Team to defend title at invitational

Heading into this weekend's Indiana Invitational, the women's swimming and diving team is looking to defend last season's title. The Hoosier squad is also hoping to use the event to prepare for the U.S. Open Swimming and Diving events later this month and in early December, as well as to gear their progress toward the Big Ten and NCAA Championships in the spring.\nHead coach Dorsey Tierney said she looks at the invitational as a good chance for the Hoosiers to go through the grueling three-day schedule of events they will face at the upcoming championships.\n"I usually approach (the invitational) as an opportunity to run through the same schedules as the championships," Tierney said. "It is the same meet format, so they get a chance to practice their championship events."\nJunior Tina Gretlund said the format for the invitational will be a good chance for the team to work with the order of events they will face at the championship events.\n"(The invitational) is a good opportunity because it is the Big Ten's order and it has both prelims and finals," Gretlund said.\nWhile the Hoosiers will use the invitational to help them work on the schedule of the championship meets, junior Kristy Martin said it is more of a stepping stone for the Hoosiers and they won't rest for it like they typically would for a championship meet.\n"We have to go into it knowing it is a longer meet and we will be doing more events," Martin said. "But we aren't really resting for it, because it isn't a real big meet for us."\nTierney said she hopes the invitational will give her swimmers a chance to utilize some racing tactics and swim consistently, but knows it won't be easy over all three days.\n "This will be a true challenge for our consistency because it is a three-day event and it will be hard to maintain that intensity over all the days," Tierney said. "We also want to strategically race smart, being patient in the beginning so we can be great at the end of races."\n The Invitational will be held at the Counsilman-Billingsley Aquatics Center beginning this morning at 10 a.m. with preliminaries and finals 6 p.m. today. Events Saturday will be on the same schedule as Friday, but the events held Sunday will have preliminaries beginning at 10 a.m. and finals at 3 p.m. The No. 17 ranked Hoosiers go into the meet with a 2-0-1 dual meet record and will host No. 29 ranked Tennessee (2-1), Cincinnati (2-0), Evansville (1-1) and Kentucky (1-0) divers.\nDiving coach Jeff Huber is preparing his group of divers differently for this year's invitational. The Hoosiers are working on new dives and gearing their preparation for the spring meets. But Huber said he expects the competition for the invitational to help push his divers and help them gauge how far they need to go before February and March.\n"Tennessee is an outstanding team and Kentucky has some good divers, so it will be a very competitive meet," Huber said. "I think (the competition) will benefit us a lot. Whether we beat them or get beat by them, either way we are going to benefit from it so it will be good for us."\nThe invitational will also give the Hoosiers their first chance to compete in the 10-meter platform event. When initially asked what he will look for from his divers on the tower, Huber replied jokingly, "survival."\nHuber said he believes his divers will perform well on the platform, even though he thinks they might not be fully prepared to compete in the tower at this time in the season.\n"We have been working on a lot of new dives (on the tower)," he said. "We aren't quite ready; it's just a little early. We need about one more month and we would be ready up there, but we will do some good stuff"