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Prelims: Day 4 at Men's ACCs
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Chapel Hill, NC — The eighth-ranked Virginia men’s swimming team advanced 10 competitors into events finals during Saturday’s preliminary round of the ACC Championships at North Carolina’s Koury Natatorium. That group of swimmers will join four other Cavaliers who automatically advanced to the finals of Saturday’s 1650 freestyle.
Highlighting the prelims was Scot Robison’s performance in the 100 freestyle. He posted the top time of 42.42, breaking his own conference and ACC meet record in the process. Peter Geissinger will join Robison in the finals after posting the day’s second-best time of 43.67.
John Azar recorded the best 200 breaststroke performance at 1:57.26. He is joined in the finals by teammates Simon Norstedt (1:58.28) and Tom Casey (1:59.18).
UVa also advanced three into the 200 backstroke finals. Daniel Johnson is the third seed at 1:44.66 and will be joined by Matt Murray (1:45.28) and David Wren (1:45.48).
Matt Houser swam 1:45.57 during his heat of the 200 butterfly to grab the number-two seed in the finals while Pat McMahon managed to get the final qualifying spot with a time of 1:47.28.
Each time recorded by a finalist during the prelims was an NCAA ‘B’ mark.
The four Cavaliers in the 1650 freestyle are defending champion Matt McLean, Taylor Smith, who owns the year’s best qualifying time, John Snawerdt and Darren Ankosko.
“It was a really good day,” said coach Mark Bernardino. “Every single athlete that swam, with the exception of one, will come back this evening to race. There are 10 in the finals of four events. We set a new conference record in the 100 freestyle, we had some nice swimming again from our freshmen and our breaststrokers came up and did a wonderful job. We are in a really good position and should come back tonight with a lot of adrenalin and emotion to finish this thing the way we want to finish it.”
Virginia is looking to win its third straight ACC title and 11th in 12 years. The Cavaliers (543.5) own a 99-point lead over second-place North Carolina (444.5) heading into Saturday’s finals that start at 7 p.m. The finals are webcast at ACCSelect.com.