IU swim and dive finishes second at Big Ten

An IU diving sweep and a strong final day led the men’s swimming and diving team to a second-place finish at the Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Senior Darian Schmidt won both the 1-meter and 3-meter titles, and was named Big Ten Diver of the Year and Big Ten Diver of the Championships for the second straight year.

“The whole team really did a great job,” IU Coach Drew Johansen said. “Everybody contributed. I don’t know how many personal bests or season bests we had, but it’s just been an exciting three days and a lot of fun.”

On the 3-meter springboard, four IU divers finished in the top eight. Freshman Joshua Arndt placed third, senior Emad Abdelatif placed fifth and senior Conor Murphy placed seventh.

Murphy was the platform champion with 434.85 points, completing a sweep of the diving events.

Both Murphy and Schmidt were first-team All-Big Ten honorees.

Johansen was named the Big Ten Diving Coach of the Year in his first year at IU.

“It’s an incredible honor,” he said. “I’m humbled by it. But, the team did great. We defended two titles, which is one of the hardest things to do in sports. That recognition is 100 percent because of the divers.”

For the swimmers, championship season didn’t get off to a very strong start, IU Coach Ray Looze said.

The first night, IU finished fourth in both the 200-yard medley relay and the 800-yard freestyle relay. Despite setting two top-five times in school history, they fell to fourth place going into day two.

The Hoosiers went 3-4-5 in the 200-yard individual medley during the second day of competition.

Junior Steve Schmuhl posted an NCAA A-cut qualifying time of one minute 42.05 seconds, a career best and the third-fastest time in school history.

The 400-yard medley relay team of senior Eric Ress, senior Cody Miller, freshman Max Irwin and senior James Wells set a new school record to finish third.

Miller said having a less experienced team hindered the Hoosiers’ performance during the first few days.

“I think the majority of the guys on the team are freshman, if not maybe some sophomores, but we’re really a very young team,” he said. “It’s the first Big Tens for a lot of people, and it’s a lot of pressure.”

IU had climbed to second place after the second day with 216 points, still far behind Michigan’s 308.

Miller, Ress, freshman Anze Tavcar and junior Yianni Thermos started the third-day finals with a fifth-place finish in the 200-yard freestyle relay.

Schmuhl was third in the 400-yard individual medley.

Irwin made his first championship final in an individual event as he placed eighth with 47.76 seconds, just off his career-best prelim time of 47.67 seconds.

In the 100-yard backstroke, IU went 3-4, with Ress third and Wells fourth.

While his upperclassmen stepped up toward the end of the meet, Looze said his team’s lack of depth has been a recurring problem.

“We need to get deeper, but we knew that coming in,” he said. “Our freshmen struggled in the meet, and that’s something as a coaching staff we need to adjust.”

It wasn’t until the final day of competition the Hoosiers got their first win of the meet.

Ress completed his Big Ten backstroke career with a new school and Big Ten meet record. He won the 200-yard backstroke with a time of one minute 38.89 seconds.

Just minutes later, Miller made history by becoming only the second IU swimmer ever to win an event four consecutive years. He won the 200-yard breaststroke in one minute 52.58 seconds, the second-fastest time in school history.

Miller said although the thought of making history crossed his mind, he was focused on scoring points for the team.

“We hadn’t had any individual wins in any of the swimming events until the last day, and about 30 minutes before the race, Eric won the 200 backstroke,” he said. “I knew I had to win my race after that because that just fired me up.”

IU finished with 564 points. This is the second year in a row the Hoosiers have fallen short of the reigning NCAA Champion Michigan.

Looze said even with their fastest times, they had no chance of winning.

“What I’m most proud about is we took what we had and maximized it,” he said. “We really didn’t have our A game, but we finished the highest we possibly could. Even if we had our A game, we were not going to defeat Michigan, they’re just too good.”

The team now looks to the NCAA Championships four weeks away.

Last year the men’s team finished ninth. Miller said although they placed fourth in individual points, their relays held them back — that will be a focus of practice during the coming weeks.

“The bottom line is we need to do a better job of getting them prepared both mentally and physically for this,” Looze said. “The good news is we got NCAAs coming up in four weeks, and hopefully we can go into that meet, which is even more important than this, and swim faster.”