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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

Anything but a 'Loozer'

IU men's swimming and diving coach Ray Looze had a moment of clarity as his team worked its way to a Big Ten title Saturday afternoon at the Student Recreational Sports Center's Counsilman-Billingsley Aquatics Center, \n"Sometimes you have a competition where everything clicks," Looze said. "The team was on auto-pilot. There was a point where I put my stopwatch down and just watched."\nIt's been a long time since a men's swim coach at IU has had the ability to savor a Big Ten Championship like that.\nIf the time span between men's swimming and diving Big Ten titles was measured under societal law, its first legal beer would have been cracked this weekend. It's been 21 years since legendary IU coach James 'Doc' Counsilman led his Hoosier squad to a Big Ten title in 1985. Most students probably have no clue, but at one point IU was the school for men's swimming. Under Counsilman, the team won 20 straight Big Ten titles from 1961-1980 and six straight NCAA Championships from 1968-1973. He produced perhaps the most well-known American swimmer of all-time, Mark Spitz. Spitz's seven gold medals at the 1976 Olympics is still a record today.\nLooze inherited the program in 2002 and vowed to return the team to its prestige of yesteryear. After finishing three points behind Minnesota last season at the Big Ten Championship, this year he took the team back to the top of the mountain.\n"The guys on the team really believed in what they were doing," Looze said. "I have to give them all the credit in the world."\nAlthough Looze might point to his team as the reason for the championship, he's no stranger to success. As a swimmer at University of Southern California, he finished second in the 400-yard individual medley at the NCAA Championships in 1990 and placed in the top 10 in eight different NCAA events during his career.\nBefore coming to IU to coach, Looze helped get the University of Texas to the 1991 NCAA title as a graduate assistant and won four straight Big West Coach of the Year awards at the University of the Pacific.\nThat's a lot of years, championships and awards to swallow, but there's a reason for the list.\nIt's to emphasize that success, awards and accolades seem to follow Looze wherever he goes. Accomplishments cling to him like paparazzi snapping pictures of Hollywood socialites. He simply can't shake or avoid them.\nThis man is a winner, and he's surrounding himself with winners as well -- like another one of IU's legendary coaches, former men's soccer coach Jerry Yeagley.\n"He was still coaching when I got here," Looze said of Yeagley. "He's a good mentor more than anything else and is very generous with his time speaking on the phone with me. I ask him advice on general things that cross over\nall sports like recruiting and where to focus it. If I could ever be a percent of what he was -- that's my goal."\nAfter this weekend's victory, Looze's goal might have already been reached.

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