The No. 1 Arizona men’s swimming team knew it had to get as many swimmers as possible in the top five to maximize it’s chances of winning.

Day two of the Pacific 10 Conference championships in Long Beach, Calif. showed how true that was as the Wildcats managed win two of the four events, but still fell back to third place overall behind first-place Stanford and second-place California.

The meet started off well for Arizona as sophomore Jean Basson won the 500-yard freestyle and senior Matt Biel took sixth, but Stanford had a swimmer take second and third, which cut into the slim eight-point lead Arizona had to start the day.

The second event, the 200y individual medley, Arizona also won as senior Darian Townsend took first place with teammate Jack Brown finishing fifth. Stanford again had two swimmers in the top five with one finishing second and the other in fourth.

“”Cal and Stanford are swimming very well right now, we’re just trying to hang with them,”” said UA head swimming coach Frank Busch. “”But, winning two events tonight was pretty cool.””

The last two events of the night, 50y freestyle and 200y freestyle relay, was where Arizona lost the majority of its points. Senior Albert Subirats was the only Wildcat who qualified for the finals in the 50y freestyle but could only finish in seventh place behind three Golden Bear swimmers and three Stanford swimmers.

The 200y freestyle relay saw the Wildcats take third, again finishing behind Cal and Stanford with Cal winning the event.

After the second day of competition, Stanford leads with 277 points followed by Cal with 258 and Arizona with 240.

“”Our guys are battling and doing great,”” Busch said. “”It makes that much of a difference when not you’re not shaved for the sprint events, but we’re in there slugging away. It’s tough because we’ve got some really good sprinters in this conference. We’ve got so many kids swimming well right now. It’s awesome. We’re having a great meet so far.””