststroke leg and kept it up through the final freestyle leg to win by a large margin. This was Gonzalez’s first NCAA title. He had come close back in 2021 with a 2nd place in 200y IM and a 3rd place in 200y Breast. On Thursday, Gonzalez touched the wall 5th in the 200y IM A-Final this year. He should be able to add another A-Final in Saturday’s 200y Breast.

Twitter avatar for @calmenswim
Cal Men's Swim & Dive @calmenswim
Hugo González, national champion! 🥇 @hglezoliveira x #GoBears 💻 » ESPN3
10:24 PM ∙ Mar 25, 2022
93Likes16Retweets

Gonzalez was joined in the A-Final with teammate Sean Grieshop. A 5th-year senior, Grieshop has not been as strong as he had been earlier in his collegiate career. It was great to see Grieshop making another A-Final after falling short of scoring in 500y Free. Grieshop could be a darkhorse to score points in Saturday’s 1650y Free (the swimming mile).

Twitter avatar for @calmenswim
Cal Men's Swim & Dive @calmenswim
Sean Grieshop with another All-American swim for the Bears. #NCAASwimDive #GoBears
Image
10:33 PM ∙ Mar 25, 2022

Winning the consolation final was another Cal Bear in Jason Louser. Louser was able to touch the wall first to minimize the Longhorns having three A-Finalists in this event.

Twitter avatar for @calmenswim
Cal Men's Swim & Dive @calmenswim
Jason Louser with PR effort a win in the B final! #NCAASwimDive #GoBears
Image
10:34 PM ∙ Mar 25, 2022

Cal’s strong evening swims turned what had looked like a big point differential going to Texas into a mere +2 point from event No.8. Texas placed 3rd (Carson Foster), 5th (Jake Foster), and 7th (David Johnston).

100y Fly

The B-Final was where the Cal Bears and Texas Longhorns raced in this event. One of Cal’s best butterfly swimmer, Trenton Julian (who will swim this leg in the NCAA winning 400y Medley Relay) has opted again to race in 200y Free where there are more Texas Longhorns.

Sophomore Dare Rose finished 5th (13th overall), one spot behind Texas’ Zac Van Zandt but three spot ahead of Alvin Jiang (who picked this event over 100y Back where he also qualified for the B-Final).

Twitter avatar for @calmenswim
Cal Men's Swim & Dive @calmenswim
Dare Rose moves up in the B final of the 100 fly and takes 13th overall. #NCAASwimDive #GoBears
Image
10:36 PM ∙ Mar 25, 2022

Stanford’s Andrei Minakov won his first NCAA title by posting a time of 43.71 over Georgia’s Luca Urlando (43.80).

200y Free

One might be somewhat surprised to realize that Texas won the team NCAA title last year without winning any individual nor relay races. Cal, in 2nd place, won 5 (3 by the graduated Ryan Hoffer as well as 2 relays).

That streak ended when Drew Kibler (1:30.28) bested a tight group of guys including Cal’s Trenton Julian (1:31.80) who finished 7th. Julian had finished 3rd in this event last year.

Twitter avatar for @calmenswim
Cal Men's Swim & Dive @calmenswim
Trenton Julian gets on the podium in the 200 free. #NCAASwimDive #GoBears
Image
10:46 PM ∙ Mar 25, 2022
16Likes2Retweets

In the consolation final, Swedish “Calympian” freshman Robin Hanson scored his first NCAA points with a 7th place (15th overall) in the B-Final. He was able to beat Texas’ freshman phenom Luke Hobson though.

Twitter avatar for @calmenswim
Cal Men's Swim & Dive @calmenswim
The freshman with his first individual All-America honor! #NCAASwimDive #GoBears
Image
10:48 PM ∙ Mar 25, 2022

In the end, Texas took 1st (Kibler), 12th (Coby Carrozza), and 16 (Hobson) to gain more points than Cal’s 7th (Julian) and 15th (Hanson).

However, Cal’s got the number advantage in A-Finals for the remaining two individual swimming events.

100y Breast

Minnesota’s Max McHugh dominated this race with a time of 49.90, just off the record pace. The story with McHugh was that he got shot by a stray bullet in his freshman year and lost a year of training, when he came back, he got a new mental attitude that had resulted in him dominating the last three NCAA breaststroke events.

In the battle between Texas and Cal, the Longhorns were able to limit the damage when their Caspar Corbeau just edged Cal’s junior Liam Bell and senior Reece Whitley. Bell had a brilliant prelim swim to earn a spot in the A-Final. In fact, Bell had the 2nd best prelim time when he beat Corbeau in the same prelim heat.

Whitley and Gonzalez should be A-Finalists in 200y Breast. Bell and Louser will hopefully also get into scoring positions (top-16). Corbeau is the only sure thing to score points for Texas.

100y Back

Since Cal had dominated backstroke for both the men and women over the past two decades, I thought this would have been the best chance for the Bears to get their first win of this meet. Somewhat shockingly, NC State’s Kacper Stokowski beat the field with a 44.004. He also made a remarkably athletic move to get out of the pool quickly to celebrate on the pool deck!?

Cal’s Destin Lasco did set another personal record but that was only good enough for 4th. What was surprising is that fellow A-Finalist Bjorn Seeliger only finished 8th. WFC fellow swim writer Christopher Zheng thinks the Bears were preserving energies for the relay.

