ASU moves into a podium position following a strong second day at the NCAA Championships

(Photo: Austin Hurst/Sun Devil Athletics)

Arizona State swimming head coach Herbie Behm has said that what makes his team so successful is having tough competitions at practice in preparation for race days.

The second day of the NCAA Men’s Swimming Championships at the McAuley Aquatic Center in Atlanta gave the ASU 200-yard freestyle relay team a unique chance to do just that, but on the biggest stage in collegiate swimming.

The Sun Devils were favored to win the relay, but they were racing against more than just opposing teams. They were racing to beat a team’s time from a year ago, which came in second at 1:13.05.

The Sun Devils not only did that, but set a new school record and NCAA record while winning, cementing the Sun Devils men’s team as a threat in the relays.

“We’ve been thinking about this all year and just thinking about the guys that swam this record last year,” ASU graduate Remi Fabiani said. “We’ve been aiming to do that, and just being able to consider ourselves better than them is a great feeling.”

For the second day in a row, the Sun Devils won their relays and, this time, moved into the top three on the leaderboards. No. 2 ASU is now in third place after scoring 71.5 points for a total team score of 133.5 points. Texas sits in first place with 215.5 points, and Florida is in second with 205.

The Sun Devils’ spot on the podium isn’t guaranteed, as Indiana trails the Sun Devils by a single point.

The finals for the 100-yard butterfly looked to be a record-breaking race based on what happened in the preliminary rounds. In the early-morning trials, Florida senior Josh Liendo broke the NCAA record in his heat, swimming it in 42.54 seconds. Arizona State junior Ilya Kharun won his heat as well in 43.54 seconds, breaking his school record while doing so.

In the finals, the two former teammates for Team Canada in the 2024 Olympics would go head-to-head for the NCAA championship, and Liendo would best Kharun again. The silver medalists in the 100-meter butterfly at the Paris Games set a new record in the final with a time of 42.49. Texas senior Hubert Kos came in second place, with Kharun coming a foot behind the two SEC swimmers at 42.92 for third, scoring 16 points for the Sun Devils.

Before Fabiani would swim the opening leg of the 200 relay, he swam in the 200-yard freestyle with junior JT Ewing. Ewing wasn’t able to advance past the swim, finishing the race at 1:34.13 in 42nd place. Fabiani tallied 14 points for the Sun Devils with his fifth-place finish, improving his early morning time by .42 seconds at 1:30.81.

Removing the B finals stopped senior Andy Dobrzanski from scoring more points for ASU. In the preliminary race for the 100-yard breaststroke, he finished sixth in his heat in 51.53 seconds. Indiana junior Toby Barnett had the same time, but the two weren’t able to have a second race. The NCAA removed the B finals this year, allowing only the top eight finishers to improve their times and resulting in Dobrzanski and Barnett splitting points.

Additional points were lost due to three Sun Devils withdrawing from the preliminary rounds. It wasn’t stated why they withdrew from the races.

The Sun Devils have a chance to continue their dominant performance in the relays with the 400-yard medley relay finals starting at 3 p.m on Friday. The relay team is the top seed in the race with an entry time of 2:57.48.