(Photo: Alli Cline/WCSN)
In the fourth meet of the season for both teams, the 24th ranked Arizona State men’s team beat USC Friday afternoon, 156.5-149.5 to remain undefeated, while the Sun Devil women’s team performed well, but did not have the same luck, suffering a 169-104 defeat at the hands of the of the Lady Trojans.
The meet received plenty of hype during the week, with both teams earning national recognition by Collegeswimming.com, and the NCAA. Despite the awkward results, Head Coach Bob Bowman said he is still pleased with his team’s performance.
“I’m very pleased with the men’s team and how we raced today,” Bowman said. “USC is an excellent team and taking them down to the wire is a big step for our program. There are many good teaching points from this meet for the men and the women.”
Freshman Cameron Craig continued to impress, by winning two events. Craig took the victory in both the 100 and 200-yard freestyle events in times of 44.43 and 1:36.79. Junior Christian Lorenz also swam well by taking a narrow second place finish in the 100-yard breaststroke with a time of 54.63 and taking first in the 200-yard breastroke in a time of 1:59.53. Freshman Ben Olszewski also captured two victories, winning the 500 and 1650-yard freestyles by 11 and 15 seconds with times of 4:27.42 and 15:33.22, respectively.
While the freshmen are swimming very well, the upperclassmen are still carrying the team and setting the stage on the men’s side. Senior Andrew Porter and Junior Patrick Park split the butterfly races, Park took first in the 200-yard butterfly at 1:46.89, while Porter held off Canadian Olympian and Trojan star Santo Condorelli in the 100-yard butterfly with a time of 47.70.
Senior Richard Bohus also tied Ralf Tribuntsov for first place in the 100-yard backstroke at 47.40. Tribuntsov was the Pac-12 champion and NCAA finalist in this event during the 2015-2016 season.
On the women’s side, the Sun Devils swam well but were not quite able to keep up with the USC women, losing by a sizeable margin but capturing plenty of season-best times.
“Our women competed well against one of the country’s best programs,” Bowman said. “We continue to make small steps forward each day. That’s the name of the game. Get better every day.”
Freshman Chloe Isleta had the day’s hardest schedule of events, swimming the 200-yard lengths of butterfly, backstroke and individual medley. She took that challenge and performed well by finishing in third in butterfly and backstroke, and second in the IM with impressive times of 2:02.71, 2:00.03 and 2:03.67.
Despite being one of the conference’s best swimmers last week, Bush finished second in both sprinting events. In the 50-yard freestyle, Bush lost to Trojan sprinter Anika Apostalon by .10 with a time of 22.82. Apostalon would also grab the victory in the 100-yard freestyle as Bush and her teammate Claire Fisch finished 2-3 in the 100 yard-freestyle with times of 49.92 and 50.00, respectively.
For the relays, both the men’s and women’s teams also swam very solid, but were unable to capture victories. The men came in second by .43 and put up a very impressive season-best time of 3:13.17 in the medley relay. They also came within a tenth of a second of their season best in the 200-yard freestyle relay in a time of 1:20.64.
The men will head back to Tempe to prepare for their next meet, while the women travel across town take on UCLA tomorrow at 11:00 A.M.
