The No. 14 UCLA swimming and diving team split its first weekend of Pac-10 meets in Arizona, suffering its first loss of the season Saturday to the No. 2 Arizona Wildcats.
The Bruins (5-1, 2-1 Pac-10) won nine of the 14 events Friday against unranked Arizona State, with double wins from senior Nicolette Teo and junior diver Marisa Samaniego.
Teo gave a standout performance in the 100-yard breaststroke, with a time of 1 minute, 2.11 seconds, and in the 200 breaststroke with a time of 2:15.00, blowing away her competition by a considerable distance.
“Nicolette did an awesome job today,” swim coach Cyndi Gallagher told uclabruins.com. “She won by two seconds in the 100 and over four seconds in the 200. She got out of her comfort zone and was really focused today.”
For the divers, Samaniego won the 1-meter event by a considerable margin, beating second-place Sun Devil diver Brittany Jumer by 30 points with a score of 282.02 and also winning the 3-meter event with a score of 308.48.
With a team stacked with many freshmen, this was the first Pac-10 meet for many of the swimmers, but nerves did not seem affect their performances.
Freshman Emily Bibb won the 500 freestyle in 4:55.13, while Sam Vanden Berge won the 1,000 freestyle in 10:09.10. Lauren Hall also notched a win in the 400 individual medley with her time of 4:19.67.
“We used Lauren a lot today and she stepped up and swam great,” Gallagher said. “She had one of the fastest splits of the day in the 400 free relay right after winning the 400 IM.”
On Saturday, the Bruins faced an Arizona team that Gallagher had earlier predicted would win a national championship.
“Arizona is just a really tough team, and we knew that coming in,” Gallagher said.
But the Bruins didn’t completely allow the Wildcat’s rank to intimidate them.
While only two UCLA swimmers earned first-place finishes, it was Teo once again who won the 100 breaststroke with a time of 1:02.56.
Junior Anna Poteete, the other first-place finisher, won the 100 freestyle in 50.62. She had also taken first place in the 200 freestyle Friday.
Samaniego had a repeat performance, again winning the 1-meter and 3-meter events with scores of 278.35 and 268.90, respectively.
“Marisa had a really good weekend, winning four events,” dive coach Tom Stebbins said, according to uclabruins.com.
“As a team, we looked a little tired in the second event of the day. Overall it was a good meet.”