Greg Hansen: 'Completely irrelevant' just three years ago, Arizona men's swim team now a force again

Arizona finished 24th at the 2017 NCAA men’s swimming championships, which is a lot like Duke listed as “Last Four Out” in basketball’s NCAA bracketology.

The Wildcats were three spots ahead of Harvard, not exactly a swimming dynamo.

Among those on the deck in Indianapolis that day was Virginia head coach Augie Busch, who had been an Arizona assistant when the Wildcats won the men’s national title in 2008, finished second in 2006 and third in 2005 and 2007.

“They were completely irrelevant,” he remembers. “I knew it was a complete overhaul situation.”

Three months later Busch’s phone rang. Would he consider being the man to overhaul Arizona’s once-grand swimming program? He would.

Saturday night at the King County Aquatic Center near Seattle, Busch’s men’s team finished second at the Pac-12 championships. It was such news in the nation’s top swimming conference — Arizona is back! — that the Pac-12 Networks crew mentioned it four times in the final 10 minutes of the broadcast.

It might not be considered newsworthy to finish second in Pac-12 basketball or football, but since 1982 men’s swimming in the Pac-12 has been such a monopoly that California schools won all 39 championships and finished second 37 times.

ASU finished second in 1995 and Arizona did so in 1996. That’s it. Until Saturday, either Cal, Stanford, UCLA or USC had finished 1-2, or 2-1, for 23 consecutive years.

As Arizona proved in its glory days under Frank Busch — Augie’s dad — it’s ‘’easier” to finish first or second at the NCAA finals than it is at the Pac-12 championships, although “easier” isn’t a term Busch would use after three years of restoration work on Arizona’s swimming operation.

“There’s been a real urgency to get back to the accomplishments of the past,” he says. “In that regard, it was an incredibly successful week.”

Arizona hit bottom in 2017 when it scored 360 points in the Pac-12 finals. Compare that to the 748 the Wildcats scored in 2008, its national championship season. The program was void of NCAA champions.

Yet during Frank Busch’s years at Arizona, 1990-2011, the Wildcats produced an astonishing 92 individual and relay NCAA championships.

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In a blip on the swimming calendar, three intense years, Augie has shown that he has far more than his father’s good name; he also has his coaching chops. Not that it should surprise anyone in the swimming community; Busch’s women’s teams at Virginia twice finished No. 5 in the NCAA championships.

What’s remarkable about the reconstruction of a college swimming program is that the NCAA allows a ridiculously small 9.9 scholarships per team. You don’t just throw something against the wall and hope some of it sticks, or depend on a long-ago reputation.

You must smartly cobble together a roster or 25 or so swimmers and divers using those 9.9 scholarships. Any recruiting mistakes can follow you for years.

You don’t just get in line and say “I’ll take those guys Cal and Stanford didn’t want.”

At the Pac-12 meet, Busch’s recruiting diversity was like that of his father, who once acquired future Olympic swimmers from South Africa, Great Britain, Canada, Venezuela, you name it. On Saturday, Arizona got game-changing points from freshman platform diving champion Bjorn Markentin of Canada, freestyler Marin Ercegovic of Croatia, and versatile Etay Gurevich of Israel.

But no one had more of an impact than junior Brooks Fail of Catalina Foothills High School, who won the 1,650 freestyle and finished third in both the 500 freestyle and 200 butterfly.

Fail signed a partial scholarship before Busch was hired, but the development of the 6-foot 5-inch Tucsonan has become the cornerstone of the Busch II project.

“I couldn’t tell Brooks was special right away, but he’s got the heart of a lion and he’s become our bellcow,” says Busch. “He’s sort of like (2008 Olympic silver medalist) Lacey Nymeyer in that has an incredibly positive attitude works so hard every day, every set, every practice, and has a toughness you can’t coach.”

From 1998-2013, Arizona’s men’s swimmers finished in the NCAA’s top eight every season. That’s a Sweet 16 to hold dear. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for it to all come apart; once Frank Busch moved on to be the director of USA Swimming’s national teams, Arizona was not able to sustain its swimming prominence.

Given the events of last week, it’s conceivable that the Wildcats could be back in the Top 10 at the NCAA finals later this month in Indianapolis.

Talk about your quick fixes.

“We’re not rolling like we were in the 2000s,” Augie Busch says. “But I’d like to think we’ve close the gap.”