The Arizona men’s swim team is tied with California for first place after the first day of the Pacific 10 Conference championships. Arizona and California have 72 points apiece while Stanford comes in at a close third with 68 points of its own.

“”We like to think this is a great way to start,”” UA head coach Frank Busch said of Wednesday’s performances. “”We feel like we’re ready to swim fast, and they’re doing it right now.””

In their opening event of the meet, the 200-yard medley relay team of Ivan Tolic, Marcus Titus, Bryan O’Connor and Jordan Smith finished third with a time of 1:25.23, which is good enough to qualify for the upcoming NCAA meet.

Arizona showed even better in the 800y freestyle relay, with Jean Basson, Nicolas Nilo, Nimrod Shapira Bar-Or and Joel Greenshields finishing in 6:14.82 seconds and setting a new Pac-10 meet record. That number was just enough to top second-place Stanford, who lost by 0.02 seconds, and also earned Arizona another NCAA qualifying time.

“”That was pretty special,”” Busch said. “”We’ve won that relay four years in a row. Those guys did a great job, and winning any relay in (a) conference is exciting.””

Despite that event being so close, Arizona and Stanford had no other competition, with third-place California coming in almost six seconds after the two frontrunners.

Meanwhile, freshman Jordan Slaughter compiled an NCAA ‘B’ cut time of 1:43.70 in the 200y butterfly. His time is ranked 20th in the country, and Busch said he has a good chance of making it to the championships, which will feature between 23 and 24 swimmers.