{"id":525599,"date":"2023-03-23T09:02:52","date_gmt":"2023-03-23T16:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=525599"},"modified":"2023-03-23T09:10:37","modified_gmt":"2023-03-23T16:10:37","slug":"ncaa-mens-championships-destin-lasco-takes-200-im-top-seed-sets-up-showdown-with-leon-marchand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/ncaa-mens-championships-destin-lasco-takes-200-im-top-seed-sets-up-showdown-with-leon-marchand\/","title":{"rendered":"NCAA Men’s Championships: Destin Lasco Takes 200 IM Top Seed, Sets up Showdown With Leon Marchand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arizona State’s Leon Marchand<\/strong> had two great swims on the Wednesday night relays to open the meet, nearly chasing down Texas in the 800 free relay to open the 2023 NCAA Division I Men’s Championships from Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

He picked up right where he left off in his first individual event of the meet, the 200 IM, but Cal’s Destin Lasco<\/strong> beat him by a hundredth of a second to take the top seed.<\/p>\n

Coming into the meet, the NCAA record was 1:37.69, set by Marchand at last year’s NCAA Championships.<\/p>\n

Marchand is aiming to be the first repeat winner in the 200 IM since Texas’ Will Licon<\/strong> in 2016-17. Only Licon and Ryan Lochte<\/strong> have been repeat champions in the event since 2000.<\/p>\n

The Arizona State swimmer went\u00a01:38.33 in prelims to take the second seed. He clearly shut it down a bit during the final 15-20 yards of the race after building an insurmountable lead.<\/p>\n

Marchand trailed after the butterfly leg of the race, but then took the lead during the backstroke. As expected, he slowly built his lead during the breaststroke leg and had clear water the entire freestyle leg.<\/p>\n

But he was a hundredth of a second short of the top seed for tonight’s final.<\/p>\n

The top overall seed went to Cal junior Destin Lasco<\/strong>, who broke the pool record to touch the wall in 1:38.32.<\/p>\n

Marchand was second in 1:38.33, also breaking the previous pool record set by Florida’s Jan Switkowski<\/strong> in 2018 (1:39.54).<\/p>\n

NC State’s Arsenio Bustos<\/strong> took the third seed in 1:40.24, followed by Texas junior Carson Foster<\/strong> (1:40.56), Cal fifth-year Hugo Gonzalez<\/strong> (1:40.57), Texas A&M freshman Baylor Nelson<\/strong> (1:41.01), Stanford sophomore Ron Polonsky<\/strong> (1:41.14) and Texas senior Jake Foster<\/strong> (1:41.52).<\/p>\n