Arizona Wildcats vs. Arizona State Sun Devils

• February 10, 2024
• Hillenbrand Aquatic Center, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona
• Short Course Yards (25 yards), Dual Meet
• Meet Results
• Team Scores
  • #1 Arizona State Men def. #23 Arizona Men 227-73
  • #16 Arizona State Women def. HM Arizona Women 189-111

Arizona State took dominant wins over their in-state rivals from the University of Arizona, including the Sun Devil men winning all of the day’s swimming events.

With the win, the top-ranked Arizona State men finished the season with a 9-0-1 record, their only blemish being a tie with 2nd-ranked Cal.

The Arizona State women finished their season 5-6.

The meet served as senior day for the Wildcats.

Men’s Meet

While Arizona’s Gage Dubois swept the diving events, the rest of the wins went to the Arizona State Sun Devils, who went 14-for-14 in swimming races in their last dual meet of the season before the Pac-12 Championships.

The Arizona State men had four swimmers when a pair of events each. That was led by World Champion and World Record holder Leon Marchand, who won the 200 fly in 1:39.62 and 100 fly in 44.67.

Those times both came within a whisker of his lifetime bests in those events, missing his best in the 200 fly by .05 seconds and the 100 fly by .01 seconds. Marchand is unlikely to swim either event at March’s NCAA Championships, though he is the defending World Champion in the 200 fly in long course meters.

Also winning a pair for the Sun Devils was Jack Dolan, who topped the field in the 50 free (19.23) and 100 free (42.17). In the 50, he led a 1-2-3-4 Arizona State finish, with Jonny Kulow (19.47), Ilya Kharun (19.56), and Cam Peel (19.65) following him. Arizona’s Tommy Palmer was 5th in 19.91 to cap the Arizona State run.

In the 100, Kharun was .01 seconds behind Dolan in 2nd place.

Kulow (42.18), Kharun (42.33), Tiago Behar (42.21), and Dolan (41.48) then won the 400 free relay in 3:48.20, with their “B” relay of Marchand (41.39), Patrick Sammon (42.34), Cam Peel (42.78), and Hubert Kos (42.51) finishing 2nd in 3:49.02. Arizona’s “A” relay was 3rd in 2:54.61, just .37 seconds ahead of Arizona State’s “C” relay, showing off just how deep the Sun Devils are in the sprint freestyles this season.

That 41.39 for Marchand is a new personal best; previously he had been 41.61.

That sprint depth might be what puts them over the top for the program’s first NCAA Championship.

The team also went 1-2 in the 200 medley relay, again splitting their top swimmers. Dolan was 21.19 on the backstroke leg and Marchand 23.33 on the breaststroke leg for the “A” relay, which finished 2nd, while Ilya Kharun split 19.55 fly on the fly leg for the winning “B”. His was the defining split, as Kulow anchored the runner-up group in 18.55.

The two relays went 1:23.47 and 1:23.72, respectively, but their best splits would have come out to 1:22.62 – which would be a best time for all but two schools this season (them and Cal).

The other double winners for Arizona State were:

• David Schlicht, the former Arizona Wildcat, won won the 100 breaststroke (52.83), just ahead of teammate Andy Dobrzanski (52.86); and the 200 breast in 1:54.05.
• Owen McDonald, who won the 200 back (1:43.14) and 200 IM (1:44.92).
• Arizona State grad student Julian Hill won the 200 free in 1:33.58, just holding-off Arizona’s Ralph Daleiden Ciuferri, who very-nearly gave the Wildcats a swimming win with his 2nd-place 1:33.62. Daleiden has been a 1:33 in three consecutive dual meets; including the last two faster than his time from last year’s NCAA Championship meet. Hill later won the 500 free in 4:23.40.

Other big winners include Hungarian Zalan Sarkany, who took the victory in the 1000 free in 8:39.89. After spending the fall semester training back home, he made his season debut in January with a new school record in the 1000 free. That time was an 8:38.13 against Stanford, which he lowered a day later against Cal in 8:37.82.

He now has the five best 1000 yard frees in program history, excluding splits en route to a full 1650, which would have entries on that list as well.

Other Winners:

Women’s Meet

The Arizona State women won 9 out of 14 swimming events, including three individual races from sophomore Charli Brown.

Brown started her winning in the 100 back (53.09), which is just .10 seconds shy of her personal best. Her teammate Katrina Marty was 2nd in 53.31, which is a new personal best for her. That’s in fact her second personal best int hat race in two meets, improving upon her 53.44 from the team’s mid-season invite in November.

Marty, the latest of a huge wave of improvement for Arizona State this season, had never been under 54 seconds coming into this season. She’s now done so eight times in the last four months.

Brown got her next win in the 200 back in 1:55.57, more than two-and-a-half seconds clear of the field, and finished her day with another huge margin in the 200 IM, touching in 1:58.18.

Brown also had the fastest split of the field on the backstroke leg of the 200 medley relay (24.83) on ASU’s 4th-place “B” relay. That could give her the chance to lead off that relay at Pac-12s.

Her teammate Lindsay Looney swept the butterfly events, first winning the 200 in 1:53.44 and the 100 fly in 53.57, the latter by just .15 seconds ahead of Arizona’s Maddy Burt. Looney went undefeated in the 200 fly in dual meets this season and has swept the butterfly events at four meets this season.

We didn’t get to see a head-to-head matchup with Arizona’s Julia Heimstead in the 200 fly. Looney was 4th and Heimstead 6th in that event at last year’s Pac-12 Championships. Heimstead instead swam the 200 free, which she won in 1:44.73, and the 100 free, which she won in 48.73, picking up crucial points for her team. That time in the 200 free was only .04 seconds shy of her personal best.

She also swam the butterfly leg (23.01) on Arizona’s 200 medley relay, which won in 1:37.20. She combined with Paige Armstrong (back – 25.19), Maddy Ahluwalla (breast – 27.17), and Julia Wozniak (free – 21.83) to win that race by over half-a-second.

That anchor split for Wozniak is a revelation – it’s about eight-tenths better than her lifetime best in a flat-start coming into the meet. That flat-start time also fell in this meet – she dropped two-tenths to win the individual event in 22.48 ahead of Arizona State’s Erin Milligan (22.54).

The other double winner for Arizona State was Deniz Ertan, who won the 1000 free in 9:42.34 and the 500 in 4:47.28.

Arizona State finished the day with a win in the 400 free relay in 3:16.21, winning by a second-and-a-half over Arizona. That included 48-second splits on the middle two legs from Ieva Maluka (48.81) and Lindsay Looney (48.73). They had another on their “B” relay from Marte Lovberg, who split 48.97. Those were the only 48-second splits in the field.

Both teams concluded their regular season with this meet and will next race from February 28 – March 2 in Federal Way, Washington.