Men's swim team sweep, women's split

IU swimming Coach Ray Looze had an almost endless list of swimmers to praise after Friday’s meet.

The men’s team saw contributions all across the board in its 208-92 and 179-121 sweep of Kentucky and No. 8 Tennessee, respectively.

“We put emphasis on this meet all week long,” Looze said. “We couldn’t be happier going against two solid SEC opponents.”

Senior swimmer Eric Ress won the 200-meter backstroke and both the 500-meter and 1,000-meter freestyle. Looze said such a race load was uncommon, and the result was the kind of aggression he was looking for out of his swimmers.

“For a guy to be able to do that and then still throw up a great relay split on the end was phenomenal leadership,” Looze said.

Ress said the team trained even harder this past week than it had previously.

“Basically what we did this week was we took what we did at Texas/Michigan and worked out a lot of those things like really good finishes and winning close races, just being more competitive at practice,” Ress said.

The Hoosiers went 1-2-3 in the 200-meter freestyle with freshmen Anze Tavcar, Max Irwin and Jackson Miller finishing first, second and third, respectively.

IU’s relay team of senior James Wells, senior Cody Miller, Irwin and sophomore Tanner Kurz won the 200-meter medley relay. Other first-place finishes included Miller in the 100-meter breaststroke and 200-meter individual medley, and junior Steve Schmuhl in the 200-meter butterfly.

Ress said the biggest difference in team results this week was encouragement from teammates.

“At first, I didn’t know how much of an impact that was going to have, but it was incredible how much having everybody cheer and be really loud motivated everyone,” he said.

Looze is confident in the progress his team is making from week to week.

“By February or March we’re going to end up with a great team that has a chance to be top five in NCAA’s because of what we’ve been through over the past several weeks,” he said.

The women’s team earned another split this weekend, beating Kentucky handily 199-95 and losing to No. 8 Tennessee 171-123.

The team was shorthanded this week with the absence of senior Kait Flederbach, who was ill. Senior Allie Day also missed practice at the beginning of the week due to illness but was still able to compete.

“This was an opportunity for others to step up,” Looze said. “We showed such toughness and fought tooth and nail to the end.”

Sophomore Brooklynn Snodgrass, freshman Gia Dalesandro, senior Bronwyn Pasloski and senior Stephanie Armstrong opened the meet with a second-place finish in the 200-meter medley relay. The Hoosiers went 1-3 in the 100-meter backstroke with Snodgrass finishing first and Day, third.

Last week’s Big Ten Freshman of the Week, Olivia Barker, was second in the 200-meter butterfly, posting a season-best time of 1:58.88.

In diving, senior Kate Hillman finished second in the 3-meter competition and was third on the 1-meter.

With the absence of senior diver Darian Schmidt due to injury, the men’s team had to show its depth competing against two of the top diving programs in the country.

Senior Emad Abdelatif won the 1-meter springboard competition with a personal best 350.20 points. Seniors Bryce Ogden and Conor Murphy then went 2-3 in the 3-meter.

“Today was a marked improvement on their consistency,” head diving Coach Drew Johansen said. “All the scores were higher than what they’ve been, and the misses they had were not substantial misses.”

Looze was complimentary of the divers as well in being able to come through to help them win.

“Just in general, to see IU diving show their depth and the fact that anybody can step up and get the job done against this kind of competition was great,” he said.

Follow reporter Grace Palmieri on Twitter @gpalmieri7.