This weekend, No. 12 men’s swimming (4-0, 3-0 Pac-12) defeated USC (0-4, 0-3 Pac-12) in Los Angeles, 190-109. Junior Alex Liang led the team to victory, finishing in first in multiple individual events.
Liang came in first in the 200-yard backstroke, clocking in at 1:47.29, followed by teammate sophomore Alex Boratto (1:48.15). With a time of 1:49.65, Liang also led a Cardinal sweep of the 200-yard I.M. He was followed by sophomore Jon Cook (1:52.00), junior Brennan Pastorek (1:52.31) and junior Johannes Calloni (1:53.21).
Liang’s 200 medley relay also claimed the first event victory of the day (1:28.39). Liang swam the butterfly leg, senior Benjamin Ho swam backstroke, senior Hank Poppe swam breaststroke, and freshman Neel Roy swam freestyle.
In the 100-yard breaststroke, Poppe led a Stanford sweep, coming in at 54.37. He was followed by sophomore Daniel Roy (54.95) and Pastorek (55.62). Poppe later came in second in the 100-yard butterfly (48.57) to USC’s Alexei Sancov.
In the last event of the meet, Poppe’s 200-yard freestyle relay came in first as well, clocking in at 1:22.32.
After a close 100-yard breaststroke race, Roy came up big for the Cardinal in the 200 breaststroke, touching the wall at 1:55.83 and winning the event by almost five seconds. Cook (2:00.79) and Pastorek (2:01.39) followed.
The Cardinal came out on top in the weekend’s distance events as well. Senior Grant Shoults claimed the 1000 yard freestyle, coming in at 9:05.70. Later in the meet, Calloni came in first in the 500-yard freestyle, with a time of 4:26.18.
In the 200-yard freestyle, Will MacMillan came in with a time of 1:37.72, just 0.18 seconds behind the Trojan’s Sancov. In the next event, Ho clocked in first in the 100 back (48.21), coming in over a second ahead of the competition.
In the 200-yard butterfly, sophomore Jack Levant came in second place (1:48.80), right behind USC’s Mark Jurek (1:48.63).
Junior Jordan Greenberg came in second in the 50-yard freestyle with a time of 20.41, behind USC’s Miljenic. After the break, sophomore Mason Gonzalez won the 100 freestyle (44.95), edging out Miljenic.
In the 1-meter diving event, sophomore Conor Casey came in first place with a score of 393.23. In the 3-meter event, sophomore Noah Vigran came in second with a score of 354.07, behind USC’s Henry Fusaro.
After a successful weekend in Southern California, the team gets a weekend off before facing No. 2 Cal on Feb. 22 at home, marking senior day and the last meet of the regular season.
Contact Natalie Hilderbrand at nhild ‘at’ stanford.edu.