With late wins in Sunday’s high performance portion of the Pacific-10 Conference Championships, the Men of Troy staved off Oregon and Arizona to capture the school’s fourth Pacific-10 Conference title in men’s competition.
USC Director of Track and Field Ron Allice thought the win for his men’s team was especially satisfying considering the level of competition at the meet.
“It doesn’t get any better than this,” Allice said. “When you look at the scores, this is really a special conference … There’s no other conference in the country that can balance like this … everybody has quality athletes and we were fortunate to come out on top.”
The Trojans led the Ducks by four and a half points heading into the final event, the 4×400-meter relay. The Trojans’ foursome needed at least a third-place finish to clinch the team title – it did even better.
The Trojans never fell out of the top three spots in the race en route to a first-place time of 3:05.7, the exclamation point for Allice’s men.
“They had to get third, but they ran to win,” Allice said.
Oregon finished second in the 4×400 relay at 3:06.74, which gave the Ducks eight team points. They ended with 133.5 points, the Trojans took first with 140.
Arizona followed Oregon in third place at 120.
Oregon coach Vin Lananna felt the meet could not have gone better for his men who were 6.5 points shy of becoming the program’s second team to win consecutive titles at this event in nearly 30 years.
“Their effort was fabulous,” Lananna said of his athletes. “The men’s team – what could be better? It came down to the four by four. It doesn’t get any better than that except for maybe a different conclusion. … My hat goes off to this wonderful group of people.”
Despite finishing second as a team, Oregon athletes took first in three events on Sunday and added nine top-five finishes.
Sprinter Richard Del Rincon was a workhorse for Lananna’s Ducks. The senior from LaMesa, Calif., ran in three events and finished in the top three in each. He took second in the 100 meters and third in the 200 roughly 45 minutes later.
Del Rincon also ran the opening leg of the 4×100 relay, which the Ducks won for the first time in school history.
“I felt great out there. It was a great day for racing,” he said after the relay. “I’m blessed to be running for such a great program.”
The win in the relay did not come easy for the Ducks. The race was in a dead heat through the first three legs until Oregon’s Jordan Kent and USC’s Roy Alugbue exploded into the lead off the Bowerman Curve.
As they bore down to the finish line, Kent inched ahead for the win at 39.74, which sent the record-setting crowd of 7,060 at Hayward Field into a frenzy.
Del Rincon said it would notbe the last win for Oregon in the 4×100 relay.
Teammate Matt Scherer also had a busy second day of the meet. Scherer handled the second leg of both relays plus the 200.
Additionally, he clocked the nation’s fastest time in the 400 this season at 45.19. It gave the senior from Sumner, Ill., the first individual track title of his career.
His win combined with Oregon’s second-place finish left Scherer torn after the meet.
“We would’ve liked first, but second is nothing to be ashamed of,” he said.
His classmate A.K. Ikwuakor felt similarly.
“It’s a heart-breaker,” Ikwuakor said. “But it had nothing to do with how we competed.”
Ikwuakor came into the meet hoping to finish close with his teammate Eric Mitchum in the 110 and 400-meter hurdles. They shared the podium in the 110 hurdles with Mitchum taking first at 13.54 and Ikwuakor third at 14.00.
The seniors finished fourth and fifth in the 400 hurdles, respectively.
Washington’s Shane Charles broke the school record in that same event. Charles won with a time of 49.51.
Oregon’s Galen Rupp saw duty Saturday and Sunday with the 10,000 and 5,000, respectively. He finished in the top three in both races behind Robert Cheseret, who accounted for 30 of Arizona’s points.
Cheseret ended the meet with a conference-best eight career titles in distance events. He took first in the 10,000, 5,000 and 1,500.
“I came here hoping to win all three events and I did. I’m happy with that,” Cheseret said.
On the apron, Norris Frederick of Washington and Jesse Williams of USC battled to top-three marks in both the high jump and long jump.
Frederick’s personal best height of 7 feet, 3 inches came short of upsetting the defending national champion in the high jump. Williams’ did not try to match his personal best height of 7-6 1/2 and ended at 7-6.
“I was heavily favored and needed to win,” Williams said. “Once I had the win, it was all for fun.”
Frederick won the long jump on Saturday. He edged Williams and Arizona’s Jordan Powell with a distance of 25-10.
Ryan Zimmerman of Arizona State took first in the triple jump with a distance of 53-3.
One of the biggest factors in deciding the team winner on Sunday was track events. With almost every third-place or top-five effort an Oregon runner delivered, a Trojan countered by taking first in the same event.
Philip Francis and Duane Solomon of USC combined for wins in the 100, 200 and 800. Both saw action on Allice’s relay teams.
The win for USC offered solace to the school who lost point guard Ryan Francis on Saturday. The freshman was shot and killed while visiting his mother in Louisiana.
“Yesterday morning was hard for all of us at this school. He was a strong young man,” Allice said of Francis.
USC athletes painted Francis’ initials and jersey number 12 on their faces for Sunday.
“You all helped this school and the administration take a step forward today,” Allice told his athletes after the meet.