2015 Men’s Pac-12 Championships: Day 2 Team Scoring Analysis

Day 1’s Team Score Analysis can be found here

After last night, Stanford was at the top of the point standings in 209, followed by USC in 197 and Arizona in 137. That included diving, the 200 medley relay and the 800 free relay events.  Cal wasn’t even in the picture at that point, sitting in 5th with a point total of 103.

Flash Forward to tonight’s Finals, where, after the 500 free, 200 IM, 50 free and 200 free relay events, Cal boosted itself up to third place, amassing an impressive 165 points on the night.

Team Scores below:

Stanford – 385.0
USC – 335.0
Cal – 268.0
Arizona – 220.0
Utah – 146.0
Arizona State – 145.0

The Bears saw a total of 6 swimmers in tonight’s A-Final races with Trent Williams scoring 8th place points in the men’s 500 free, Josh Prenot and Ryan Murphy with a 2-3 finish in the 200 IM, and Seth Stubblefield with Fabio Gimondi and Tyler Messerschmidt getting gains in the 50 freestyle.  All told, Cal is now knocking on the door of USC and is staging some big swims tomorrow as well.

But, USC and Stanford have giant lineups ready to launch on Friday also, which may put the top 2 team finishes out of reach for the Bears.  USC will see Santo Condorelli, Lucca Spinazzola, Ralf Tribuntsov and Dylan Carter as just part of its 100 fly heavy-hitting contingent.  That event alone could do some major damage as long as the Trojans swim well enough to set themselves up for point-scoring positions in the evening.  Stanford has some key athletes slated to swim the 200 free in Drew Cosgarea and Tom Kremer and the Cardinal will also have on-fire Dave Nolan in the 100 backstroke tomorrow.

The prelims tomorrow are crucial in pushing forth as many swimmers as each team can muster into the finals.  There is still time for any one of the top three powerhouses to take control and edge themselves that much closer to the Pac-12 team title.