The California Bears captured the men’s Division I NCAA Championship title tonight in Austin, Texas, by surpassing the Texas Longhorns in the final night of competition.
Cal was down six points after finals on day two to the Longhorns. The Bears came back big in preliminaries, putting up 7 A finalists and 2 consolation final swims compared to Texas’ 5/5 —Â without accounting for the milers. The team then moved up from their seeds all night, and by the 200 butterfly, they had a 64.5 point lead heading into diving.
We at SwimSwam like to do the math, and this was the scenario at hand. For Cal to lose the title, Texas would have to win the diving, win the 400 freestyle relay and have Cal disqualify their relay. And it would leave the Bears just 1 point behind the Longhorns. But Duke’s Nick McCrory won platform diving on a massive last dive from Nick McCrory, which then sealed the fate for the Bears and allowed them to rip on the 400 freestyle relay.
Cal had quite the weekend in Austin. They walked away with relay titles in the 200 medley, 200 freestyle and 400 medley relays; plus individual event winner, Ryan Murphy, won the 100 and 200 backstroke. But it was non-winning swims that were just as pivotal in this victory. Â Like Jeremy Bagshaw on the last day of the meet placing second in the 1650 in the new school record from the “early” heats, and Marcin Tarczynski finishing third in the 200 butterfly — putting on their “big boy senior pants” as Cal fans would say.
This is the fifth team title for the Bears. They won in 1979 and 1980, then again in 2011 and 2012; making this the third title in four years for Durden and his Cal men.
Congratulations to the Cal swimmers and their staff, including:
- Dave Durden, Head Coach
- Yuri Suguiyama, Assistant Coach
- Todd Mulzet, Diving Head
- Joel Smith, Strength Coach
- Jay, Della, Corina and Eddie, Masseuses
Your 2014 Men’s NCAA Swimming & Diving Champions: the Cal Golden Bears
| Name | Yr. | Hometown (Prev School) |
| Bagshaw, Jeremy | Sr. | Victoria, B.C., Canada (St. Michaels Univ. School) |
| Burns, Janardan | Fr. | Aliso Viejo, Calif. (Aliso Niguel) |
| Campbell, Sven | Fr. | Oakland, Calif. (Campolindo) |
| Chung, Henry | Jr. | Hong Kong (Ventura College) (Diocesan Boy’s School) |
| Cobleigh, Hunter | Fr. | Thousand Oaks, Calif. (Westlake) |
| Cox, Tony | Sr. | Northridge, Calif. (Bishop Alemany) |
| Cyr, Peter | So. | Hamden, CT (Hamden) |
| DeZwirek, Jeremie | Jr. | San Jose, Calif. (Archbishop Mitty) |
| Dillinger, Nick | So. | Gillette, Wy. (Gillette) |
| Farley, Scott | Sr. | Pasadena, Calif. (San Marino) |
| Fiepke, Jonathan | Fr. | West Des Moines, Iowa (Dowling Catholic) |
| Fleming, Shayne | Sr. | San Jose, Calif. (Valley Christian) |
| Gimondi, Fabio | Jr. | Milan, Italy (Primo Levi) |
| Gutierrez, Long | Fr. | Cottonwood, Utah (Brighton) |
| Haeberle, Scott | So. | Bloomington, Ind. (Bloomington South) |
| Hamilton, Will | Jr. | Franklin, Mich. (Detroit Country Day) |
| Haney, Michael | So. | Rialto, Calif. (Bloomington) |
| Hinshaw, Adam | Jr. | Saratoga, Calif. (Saratoga) |
| Huston, Grayson | Sr. | Carmel, Calif. (Carmel) |
| Katis, Chuck | Jr. | Falls Church, Va. (Langley) |
| Leon, Chris | Jr. | Walnut Creek, Calif. (Berean Christian) |
| Lyon, Jameson | So. | Carlsbad, Calif. (La Costa Canyon) |
| Messerschmidt, Tyler | So. | Phoenix, Ariz. (Desert Edge) |
| Murphy, Ryan | Fr. | Ponte Vedre, Fla. (The Bolles School) |
| Pebley, Jacob | So. | Corvallis, Ore. (Crescent Valley) |
| Prenot, Josh | So. | Orcutt, Calif. (Family Partnership Charter School) |
| Pullen, Tyler | Sr. | Pleasanton, Calif. (Amador Valley) |
| Ryckman, Jesse | Jr. | Westlake Village, Calif. (Oaks Christian) |
| Selby, Thomas | Jr. | Menlo Park, Calif. (Sacred Heart Prep) |
| Shimomura, Sam | So. | Santa Cruz, Calif. (Bellarmine College Prep) |
| Stassi, Dane | Jr. | Irvine, Calif. (UC San Diego) |
| Stubblefield, Seth | Jr. | Plano, Texas (Plano Senior) |
| Studebaker, Ryan | Sr. | Auburn, Calif. (Placer) |
| Tarczynski, Marcin | Sr. | Warsaw, Poland (LO im. Janusza Kusocinskiego) |
| Thai, Harrison | Fr. | La Canada, Calif. (Crescenta Valley) |
| Tyrrell, Jamie | Sr. | Granite Bay, Calif. (Granite Bay) |
| Williams, Dillon | Fr. | Danville, Calif. (Monte Vista) |
| Williams, Trent | So. | San Diego, Calif. (Rancho Bernardo) |
Ok. The missing race videos (except the 1650 free) have been posted on youtube. 😎
Day 2
100 back
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJDZZZwhJrM
Day 3
200 back
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twmg4PGj0Kg
200 fly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHBaLGdG5Qs
100 free
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcI95HecB6E
4X100 free relay
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saqYNTuA1hc
Posted this elsewhere, but thought I’d drop it here as well:
Just avoiding work and looking at some numbers, thought I’d share…
Top 9 break down:
Diving
Texas 71
Stan 47
Zona 40
Aub 28
Cal 0
Flor 0
Mich 0
Georgia 0
USC 0
Relays
Cal 180
Texas 158
Flor 148
Aub 128
Mich 100
USC 100
Georgia 80
Zona 46
Stan 44
Individual
Cal 288.5
Flor 239
Mich 210
Texas 188.5
Georgia 179
Zona 112.5
USC 82
Aub 74
Stan 64
About as dominating a performance as possible on the swimming… Read more »
I think Katis “pulled” himself out of Harvard to attend Cal.
