Conor Casey Sweeps Springboards as Stanford Men Take Pac-12 Diving Lead

Men’s Pac-12 Swimming & Diving Championships

• Wednesday, March 2- Saturday, March 5, 2022
• Swimming: Weyerhaeuser King County Aquatic Center- Federal Way, WA
• Diving: University of Arizona
• Defending Champion: Cal (4x)
• Diving Results

A second win by Stanford’s Conor Casey in springboard diving and another by USC’s Georgii Korovin on platform wasn’t enough, as it was the Stanford Cardinal who emerged from the diving portion of the Men’s Pac-12 Championships on top.

For the second-straight season, men’s and women’s diving was held separately from both swimming championships this week, with Arizona hosting.

After winning the 1-meter springboard event on Thursday, Stanford’s Conor Casey came back to win the 3-meter springboard on Friday. His margin there was 38 points, well ahead of Arizona’s Bjorn Markentin.

Casey has won three straight Pac-12 titles on 1-meter, while his 3-meter win was a third as well, though not consecutively: his teammate Noah Vigran won last year but has since graduated.

Then on Saturday, USC junior Georgii Korovin won his first Pac-12 title by topping the men’s platform event. His score of 373.95 was almost 30 points better than Utah’s Ben Smyth, the runner-up in the event.

Korovin had easily the highest degree of difficulties on his dive (total 18.5 across three dives, versus just 17.1 for Smyth), and even a low-scoring final dive that earned him 4s and 5s wasn’t enough to let Smyth close the gap much at all.

Below is the total scoring after the diving portion of the Pac-12 championships, with swimming scheduled to begin next Wednesday in Federal Way.

The 4-time defending conference champions from Cal didn’t enter any divers and didn’t score any points, so they will have to make up a 131-point deficit on their primary rivals for the team title, Stanford.

Last year, Cal was 85 points behind Stanford after diving, but still managed to claw back and win the meet by 182 points. But after Stanford beat the Bears by 12 points in a dual meet two weeks ago, the Cardinal confidence will be high and wanting to prove that they are a dramatically-improved team.

With a bigger deficit and a better Stanford team than last year, this meet becomes a little more interesting for the team title, though Cal are still the favorites. Arizona State, the team seeded to finish second (ahead of Stanford but behind Cal) by Swimulator calculations, scored 31 diving points.