In his 7th season at Southern California, Dave Salo has cracked the top 4 at Men’s NCAAs. In his first year with the Trojans they scored in the single digits. He’s changed the culture, he’s changed the expectations, and his boys finished the 2013 season with a win in the 400 freestyle relay.
400 Freestyle Relay on night 3 from Men’s NCAAs, as reported by Braden Keith:
With only a few spots in the 4-10 range up in the air in the team battle coming into this 400 free relay, nobody was playing this 400 free relay conservatively. Rather, everyone really let fly in a true measure of the race.
When USC was close in this relay and had Vlad Morozov left to go on their anchor, you know this one was over. He took a slight deficit and turned it into a sizable lead with a 40.28 anchor split – second only to the 40.23 that Nathan Adrian swam in 2009.
The full team of Cristian Quintero, Dimitri Colupaev (42.23), Jack Wagner, and Morozov were the winning team. That means that each of the meet’s five relays were won by a different team – the first time in historythat we’ve seen that happen since the schedule was expanded to 5 relays in 1989.
man he is a great coach! next year they have a chance to win it all with the class of freshmen there bringing in!