while bagshaw’s swim was very inspirational, I would cast my vote for murphy. two wins, A final in 200 im, 51 points, which happens to be the margin cal won by, plus 4 awesome relay swims. kind of settles the debate about he and conger, at least for this year!
also, the main reason the meet so close, was the texas divers did very well, scoring about 70 points to cal’s 0.
I would disagree. The main reason it was close was that the Texas swimmers swam far above expectations. The divers were a known quantity, most predicting they would score ~100pts.
The main reason the meet was so close and tipped in Cal’s favor was they pulled Katis out of Harvard to fill their breastroke void. Without him, they dont win.
Congratulations to Durden and his staff and Cal swimmers. One thing I have noticed is that Dave has slowly gotten away from being foreign dominate to Americans. So now Texas and Cal have proved that you CAN be successful at NCAA’s with Americans. (Georgia is also all USA swimmers now). Florida, Auburn, couldn’t survive without their international swimmers. Just stating facts…no commentary.
False. Matias Koski
MacLean and Van Landeghem on the women’s team too.
The “Berkeley” brand is widely known internationally, so Durden and McKeever will always be able to recruit well in Europe and Asian. Bagshaw, Tarczynski, Gimondi, and Guttierrez all came up big for Cal this season and Chung is expected to step up next year. Teri likes a few foreigner swimmers on her teams because it mirrors Cal’s student body as a whole. Not a fan of the xenophobic angle, but it’s easier and less expensive to build a team around Americans. They’re eligible for student loans that aren’t available to foreign recruits.
I was mistaken about Koski but mainly because he has lived in the USA for most of his life.
But for Cal, I think Jeremy and Macin are seniors (maybe Fabio too) and so he is weeding their foreign image away and more to a place where mostly Americans can be successful.
Gimondi is a junior, as is JuCo transfer Henry Chung from Hong Kong. They will be the only two returning internationals for Cal.
Georgia returns Koski, Anival Rodriguez from Mexico that I recognize. Rodriguez should be an NCAA qualifier next year – he was teetering on the edge this year.
Long Gutierrez will be a sophomore next season.
You’re right – another “went to high school in the USA, but born somewhere else” kid.
Anival didn’t swim this year for the Bulldogs after the first of the year. so just Koski .
Here’s some commentary 🙂
As has been gone into, at length, here, domestic recruiting is the preferred, advantageous method of team-building. This is just basic college swimming strategy. Cal is just catching up with Texas and Stanford on that front just now, and should realy get rolling moving forward.
It would be strange indeed to see the best domestic talent pick a school other than Cal for a reason beyond not being academically or financially fit. But of course there are other reasons, such as family and friends, partying, gfs and bfs, drawing kids elsewhere.
At this point it is looking like Durden should be the head Oly coach in ’16, as long as the powers(egos) that be… Read more »
It will be interesting to see what effect the “home pool advantage” had on the Texas team–whether they will have as big of drops next year without the atmosphere and energy of swimming in Austin. Remember that last year they fell completely flat–let’s hope that was just an aberration.
Congrats to Cal. Heck of a meet.
On the morning after, I have to find reason to hope, so I analyzed the returning points going into next year. This includes relays.
1. Texas, 388.5 returning, 93.1% of points returning
2. Cal, 366 returning, 78.1% returning, 22.5 points behind
3. Georgia, 213.5 returning, 82.4% returning, 175 behind
4. Florida, 203 returning, 52.5% returning, 185.5 behind
5. Michigan, 173.5 returning, 56% returning, 215 behind
6. Zona, 151 returning, 76.1% returning, 237.5 behind
7. Stanford, 155 returning, 100% returning, 233.5 behind
8. Auburn, 100 returning, 43.5% returning, 288.5 behind
9. USC, 70 returning, 38.5% returning, 318.5 behind
These are the only teams I… Read more »
Cal loses some good Seniors, but are keeping the bulk of the relays and bringing in some serious thunder with their recruiting class.
(As are Michigan, Florida, Georgia and Texas)