2026 M. NCAA Division I Championship: Day 2 200 Free Relay Analysis – Four More 17-point Splits

2026 NCAA Division I Men’s Swimming and Diving Championships

• Dates: Wednesday, March 25–Saturday, March 28
• Location: McAuley Aquatic Center, Atlanta, GA
• Defending Champions: Texas (1x)
• SwimSwam Preview Index
• Psych Sheets
• Live Stream
• Live Results
• Live Recaps
  • Prelims: Day 1 | Day 2
  • Finals: Day 1 | Day 2

Men’s 200 Free Relay 

• NCAA Record: 1:12.80 – Tennessee (Crooks, Caribe, Taylor, Blackman), 2025
• Championship Record: 1:12.84 – Tennessee (Crooks, Caribe, Blackman, Taylor), 2025
• American Record: 1:14.13 – NC State (Henderson, Miller, Fox, McCarty), 2024
• U.S. Open Record: 1:12.80 – Tennessee (Crooks, Caribe, Taylor, Blackman), 2025
• 2025 Champion: Tennessee (Crooks, Caribe, Blackman, Taylor), 1:12.84
• 2025 8th/16th Final Times: 1:15.25/ 1:15.83
• Current Leader: Texas (Gould, Fente-Damers, Kos, Peck) – 1:14.40

Top 8 Teams

1. ASU (Fabiani, Chaney, Kharun, Kulow) — 1:12.46 **New NCAA Record
2. Florida (Liendo, Painter, Buff, Dilger) — 1:13.30
3. NC State (McCarty, Salls, Fox, Winkler) — 1:13.73
4. Tennessee/Texas — 1:14.40
5. —
6. Cal — 1:14.63
7. Michigan — 1:14.64
8. Louisville — 1:14.94

ASU broke Tennessee’s record from last year, in what is an NCAA swansong for three-quarters of their relay. Ilya Kharun and Jonny Kulow both split sub-18 seconds, the only time this has been done on the same relay other than in Tennessee’s record last year (Jordan Crooks and Gui Caribe), while Florida got an 18.27 from 100 fly champ Josh Liendo.

ASU had three of the fastest five rolling splits and the third-fastest leadoff, as they won by 0.84 seconds to claim their seconds relay title of the meet. No teams were DQed in this event, although UNC’s Martin Kartavi played it close with a -0.03 second takeover as he split 18.45.

With four more 17-point splits here, this is now the meet with the most sub-18 rolling splits. There were only four in 2025, which stood as the most in a single meet until this week.

Reaction times down to -0.03 seconds are allowed, as the timing equipment has a tolerance of 0.03 seconds.

Leadoff Legs

Josh Liendo had the fastest leadoff in 18.27, the fastest time in the NCAA this season but off his best of 18.07 from 2024. Quintin McCarty and Remi Fabiani set best times behind him as both swam under 18:60, while two of the top six leadoffs came from this morning in the form of Julain Koch’s 18.65 and Sean Niewold‘s 18.73.

There were 12 leadoff legs under 19 seconds, five of them between 18.90 and 19.00 seconds. Martin Wrede was only the 16th-fastest leadoff for Cal, clocking a time of 19.16 which is 0.36 seconds off his best. Brendan Whitfield of Virginia Tech set his second best time of the day in 18.65 after lowering his 200 free PB in prelims, and Faleman Tuufui set a new Kentucky record in 18.90. Nikoli Blackman and Garrett Gould were a little off their best times in 18.93 and 18.92 respectively, as Tenneessee and Texas ultimately tied for 4th.

Rolling Splits

Just like yesterday in the 200 medley relay, we saw four 17-point splits. Two of those came from the same swimmers, as Jere Hribar was a hundredth faster in 17.95 and Jonny Kulow was a hundredth slower in 17.99, but Ilya Kharun split his second ever swim under 18 seconds to take the top time in 17.76.

Arizona Statue were the only team to get multiple sub-18 second splits, and they ended up with three of the top five splits with Adam Chaney splitting 18.12 as they soared to a new NCAA record of 1:12.46.

Alex Painter also swam 18.12 to give some impetus to a sophomore season which hadn’t quite hit the highs of last year, and he did enough to keep Florida in the lead at halfway. Despite getting more than solid splits from Scotty Buff (18.54) and Devin Dilger (18.37) they fell to 2nd on the back half of the race as ASU unleashed their 17-point swimmers. For Dilger that was a best-ever split, and his sophomore season has been an almost unqualified success at this point.

Michigan had two splits in the top ten in Big Ten record holder Tyler Ray (18.22) and Jack Wilkening (18.24), while NC State had all three flying legs in the top 20. Drew Salls was their fastest swimmer in 18.32, and was joined by Jerry Fox (18.39) and Kaii Winkler (18.48) as the Wolfpack broke 1:14 for the first time.

Cal had two swimmers in the top 15 from #10 Lucca Battaglini and #14 Evan Petty. while Virginia had a pair of 18.4s from freshmen Maximus Williamson and Thomas Heilman. Tennessee’s Koby Bujak-Upton was just 19.03 after taking 2nd behind Williamson in the 200 free ealrier in the finals session, while Virginia swam this relay this morning.

In total there were 53 splits under 19 seconds; four 17-point and 49 18-point. That was over half (56.9%) of the 93 rolling splits today, which was a lower percentage than last year (47 of 72, 65.3%), but there were three more sub-18 splits.