Men's meet breaks 7 world, 8 NCAA records

The No. 9 Arizona men's swim and dive team completed the 2004 NCAA Championships Saturday in fourth place with 322 points. There were seven world, eight American, 15 U.S. Open and eight NCAA records broken thought the course of the meet.

To start the evening's action, UA sophomore Tyler DeBerry finished the 1500-meter freestyle in 11th place with a time of 15:09.31.

Senior Eric La Fleur finished seventh in the 100-meter freestyle championship finals with a time of 48.13. Sophomores Lyndon Ferns and Simon Burnett qualified for the consolation finals of the 100m freestyle. Ferns finished third in the heat (48.37) and Burnett finished seventh (49.13).

Senior Greg Owen finished seventh in the championship finals of the 200-meter breaststroke in a time of 2:10.05, and senior Juan Veloz finished the 200-meter butterfly seventh at 1:56.06.

Senior Josh Anderson qualified for the finals of the platform diving competition, finishing fourth overall with 515.80 points. Anderson posted 15 team points, contributing to the Wildcats' fourth-place finish.

The 400m free relay team of La Fleur, Ferns, Burnett and freshman Adam Ritter completed the championships by finishing third with a time of 3:13.18.

"It was a great team effort by all of these athletes," said head coach Frank Busch, "We lost one of our best swimmers (senior Luis Rojas) before entering this meet, and no one in their wildest dreams thought that we would finish as well as we did."