GENEVA, OHIO â€" After dropping to third place on two different occasions Thursday, the Florida Southern Moccasins  moved back into second once, but weren’t quite able to make up the difference the second time it happened. Even so, on a day where the Mocs had no qualifiers in two of the six events held, they still reached the halfway point of the NCAA Division II National Swimming and Diving Championships only 17 points out of second after three individuals and one relay team reached the finals on day two.

Thursday figured to be Florida Southern’s most challenging day when it came to scoring. The Moccasins had no one in the 400-yard IM, and one of the two diving events of the championships was also scheduled for Thursday. (The Moccasins have no divers.) Yet they barely lost ground when junior Allan Gutierrez (San Pedro Sula, Honduras) and sophomore Edson Lima (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) both reached the finals of the 100-yard butterfly as double-digit seeds, and junior Luis Rojas (Caracas, Venezuela) advanced to the 200-freestyle finals as the #29 seed. They also got strong showings from two different relay teams, with the 400-medley group reaching the championship finals as well.

The 200-yard freestyle relay team was the first to compete on Thursday, with senior Robbie Swan (Snellville, Ga.), Gutierrez, senior Zach Edwards (Jacksonville, Fla.) and freshman Diego Gimenez (Burgos, Spain) missing a spot in the finals by the slimmest of margins. Their preliminary time of 1:21.24 was one one-hundredth of a second away from eighth place, but it still landed them in the consolation finals which they won in a school-record time of 1:20.20. The Mocs achieved that with Swan and Gutierrez in the first two positions, and Rojas and Lima in the second two. Rojas had the fastest 50-yard leg at 19.83 seconds.

That kept Florida Southern two points ahead of UC-San Diego, but with no one in the 400-yard IM, the Moccasins dropped 16 points behind the Tritons after the next event. The roles were reversed in the 100-yard butterfly, where UC-San Diego had no one make the finals, but Florida Southern had both Lima and Gutierrez. Lima reached the finals by swimming the prelims in a school-record time of 47.91 seconds, which topped the previous mark of 48.57 set by Gutierrez earlier this year at the Sharks Invitational. It was also the fastest time in the 100-butterfly ever recorded by a swimmer in the Sunshine State Conference. In Thursday night’s finals though, Gutierrez bested Lima by 0.06 seconds as they finished sixth and seventh respectively. Their 25 combined points put Florida Southern back into second in the team standings with a 9-point lead over UC-San Diego.

Rojas led Florida Southern in the 200-yard freestyle, reaching the finals with a sixth-place finish in the prelims after his seed time was 29th. He wasn’t the only big mover for the Moccasins either. Junior Jesus Marin (Cumana, Venezuela) entered the NCAA Championships as the #24 seed in the 200-freestyle, but earned a spot in the consolation finals with his best time of the season too. Rojas ended up eighth in the championship finals, and Marin was fifth in the consolation race.

That expanded the Mocs’ lead over UC-San Diego, which again had no qualifiers, but a new team moved into third place on the team board, with Wayne State (MI) replacing the Tritons. The Warriors even made up enough ground with two swimmers in the 200-freestyle to assume the same 9-point deficit the Tritons had faced.

Wayne State moved ahead of Florida Southern with its 16 points in the 1-meter diving competition before the two schools would go head-to-head in the finals of the 400-yard medley relay. Wayne State finished second to out-score Florida Southern by 10 points in that event, with the Mocs’ team of senior Thomas Nguyen (Snellville, Ga.), junior Spencer Rowe (Chattanooga, Tenn.), Lima and Swan placing seventh in a time of 3:16.17.

Drury (MO) continued to lead the field with 276½ points, Wayne State had 182, and Florida Southern had 165. Queens (NC) was running fourth with 143 points, and UC-San Diego was fifth with 135.

Day three of the NCAA Championships begins with prelims at 10:30 a.m. Friday, and finals in five events at 6 p.m.