Twitter avatar for @calmenswim
Cal Men's Swim & Dive @calmenswim
That's a new PR & a fourth-place finish for Destin Lasco in the 100 back (44.36). #NCAASwimDive x #GoBears
Image
11:17 PM ∙ Mar 25, 2022
Twitter avatar for @calmenswim
Cal Men's Swim & Dive @calmenswim
Björn Seeliger takes 8th in 44.87 👊 #NCAASwimDive x #GoBears
Image
11:19 PM ∙ Mar 25, 2022

Two additional Cal Bears in the B-Final and the fact that only two Texas Longhorns made the B-Finals of this event (they ended up scratching one) meant that Cal would take over the team lead.

Personally, I was expecting more points from Cal in this event, but Daniel Carr (4th in the B-Final for 12th overall) and USA “Calympian” Bryce Mefford (6th to touch the wall for 14th overall) scoring points and keeping out Texas Longhorns is enough. Carr actually tied Texas’ Cameron Auchinachie in touching the wall 4th.

Both Carr and Bryce Mefford are stronger in 200y Back where as one would not be surprised if 3-4 of the A-Final lanes are racerss wearing Cal caps.

Twitter avatar for @calmenswim
Cal Men's Swim & Dive @calmenswim
A 44.98 finish by @danielcacarr earns him another All-America honor & 12th place in the 100 back. #NCAASwimDive x #GoBears
Image
11:20 PM ∙ Mar 25, 2022
Twitter avatar for @calmenswim
Cal Men's Swim & Dive @calmenswim
Bryce touches in 45.03 to take 14th. 👏 #NCAASwimDive x #GoBears
Image
11:21 PM ∙ Mar 25, 2022

3-meter Diving

After scoring a ZERO in 1-meter diving, Texas got a bit more when Noah Duperre qualified for the consolation final and placed 10th overall for 7 points. It was just enough to give then a 2.5 point lead going to the final event of Friday night.

Texas should score maybe twice the points from platform diving on Saturday. That would still be much less than ~80 points that they would score from the three diving events.

Texas A&M’s Kurtis Mathews picked up his second diving win of the meet.

400y Medley Relay

Twitter avatar for @calmenswim
Cal Men's Swim & Dive @calmenswim
RELAY CHAMPS! 🥇🏆 The Bears bring home the 400 medley relay title at #NCAASwimDive. #GoBears 🔥🔥
Image
12:46 AM ∙ Mar 26, 2022
80Likes15Retweets

With only the 10th best seed time, Cal Bears had to swim in the penultimate heat. The lineup of Destin Lasco (backstroke), Reece Whitley (breaststroke), Trenton Julian (butterfly), and Bjorn Seeliger (freestyle) each contributed a near perfect leg. Cal Bears easily won their heat and set a time of 3:00.36 - the best time in this event this year.

The field in the final heat all made a run at it, but Indiana can only get a 3:00.76 ahead of Florida (3:01.00) and Texas (3:01.22). A 10-point different was awarded for 1st (Cal) vs. 4th (Texas) in the doubled-pointed relays.

This NCAA Championship was senior Reece Whitley and 5th-year senior Trenton Julian’s first NCAA title after coming close a number of times in individual and relay races. Sophomore Bjorn Seeliger was part of two NCAA winning relays last year while fellow sophomore Destin Lasco swam in one of those relays.

The heat with Cal Bears also had another notable achievement. Georgia’s Luca Urlando, who swam 100y Fly rather than 100y Back earlier, set a new 100y Back record time of 43.35. He broke Cal and USA “Calympian” legend Ryan Murphy’s record of 43.49, set exactly 6-years ago to the date.

Twitter avatar for @ryan_f_murphy
Ryan Murphy @ryan_f_murphy
Big congrats to Luca on this massive swim! He has many record swims in front of him! https://t.co/WxYYrKapjs
Twitter avatar for @SwimmingWorld
Swimming World @SwimmingWorld
NCAA Men's Championships: Luca Urlando Takes Down Ryan Murphy's American Record in 100 Backstroke - https://t.co/ycgjJNxmOJ #SwissTiming https://t.co/zLuKkQCGDa
4:24 AM ∙ Mar 26, 2022

Congratulations to the Cal Bears for taking over the team lead already. Judging from the team’s demeanor, you know that this group knows the importance of Saturday’s prelim session. The upperclassmen were all a part of that 2019 NCAA team win. Interestingly, I had thought that was Cal’s 99th team national championship title before an Cal Athletics internal audit dropped that count by 2.

You can not get to 100 team national titles without first getting to 99 (again).

ROLL ON YOU BEARS!

24
Share this post

Cal Men's Swim claims team lead with two NCAA Titles and a dozen finalists on Day 3

writeforcalifornia.com
Previous
Next
24 Comments
author
Ruey Yen
Mar 26, 2022Author

The team win is essentially clinched!

Expand full comment
ReplyCollapse
author
Avinash Kunnath
Mar 27, 2022Author

Great coverage all month long Chris and Ruey!

Expand full comment
ReplyCollapse
22 more comments…
TopNewCommunity

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2023 Write For California LLC
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great writing