A number of races went right down to the wire in Stanford’s battle with Pac-12 rival USC, including both relays. But the Cardinal survived some nail-biting finishes to wear down the Trojans and win 170-128.
The opening relay came down to .19 seconds, setting the tone for the rest of the day. Stanford pulled out to a big lead in the 400 medley as David Nolan crushed USC freshman Dylan Carter by nearly two full seconds in backstroke. But USC fought back, with breaststroker Sergio Lujan-Rivera splitting 53.3 to make up half that margin. Maclin Davis outsplit Gray Umbach and Santo Condorelli made a late charge, but Stanford anchor Tom Stephens was able to hold him off for the Cardinal win 3:13.49 t0 3:13.68.
Interestingly, USC’s Carter responded to an early brush with adversity by coming back to nearly pull the upset of the night. He rematched Stanford’s Nolan in the open 100 back and went over a half-second faster, putting up a 48.91 to come within .07 of upsetting Nolan, the defending NCAA champ in the event.
The 200 back saw USC once again come after Nolan hard – Cary Wright did battle with the Stanford junior this time, and came out with a win 1:47.16 to 1:47.71. Wright came from behind, negative splitting his race (53.7/53.4) to pull off the big Trojan win.
Stanford’s Tom Kremer out-touched USC’s Dimitri Colupaev in the 100 free, going 44.46 to Colupaev’s 44.59. That was on the heels of the 50 free, which was decided by just .01, although the top two were Trojan teammates. Condorelli won that race over Maclin Davis 20.49 to 20.50.
Davis picked up yet another touchout in the 100 fly, beating Stanford’s Connor Black 48.30 to 48.37. Gray Umbach wasn’t far behind for Stanford in 48.63.
Each side had a pair of double-winners: diver Kristian Ipsen (405.60 on 1-meter and 413.40 on 3-meter) and breaststroker Daniel Le (100 breast in 54.97, 200 in 1:59.62) for Stanford against Wright (aforementioned 200 back and the 200 fly in 1:47.03) and Cristian Quintero (200 free in 1:36.50, 500 free in 4:26.10) for USC.
Danny Thompson crushed the mile for Stanford, going a season-best 15:01.41 to just miss becoming the 11th 14-minute miler of the season so far. Freshman Max Williamson ran away with the 400 IM, going 3:53.56.
The 200 free relay was, fittingly, another tight race. The difference-maker was Nolan, who led off in 19.96 for Stanford, while Condorelli was only 20.49 for So Cal. Carter put up a 20.0 on the second leg for the Trojans, and Black did the same for Stanford on the third split. Ultimately, Stanford capped off its meet win by taking the event in 1:20.58 to USC’s 1:20.94.
Full results are available on Meet Mobile, listed as “2014 CA OB USC vs Stanford- MEN”.
Nice racing by both teams, and really good results by Stanford’s D Le, especially – curious how Charlie Wiser is doing, post water polo season. Will be fun to watch the Cal vs Stanford dual, probably a short program with neither team really “prepped”…tho they will hold nothing back in each and every race! Looking forward to it!