Louisville Cardinals Set ACC Record with 3:01.52 in the 400 Medley Relay

2021 NCAA MEN’S SWIMMING & DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS

• When: Wednesday, March 24 – Saturday, March 27, 2021
• Where: Greensboro Aquatic Center / Greensboro, NC (Eastern Time Zone)
• Prelims 10 AM/ Finals 6 PM (Local Time)
• Short course yards (SCY) format
• Defending champion: Cal (1x) – 2019 results
• Streaming: ESPN3
• Championship Central
• Psych Sheets
• Live Results

The Louisville Cardinals are built around a strong core, especially for the medley relays, and tonight, the Cardinals’ firepower was on display as they took down the pool (briefly), school and ACC records in the 400 medley relay with a 3:01.52 effort that put them in 4th place overall.

Swimming in the next to last heat, the Cardinals dropped over a second off of their 3:02.86 seed time and 3:02.91 winning time from ACCs to stop the clock in 3:01.51. That broke the Louisville record and pool record of 3:02.80 from last year’s ACCs, as well as the ACC record of 3:01.76, previously set by NC State at the 2018 NCAAs. That pool record would only last for a few minutes, as three teams in the next heat finished under it, led by Texas’ 3:00.23, but Louisville now holds the ACC record.

Here’s a quick look at Louisville’s splits tonight vs NC State’s splits from 2018.

NC State was faster on three of the four legs, with Somov’s 50.68 proving to be the key different for Louisville. Not’s not surprising, as in recent years NC State has struggled to find or develop a crazy fast breaststroke leg that’s on par with what they’ve been able to do in the other three strokes.

And here’s a comparison of the Cardinals’ splits from tonight against their splits from this year’s ACCs.

Tonight, Somov was just a tad off of his time (and on a tighter exchange), but the other three men were well under their times from ACCs. Again, that’s not surprise, as Whyte and Albiero both had the 100 fly/back double before this event at ACCs, meaning that Whyte was on his 6th swim of the day (after a swim-off) and Albiero was on his 5th swim of the day.

Tomorrow, we’d expect all four of these men to be on Louisville’s 200 medley relay. At ACCs, Albiero swam on the 200 free relay, and freshman Dalton Lowe swam the 200 medley relay, but Louisville left Albiero off the 200 free last night.  Especially with Albiero, who went out in 20.15 on the 400 medley relay, the Cardinals should again be in the mix for a finish near the top of the standings, as they’re seeded 2nd with a 1:22.71, with that time coming from ACCs.