Men place 3rd at Big Ten Championships

The situation was all too familiar to IU’s men’s swimming and diving team.

After the platform dive drew the Hoosiers 1.5 points away from second place at the Big Ten Championships on Saturday, with only the 400-yard freestyle relay left in the entire competition, the Hoosiers had one last chance to jump Ohio State in the standings.

The Hoosiers had done it before. On Friday, the 3-meter dive gave IU a lead against the Buckeyes, only for the team to lose it on the next race due to a false start on the final leg of the 400-yard medley relay.

On Saturday, however, the Hoosiers were unable to finish higher than Ohio State in the 400 free relay, sealing a third-place finish with a total of 549 points, only 3.5 behind second-place Ohio State. Michigan won the title with 738.5 points.

“There was just exceptional team chemistry,” IU Coach Ray Looze said. “With everything we had to overcome, disqualifying a relay and losing 32 points there and not giving up, and Ryan Hinshaw fighting through his serious back injury to score in two events, I just have so much respect for the men.”

Though IU started and ended the Big Ten Championships each day in third place, multiple record-setting dives and swims led by sophomore diver Darian Schmidt, sophomore swimmer Cody Miller and junior swimmer Sam Trahin allowed the Hoosiers to stay close to second-place Ohio State.

Before starting the Big Ten Championships, Schmidt had never even eclipsed 400 points during the 3-meter dive in multiple attempts throughout his career.

On Friday, that changed.

During preliminaries, Schmidt easily broke the 400-point barrier, scoring 445.90 — not only a career-best, but the IU record, as well. Later that night, Schmidt set the record yet again, scoring 459.30 in the finals, good for his first career Big Ten title.

The good fortunes continued for the Hoosiers as Miller, the defending Big Ten Champion in both the 100- and 200-yard breaststroke, won each title for the second straight year, and in a record-setting fashion, as well. In the 100-yard on Friday, Miller raced a career-best time of 52.34 in the process of earning his third career Big Ten title, a school record.

The following day, Miller raced the school’s second-best time ever of 1:54.07
en route to his fourth career title and second of the meet.

“I’m pretty happy with my 200 breast,” Miller said. “I really wanted to break 1:54, but I’m OK with it. When I bent over on the block, my suit ripped in the ass, and that got my adrenaline pumping, so I took it out a little fast and accidentally changed my
race strategy.”

Following Miller’s first title in the 100-yard breaststroke, IU sophomore James Wells upset Michigan’s Miguel Ortiz in the 100-yard backstroke, winning his first career title in a time of 46.30. Wells’ time was not only his career best, but it was also only 0.03 seconds faster than Ortiz, who had finished first in prelims by a 0.16-second margin.

“I knew before the race that Ortiz was going to be gaining on me during the last 25 of the 100 back,” Wells said. “My race strategy going into it was to build each 25 and try to get out ahead of Ortiz and then just give it everything I had during that last 25. I figured at that point, it would be a battle of mental toughness and who wanted to win it more, so that’s what I tried to prepare myself for beforehand.”

Though IU did not win another title out of the four among Schmidt, Wells and Miller, Trahin did earn a school record in the 400-yard individual medley in a fourth-place effort. Trahin’s time of 3:46.49 was also the best of his career.

The Hoosiers also picked up significant points from sophomore diver Emad Abdelatif, who had planned on redshirting this season before competing this past weekend.

Abdelatif, who was training to represent Egypt in the FINA Diving World Cup, was told by the Egyptian government only days earlier that he could no longer compete, and he instead decided to participate in the Big Ten Championships and avoid the redshirt season.

Abdelatif ended up finishing fourth in the 1-meter dive, 15th in the 3-meter dive and 11th in the platform dive. He also picked up IU’s Sportsmanship Award for the Championships.

“He was our sportsman of the year because of that. You would have never known that he had just suffered just a totally crushing setback, having an Olympic opportunity extinguished,” Looze said. “You just would have never known that with his attitude at this meet, so I’m just proud all the way around.”

IU Diving Coach Jeff Huber was also named Big Ten Diving Coach of the Year, the 14th of his career.

Despite the season being over for most swimmers, seven members of the Hoosiers’ swimming team will compete in the NCAA Championships from March 22-24 in Federal Way, Wash. The Hoosiers could potentially send more, depending on how their divers do in the NCAA Zone C Championships, which will be from March 8-10 in Bloomington.

“We had lots of success as a team, and I am very proud of them,” Miller said. “Though it’s disappointing we finished third because we know we are better than that, next year’s Big Ten Championships will be a different story because we are only getting better.”