Friday’s 400-yard medley relay may have been the moment that decided the men’s swimming and diving Southeastern Conference champion.
The No. 5-ranked UF men’s team, who came into Friday with a 54-point lead over the No. 6 Auburn Tigers, struggled to find success for most of the evening. With only one podium finish in the first four events, the Gators saw their overall lead diminish to just 22 points.
With one event remaining — the 400-yard medley relay — the Gators made their championship statement.
With a time of 3:03.86, the UF men’s team defeated Auburn, besting them by 1.58 seconds to take their third SEC Relay Title. Meanwhile, for the second time in the SEC meet, the No. 9-ranked UF women’s team went winless on the evening and were eliminated from winning an SEC championship.
Sophomores Caeleb Dressel and Jan Switkowski, junior Jack Blyzinskyj and senior Corey Main captured their second overall relay victory as a group in Columbia, Missouri. Their first came on Tuesday in the 200-yard medley relay.
Blyzinskyj also placed third in the 100-yard backstroke with a time of 45.66, which was 0.41 seconds slower than the winning time set by Alabama’s Connor Oslin.
With one day remaining in the SEC meet, the Gators lead the field with 982 points. They hold a slim 30-point lead over the Tigers.
Unlike the men’s team, the women’s team regressed. With no wins, zero podium finishes and a highest finish of sixth place in four total events on Friday, the Gators slid from fourth in the overall standings to sixth.
The most telling event for the UF women’s struggles came in the 400-yard medley relay. Senior Natalie Hinds, who had been unsuccessful finding any speed this week, was one of the four swimmers that was part of UF’s disappointing 10th place finish in the relay. It was the second time that the team finished 10th in the relays this week, tying their worst outing of all four relay events at the meet.
Trailing by 340.5 points to overall leader Texas A&M with one day of competition remaining, Friday’s poor performance eliminated the women’s team from winning an SEC championship for the first time since 2009.
The final round of the SEC championship meet begins Saturday at 10 a.m.
Contact Sean Doty at sdoty@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter @TheRealSeanDoty.
Caeleb Dressel touches the wall at the end of his leg of the 400 meter freestyle relay during Florida’s meet against Auburn on Jan. 23, 2016, in the O’Connell Center.
