He's an amazing kid, ... He's a really good team person. He's always helping people. He's got only one B since he's been at Cal. He's an impressive young man. He's a good person, a leader.

In swimming, when you head into championships, it gets worse before it gets better because when you start resting up, you get a bit sluggish the last couple of meets before it.

It's what you think and how you think-confidence. If you believe you can do it, you can. If you don't, it doesn't matter how good you are, you'll never do it.

It's kind of like a funnel. Meets are just stops along the way and everything funnels down to that goal.

At the beginning of the year, I felt we were a good team with the ability to be great. I still do. We just need to push a little harder.

Everyone's on the same page and they all enjoy being around each other. They know what they have to do and they do it. For many years I couldn't say that.

(To win) we need to make our best times, but this meet will also be determined a lot by the people who get second, third and fourth because that's more points that we can take away from them.

We know the level of competition (we will face) and we're optimistic at this point.

We have a lot of motivation. We're currently No. 1 in the country and for some guys, it's the last swim of their (regular season) college careers.

We had a lot of best times and we've got 16 or 18 going to the NCAA-that's about a whole team-and I'm happy about that.