All 6 Pac-12 Medley Relays Hit “A” Cuts on Day 1; Stanford Breaks School Record

2022 MEN’S PAC-12 CHAMPIONSHIPS

• Wednesday, March 2-Saturday, March 5, 2022
• Weyerhauser King County Aquatic Center, Federal Way, Washington
• Defending champions: Cal (4x)
• Start times: 10:30am prelims / 6:00pm finals (PST)
• Event Schedule
• Diving Results
• Championship Central
• Live Results
• Live Stream

All 6 of the men’s 200 medley “A” relays at the 2022 Pac-12 Swimming & Diving Championships hit NCAA Qualifying Standards on Wednesday evening. After a first week debate about whether the ACC or SEC is the deeper conference, the Pac-12 has just put up their case to stake that claim at the end of the conference championship season.

Among the scoring relays, Arizona was last of 6 teams in 1:24.10. With an NCAA “A” standard of 1:24.22, that assures each Pac-12 school of a relay presence at NCAAs (though many were already qualified via “A” Cuts in other relays).

Pac-12 Standings, Men’s 200 Medley Relay

1. Stanford – 1:22.74
2. Arizona State – 1:22.95
3. Cal – 1:23.26
4. USC – 1:23.76
5. Utah – 1:23.87
6. Arizona – 1:24.10

Stanford and Arizona State already had “A” cuts in the event with mid-season 1:23.98s. The winning time for Stanford of 1:22.74 breaks the school record by four-tenths of a second. The old record of 1:23.14 was set in 2009. The Cardinal haven’t won this relay, since 2007: an event they used to dominate at Pac-12s. The Cardinal won the first 15 Pac-12 titles in the 200 medley relay from 1989 through 2003.

The Stanford program turned a corner this year under 3rd-year head coach Dan Schemmel, including beating Cal in a dual meet heading into Pac-12s, and that momentum has carried over so far into this week’s championship meet.

The 6-for-6 is noteworthy because it is the entirety of the men’s field in the conference, but it’s also more than we saw in any of the other Power 5 Conference Championship meets, where the overwhelming majority of NCAA Championship relay qualifiers come from:

• 5 in the ACC (Louisville, Virginia Tech, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Notre Dame)
• 5 in the SEC (Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Texas A&M)
• 4 in the Big Ten (Ohio State, Indiana, Michigan, Northwestern)
• 1 in the Big 12 (Texas)

The winning Stanford relay included a 19.49 butterfly split from freshman Andrei Minakov, which makes him the 2nd-fastest on a 200 medley relay butterfly split in history.

Jack Dolan of Arizona State led the splits on backstroke with a 20.96, while Cal’s Daniel Carr wasn’t far behind at 10.97.

USC’s Trent Pellini, a 5th-year transfer from Purdue, blew the field away on the breaststroke split with a 22.67. Stanford freshman Ron Polonsky was the next-best at 23.40. Cal’s Bjorn Seeliger had the fastest freestyle split in 18.27. He was the runner-up at last year’s NCAA Championship meet in the 50 free, with only his now-graduated teammate Ryan Hoffer placing ahead of him.