Cal vs. Stanford
- February 24, 2024
- Avery Aquatic Middle, Stanford, California
- Brief Course Yards (25 yards), Twin Meet
- Full Meet Outcomes
- Staff Scores
- #8 Stanford def. #2 Cal 170-130
The normal remaining twin meet of the season befell on Saturday between the lads’s swimming & diving groups from Pac-12 and Bay Space rivals Cal and Stanford. The Stanford males got here away with their second victory in three years and their largest margin of victory since 2012, beating Cal 170-130.
The 2 groups look like heading into championship season with two very completely different approaches. Stanford is already bumping up near their finest occasions, whereas Cal, which is famously hyper-focused on NCAAs and lengthy course racing (and rumors are abound of a few of their stars going to the Westmont Professional Swim as a substitute of Pac-12s), look extra like typical dual-meet type.
Stanford’s Andrei Minakov had the very best efficiency of the meet. First he received the 100 fly in 44.60, beating out his teammate Rafael Gu (45.17) and the World Championship bronze medalist from Cal Dare Rose (45.89).
These occasions by Minakov would have been seventh at NCAAs final 12 months.
His finest end result was in his different occasion although: he swam 1:38.61 within the 200 fly to beat out Rose by greater than three seconds. Minakov’s 200 fly time ranks #2 within the NCAA this 12 months behind solely Arizona State freshman Ilya Kharun and would have received final 12 months’s NCAA Championship.
That swim breaks Minakov’s personal Stanford Document of 1:38.63 set within the crew’s January 19 twin meet in opposition to Arizona State. That is solely the fourth time in his profession that Minakov has swum the 200 yard fly.
He was on hearth all through the meet. He cut up 19.73 on the fly leg as a part of Stanford’s profitable 1:23.35 within the 200 medley, which was simply .03 seconds forward of Cal.
Minakov was the difference-maker there and gave his freshman anchor Jonathan Tan the prospect to carry off an 18.36 anchor from Cal’s Jack Alexy, the World Championship silver medalist within the 50 free final 12 months.
That was Stanford’s finest time of the 12 months.
Minakov additionally cut up 41.32 on Stanford’s anchor (2:48.55), however Cal was as much as the duty this time, profitable in 2:47.93.
Cal’s relay once more included an enormous leg from Alexy, who led off in 41.52. That’s just-off the 41.40 he went on the Arizona State twin meet final month and is quicker than all-but-seven different swimmers nationally.
Given what we anticipate about the place Cal is with this meet, and that point, he’s due for one thing large in March.
He swam the 200 free, a secondary occasion, individually, putting third in 1:33.08. His 2023 World Championships teammate Henry McFadden, a Stanford freshman, received in 1:32.62, and Luke Maurer of Stanford was 2nd in 1:32.81. That’s a brand new lifetime finest for McFadden, and his third time sub-1:33 this season.
Maurer’s time was simply two-tenths shy of his personal private finest.
In a form of odd end result, Alexy then completed simply fifth within the 50 free in 19.83 – lacking the wall on his flip. That race was received by Cal’s Bjorn Seeliger, who simply returned from the World Championships, in 18.88.
Seeliger additionally grabbed a win within the 100 free in 41.83, half-a-second forward of Stanford’s Andres Dupont Cabrera (42.37) and Destin Lasco (42.40).
In whole, Stanford received 9 out of 16 occasions, together with a sweep of diving by Jack Ryan, but it surely was their silver and bronze medal swims that made the largest distinction. Stanford had 10 of every, as in comparison with simply 6 of every for Cal, which begins so as to add up over an extended meet.
Different Key Outcomes:
- Stanford junior Ron Polonsky received the 100 breast in 51.39 forward of his sophomore teammate Zhier Fan (51.70). That swim for Polonsky is a quarter-of-a-second shy of his private finest, and the 1-2 was an enormous factors swing to carry off Cal’s Liam Bell.
- Cal senior Destin Lasco fought again Polonsky later within the meet within the 200 IM, swimming 1:41.28 to Polonsky’s 1:42.10. Lasco was quicker on each leg of that swim than Polonsky apart from one, the breaststroke, the place Polonsky was eight-tenths higher. That’s going to be his largest weak spot if he needs to drag an upset at NCAAs over defending World and NCAA Champion Leon Marchand.
- Cal junior Gabriel Jett confirmed off his vary by anchoring Cal’s 400 free relay in 41.75 and in addition profitable the five hundred free in 4:10.43. That’s about eight-tenths away from his lifetime finest and is quicker than he swam to position sixth at NCAAs final 12 months.
- Stanford went 1-2-3 within the males’s 200 breaststroke, racking up an enormous 16-3 level occasion margin (the utmost doable barring DQs). That was led by Fan in 1:52.68.
- Cal fifth 12 months Colby Mefford received the 200 again in 1:41.97, beating out his freshman teammate Keaton Jones (1:42.11) in probably the greatest outcomes for the Golden Bears on the day.
