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FEDERAL WAY, Washington, March 24. ARIZONA's Cory Chitwood had just enough in the tank to capture his third straight victory in the men's 200-yard back at the NCAA Division I Men's Championships.
Chitwood, who has struggled so far this meet, had his best race of the meet when he needed it to defend his titles from 2010 and 2011. He clocked a 1:39.66 to hold off Stanford's David Nolan (1:39.74) in the closest 200-yard backstroke swim in NCAA Championships history. The .08-second differential broke the previous record of .10 set by L.B. Schaefer of Ohio State (1:58.7) in his triumph over Princeton's Jed Graef (1:58.8) way back in 1962.
Chitwood's third triumph in a row moved him into a second place tie with Texas' Rick Carey, Indiana's Charlie Hickcox and Stanford's Sean Murphy as other three-time winners. John Naber of USC and Yoshi Oyakawa of OSU accomplished career sweeps of the 200 back.
Stanford's Matt Thompson (1:41.81), California's Mathias Gydesen (1:42.21), USC's Alex Lendrum (1:42.29), Eastern Michigan's Jacob Hanson (1:42.32) and Auburn's Max Murphy (1:44.19) also competed for the NCAA title.
California's Marcin Tarczynski led the B final in 1:41.97, while Ohio State's Andrew Elliott took second in 1:42.23. Michigan State's Jacob Jarzen (1:42.71), Texas' Austin Surhoff (1:43.05), Texas' Kip Darmody (1:43.09), Virginia Tech's Zach McGinnis (1:43.21), Arizona's Michael Sheppard (1:43.66) and Texas' Cole Cragin (1:44.71) also swam for team points in the consolation heat.
California cracked 400 with a team-leading 408.5 points. Texas stood second with 364.5 points, while Stanford (348), Arizona (305) and Michigan (230) made up the rest of the top five.
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