If yesterday was good for the USC Trojans, then today was great. A day after being topped by Cal in the fastest dual meet of the year, the Trojan 400 Free Relay broke the pool record, set yesterday by California, to clinch a 123-120 win over second-ranked Stanford.

Stanford started the day looking deeply in need of graduated seniors Jayme Cramer, Matt MacDonald, and Peter Marshall. Aside from Hongzhe Sun's lead off 47.25, no Stanford swimmer was within 8/10 of their USC counterpart as the Trojans cruised to something not often seen in high level competition-a three second win.

Sophomore Larsen Jensen set his third pool record of the weekend adding the 1650y free, in a time of 14:50.39, to the 500y free and 1000y free he smashed yesterday. The mark was previously held by Erik Vendt with a time of 14:54.30 set in 2003.

Ous Mellouli gave the Cardinal their third straight win. Out a little more conservatively than yesterday, Mellouli needed it as Andy Grant pulled even and held steady stroke for stroke going into the 150 before Mellouli pulled ahead for the win in 1:34.70.

A day after getting skunked in the 50, the Trojans looked to Sean Sussex who won in 20.06, just 0.01 off his own pool record. Beyond Sussex however, USC failed to crack the 21.0 mark giving Stranford its best event of the meet, holding the line with 2nd, 3rd and 4th respectively. The win stretched USC's lead to a two-event margin.

Stanford cut that margin in half during the 200 IM. USC's Viktor Bodrogi jumped out early and built up a body length lead at the 100, but Stanford's Tobias Oriwol evened the score by the end of the breaststroke and put the finishing touches on in the final fifty.

Stanford continued to whittle away at the lead when Dwight Dumais won the 1m board. Next Sam Masson set the 200 fly record for the second straight day, winning in 1:44.73.

Mellouli picked up his second win of the meet, taking the 100 free in 43.78 to Jason Dunford's 44.04, while Hongzhe Sun captured the 200 back in 1:42.86 and cut the Trojan lead to five.

Larsen Jensen doubled that margin though. Throughout the event he flirted with his recently-minted record, before finally settling in with a 4:17.18, just off yesterday's mark of 4:17.09. Jensen displayed much more closing speed than yesterday against Cal's Daniel Lysaught, perhaps a sign of what's to come in the next month.

Back-to-back wins by Dumais on the 3m board and Paul Kornfeld in the 200 breast meant the meet would go down to the wire with the fastest relay providing the winning margin.

With the meet at stake, USC led off with Sean Sussex posting a 44.22 to Jason Dunford's 44.27. On the strength of his start Andy Grant snatched the lead from the Trojans and handed it off to Matt Crowe. Crowe did his share in holding off Bryce Elser but Kyle Ransom could do nothing to stop Out Mellouli who, after four attempts, finally got his pool record.

End result

This concludes the dual-meet season for the Trojans, they return to action at the Pac-10 Tournament in Washington on March 1.