Cal Men Put Up 3:01.81 400 Medley Relay, Fastest In Nation By Over A Second

2022 MINNESOTA INVITE

• November 30 – December 3, 2022
• Jean K. Freeman Aquatic Center, Minneapolis, Minn.
• SCY (25 yards)
• Meet Central
• Heat Sheets (when uploaded)
• Live Results
• Results on Meet Mobile: “Minnesota Invite 2022”
• Live Stream ($)
• Races to watch, all the links you need
• 2023 NCAA Qualifying Times

MEN’S 400 MEDLEY RELAY – TIMED FINALS

• NCAA ‘A’ Cut – 1:23.76
• NCAA ‘B’ Cut – 1:24.42
• Pool Record –

Top 3:

1. Cal ‘A’ – 3:01.81
2. Texas ‘A’ – 3:06.20
3. Cal ‘B’ – 3:07.79

The 2022 NCAA Champions in the 400 medley are back at the top again, beating Texas by over four seconds at the 2022 Minnesota Invite. Destin Lasco (45.07), Reece Whitley (50.74), Dare Rose (45.26), Bjorn Seeliger (40.74) put up a time of 3:01.81 for Cal, which makes them the fastest team in the nation for this event by a significant margin.

2022-23 NCAA Rankings, Men’s 400 Medley Relay

1. Cal (Lasco, Whitley, Rose, Seeliger) — 3:01.81
2. ASU (Dolan, Marchand, McCusker, House) — 3:02.85
3. Auburn (Stoffle, Miktuta, Stoffle, Makinen) — 3:03.55
4. Tennessee (Lierz, Dillard, Crooks, Caribe) — 3:03.77
5. Indiana (Burns, Matheny, Frankel, Miroslaw) — 3:03.98

And while Cal’s time from tonight is still a second off the 3:00.36 they clocked to win NCAAs last year, their splits and their dominance over the rest of the NCAA put them in strong contention to repeat for the NCAA title. Whitley’s split of 50.74 was just 0.1 slower than the 50.64 he split at NCAAs, and Seeliger’s anchor leg of 40.74 was also just 0.1 off of his NCAAs anchor.

The two legs that were a bit further apart from their NCAAs counterparts have potential to be faster as well. Lasco led off in 45.07 compared to 44.64 at NCAAs, but he went 44.88 earlier on tonight and is very much capable of dropping more in March. Rose’s 45.26 fly split is still well aways from Trenton Julian‘s 44.44 from NCAAs, but his flat start best time of 45.16 indicates that he can split sub-45.

Cal, 2022 Midseasons vs. 2022 NCAAs:

In addition, track history shows that Cal always improves drastically from midseasons to NCAAs in this race. Last year, they finished third at invites in a time of 3:05.97 before dropping five seconds from that point to the end of the season. Similar patterns followed suit in previous seasons, which you can see in the chart down below:

With Cal being significantly faster this year at midseasons compared to previous years, does this indicate that they are resting more for invites than previous years? Or does it indicate that they will drop major time come time for NCAAs, potentially dipping under the three-minute barrier? We don’t know for sure now, but what we do now is that Cal has clearly established themselves as the early favorites for defending their NCAA title in this event.