Cal Set to Narrow the Gap, But ASU is Still in Control: 2023 Men’s Pac-12 Day 3 Up/Downs

2023 MEN’S PAC-12 SWIMMING & DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS

• Wednesday, March 1- Saturday, March 5, 2023
• Weyerhauser King County Aquatic Center – Federal Way, WA
• SCY (25 Yards)
• Defending Champions: Cal (5x)
• Championship Central
• Event Schedule
• Diving Results
• Live Stream
• Live Results
• Fan Guide
• Psych Sheets
• Day 1 Finals Recap
• Day 2 Prelims Recap| Day 2 Finals Recap
• Day 3 Prelims Recap

The third finals session of the 2023 Men’s Pac-12 Swimming and Diving Championships is nearly here. As the penultimate finals session approaches, let’s take a look at how the team battle is stacking up following this morning’s prelims session. Before we look at what happened this morning, here’s a reminder of what the standings look like through the first two days of the meet.

TEAM SCORES THRU DAY 2

1. ASU – 357.5
2. Cal – 251
3. Stanford – 238
4. USC – 202.5
5. Arizona – 197
6. Utah – 174

Arizona State built a huge lead on day two of the meet, leaving five-time defending champions Cal in second by over 100 points. Now, let’s take a look at what happened this morning.

The Sun Devils continued to swim phenomenally; however, Cal did slightly outperform them from a team scoring standpoint. The Golden Bears earned 14 ‘A’ finalists for tonight’s events, with another seven ‘B’ finalists to boot. Meanwhile, ASU was right behind in both categories, earning 13 ‘A’ finalists and six ‘B’ finalists. In all, that means Cal earned 21 scoring swims for tonight, while ASU has 19.

Without further ado, here is the up/down data for the day three prelims session.

DAY THREE UP/DOWNS

As the table shows, Arizona State and Cal are out in front, both with a nice, fairly even spread across the days events. ASU has one hole today, the 100 breast, where they only secured one ‘B’ finalist for finals. That event also happens to be Cal’s best of the day, as the Golden Bears went five up there. Not only did Cal put five swimmers into the 100 breast ‘A’ final, they actually posted the top five times of the morning as well.

Stanford had a very solid morning, putting themselves firmly in third place. The Cardinal was excellent in the 100 fly, earning four ‘A’ finalists for tonight and another ‘B’ finalist as well.

Now, let’s take a look at the scored prelims for this morning. Keep in mind, this is only what the scores for the session would look like if this morning’s prelims session had been a timed finals session. The scores for tonight’s finals session will look a little different, since there will be shuffling in the placement from this morning. Nonetheless, this will give us an idea of how things are looking.

DAY THREE SCORED PRELIMS

As you can see, Cal is set to outscore Arizona State by a small margin tonight, which will likely bring the Sun Devils’ overall lead under 100 points in the standings at the end of tonight’s session. ASU is still going to head into the final day of the meet tomorrow with a sizable lead, making it very likely they will snap the Golden Bears’ five-year streak of winning this meet.

It’s an instance like this where it’s important to remember that Cal was disqualified in the first event of the meet: the 200 medley relay. That loss of points stings, especially since if they hadn’t gotten DQ’d, the gap between them and Arizona State would likely be about half what it’s going to be at the end of tonight’s session.

Regardless, the point is what we can expect out tonight’s session is that Cal will close the gap on Arizona State a little bit, but the Sun Devils are looking more and more likely to win the team title when all is said and done.