IU joins five ranked teams in championships

In their last dual meet of the year, the unranked Hoosiers took the 21st ranked Purdue Boilermakers by surprise, winning in convincing fashion. Now, the Hoosiers hope it's time to take the rest of the conference by surprise when the Big Ten championship meet begins today at the Counsilman-Billingsley Aquatic Center and continues through Saturday. \n"We need to make this the best meet of the year to date," Coach Kris Kirchner said. "We need to be swimming faster than we ever have before."\nThe opening session will feature a pair of sprint freestyle events. The meet kicks off with the 200-yard freestyle relay. IU's squad of sophomores Dale Ramsy, Claes Andersson, Mike Payne and freshman Nicolas Burgess hold the season's best time in the event. \n"Since the first of the year, our sprinters have really stepped up," Kirchner said. "In this meet, sprinters will be a major factor. You've got to have the arsenal of depth and experience, that is one thing that you've got to have in a championship situation. You cannot have too many sprint freestylers."\nThe sprint freestylers will return to the pool for the second-to-last swimming event of the first day, the 50-yard freestyle. Andersson holds the season best time (20.55), but Ramsy (20.59) and Payne (20.76) aren't too far behind. \n"I hope to make the finals for the 50," Andersson said. "It would help for the rest of the meet to get a good start in the 50. It's an important race." \nThe 500-yard freestyle will be held on the first day and the Hoosiers will look to freshman Richard Bryant to lead them in the race. Bryant has competed in the 200, 500 and 1650 freestyle races all year, at some meets one right after the other. But this weekend the three are held on three different days, making Bryant a greater threat in each of them. \n"I'm feeling good in training, and I want to make the finals in the 200, 500 and 1650," Bryant said. "I'm really looking forward to it. I can't wait." \nThe 200-yard individual medley and the 400-yard medley relay round out the first day's events. Junior co-captain David Schulze and freshman Murph Halasz will look to play prominent roles in both events. Sophomore backstroker Matt Leach will lead off the 400-yard medley relay, followed by breaststroker Schulze, butterflier Halasz and freestyler Andersson. \nThe meet marks the final Big Ten championship for lone senior and co-captain Heath Montgomery, who said he hopes to make the most of his opportunities.\n"I'm going in with a really positive attitude," Montgomery said. "It's my last one, so I've got to go in and do something special."\n As for the competition, the Big Ten conference holds five ranked teams: Minnesota (No. 6), Michigan (No. 10), Wisconsin (No. 16), Penn State (No. 20) and Purdue (No. 21). \n Minnesota, the defending Big Ten champion, has had a dominating season. The Golden Gophers went undefeated, including a win against IU Jan. 26. The trio of junior backstroker and freestyler Todd Smolinski, junior freestyler and butterflier Allen Ong and junior breaststroker Jeff Hackler have four Big Ten swimmer of the week awards between them and have led the Gophers all year. \n"We swam them with Iowa earlier in the year, and they looked really good," Montgomery said. "The score of that dual meet didn't really reflect how well we swam them. I think we have a great shot at racing them in all of their events. It'll just come down to who wants to race more."\nIn the meantime, Michigan comes in with an 8-3 record, all three losses coming at the hands of top-10 teams, including one to No. 1 Stanford. Michigan placed second to Minnesota in the Big Tens last year and had three Big Ten champions, two of whom, senior Tim Siciliano and sophomore Dan Ketchum, return this year. \n"We don't have the depth some of the teams have on paper," Kirchner said. "But, fortunately, athletic events don't happen on paper."\nKirchner said every event will be contested and that every hundredth of a second counts.\n"It'll be nail biting," Kirchner said. "It will be like the Super Bowl final kick every event. It'll be tough, and it'll be separated by hundredths of a second between first, second, third, eighth, ninth, sixteenth."\nPreliminaries begin at noon and finals at 7 p.m. each day. Tickets are $3 each session for students.