2025 Men’s NCAA Champs: Day 4 Prelims Preview

2025 Men’s NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships

Day 4 Prelims Heat Sheet

The 4th and final day of the 2025 NCAA Men’s Swimming and Diving Championships is dawning, well, at least for those on the West Coast. There are five events on offer this morning, so teams will be looking to make the best of every opportunity as it is their last chance to get themselves into the points.

The morning session kicks off with the 200 backstroke (remember, the 1650 doesn’t occur until the afternoon), where Texas’s Hubert Kos will be looking for his 3rd NCAA title. The winner of the 200 IM and the 100 back, the Hungarian Olympian, has a chance for the sweep as he is the top seed, entered with a 1:35.72. However, things will be far from easy for him. He won his two events by a combined .09, and both Destin Lasco (2nd – 200 IM) and Jonny Marshall (2nd – 100 BK) will be looking for revenge. Lasco, who beat Kos for this title last year, is the 6th seed, while Marshall, a sophomore from Florida, joins Kos with a seed time under 1:36, having gone 1:35.85 earlier this season.

If the 200 back is a revenge tour, then the 100 free is a rubber match, as Jordan Crooks and Josh Liendo go head to head. Each has climbed to the top of the podium this week, with Crooks winning the 50 free and Liendo the 100 fly. Crooks beat Liendo in the 50 and holds the advantage here in the 100, but Liendo is the defending champion.  The pair entered with seeds of 40.26 and 40.45 and led the field by nearly half a second, but things got tight behind them as there were a further three swimmers who entered with sub-41 times, as Jack Alexy, Gui Caribe, and Jonny Kulow will like to spoil the Crooks/Liendo stranglehold at the top.

The 200 breaststroke, much like the stroke itself, is a bit of an outlier as, on paper, Matt Fallon is the clear favorite. The UPenn swimmer leads the field by almost a full second and is the highest-placed returner, having finished runner-up to Leon Marchand last year. Don’t start writing the obituaries for the field, however, as last year’s 3rd, 7th, and 8th place finishers all return as well and have been much faster. Carles Coll Marti of Virginia Tech leads the way in challenging Fallon. Coll Marti was seeded last season with a 1:51.28, but this year enters as the #2 seed with a 1:49.62. Fallon’s Ivy League rival Jack Kelly, too, finds himself under the 1:50 barrier as he is the #3 seed at 1:49.80.

The final swimming event of the morning sees recently minted NCAA record holder in the event, Luca Urlando, chasing after his first NCAA individual title. Urlando, who placed 2nd back in 2022, his last NCAA meet before this year, is entered with a seed time of 1:37.17, .9 clear of the next fastest competitor. While that is a large margin, like in the 200 BR, it would be wise to wait to hand out the prizes as ASU sophomore and Olympic bronze medalist and Short Course Worlds Gold medalist Ilya Kharun is the #2 seed. Kharun got the better of Urlando in the 100 fly, taking the silver by .06 and was .32 faster on the relay, so he has beaten the Bulldog twice already, but Urlando saw his 100 back NCAA record blown apart yesterday and is unlikely to want to see this one go too.

The mile is scheduled to kick off at 4 pm local with all but the final heat swimming (the top 8 will swim at night). David Johnston and Lucas Henveaux lead the way in the last heat, but we will discuss them more in the finals preview. The #9 seed and fastest swimmer in the earlier session in NC State, Lance Norris, who is entered with a 14:38.69. As the event is a timed final, Norris will be looking to post a time that bumps a few swimmers down the podium when the dust settles. His main competition in the morning is ASU’s Daniel Matheson, but keep your eyes on Florida’s Gio Lincsheer. The Gator will be swimming in heat 4 lane 1 but was the runner-up last year, having gone 14:36.01.