Florida’s men’s swimming team moved up to eighth place in the standings following a strong performance on day two of the NCAA Championships at the Weyerhaeuser King County Aquatic Center.  Florida sits behind Indiana with a total of 140 points.  Just four points separate the seventh through ninth place teams.

“We were better today and we were happy with the way that the team responded,” said head coach Gregg Troy.  “We had a lot of guys respond well after our start yesterday and we’re getting better each session and are looking to be even better again tomorrow.”

The Gators used three top-eight finishes from Clark Burckle, Bradley Ally and Shaune Fraser to complete their climb up the standings on the second day of competition.  Ally led the trio with a third place finish in the 400 individual medley with the sixth fastest time in school history of 3:43.59.  The junior bettered his preliminary time by 2.75 seconds while Burckle was just off Ally’s touch with a time of 3:43.68 to place fourth.  Burckle swam the fastest qualifying time of the morning with a career best time of 3:42.82 to claim the fourth fastest time in school history.

After swimming the second fastest time in school history of 1:33.15 in the fourth heat of the preliminaries, Fraser returned to place fifth in the championship final with a time of 1:33.53. 

Omar Pinzon turned in a 13th place finish of 47.33 in the 100 back, after placing fifth in the consolation final.  For Pinzon, it was his second consolation final of the night as he swam the first leg of the 200 medley relay team that finished fourth in the consolation with a time of 1:27.53 for a 12th place overall finish.  Freshman Joey Pedraza earned the first All-American honors of his career swimming the breast stroke leg and was followed by Tim Hughes in the butterfly and Daniel Penniman swimming the freestyle anchor leg.

Swimming in the third heat and final heat of the evening, the 800 free relay team quartet of Grant Johnson, Fraser, Ally and Roland Rudolf notched a sixth place finish with a time of 6:24.03. 

The final day of competition will get underway at noon pacific time tomorrow as the preliminaries kick off the festivities.  Timed finals of the 1,650 freestyle will begin at 5:00 PT with the final heat being swum as part of the finals.  The last set of championship and consolation finals will begin at 7 p.m. PT (10 p.m. ET).  All sessions of the championships final day can be seen live via www.swimmingworldmagazine.com.  Live results can be found on www.ncaaswim.com. 

For preliminary results from today’s action please visit www.gatorzone.com.

Top 10 Teams:

1. Arizona               316              6. Michigan              197

2. Texas                 285              7. Indiana                141

3. Stanford              231              8. Florida                140

4. California             222.5            9. Georgia               137

5. Auburn                213              10. Tennessee          119