2021 BIG TEN MEN’S CHAMPIONSHIPS
- When: Tuesday, March 2nd to Saturday, March 6th | Prelims 11am | Finals 5pm Tues, 6:30pm Wed-Sat (ET)
- Where: Ohio State University (Eastern Time Zone)
- Defending Champion: Michigan (1x) (2020 results)
- Streaming: Big Ten Network
- Championship Central
- Live Results
TEAM SCORES (THROUGH DAY FOUR)
- Indiana – 1036.5
- Michigan – 1010
- Ohio State – 1000
- Purdue – 615.5
- Wisconsin – 571
- Northwestern – 554
- Penn State – 496.5
- Iowa – 444.5
- Minnesota – 396
- Michigan State – 149
The team race continued to swirl tonight, with the top three teams, and then the teams racing for fourth, trading leads back and forth. Indiana holds a slim lead over Michigan and Ohio State going into the final day of competition, while Purdue is ahead of Wisconsin and Northwestern.
A big story of the night came in the 200 fly, where the race wasn’t competitive, but the time out of winner Brendan Burns was. At 1:39.22, Burns undercut Vini Lanza’s school record and Big Ten record, a best by over a second for Burns and his first time under 1:40.
Burns is now #9 all-time, just .01 ahead of Texas A&M’s Shaine Casas.
The other big story tonight, one we’ve been noticing only in relays thus far in the meet, is the depth of the Big Ten in breaststroke. In the final, while a few swimmers added time, all eight finished under 52 seconds. Counting this morning’s prelims, nine swimmers from the Big Ten have dropped under the 52-second barrier this season, making up nearly half of the nation’s sub-52 swimmers.
Max McHugh leads the nation with his prelims time of 50.19, while Michigan’s Will Chan dropped his first-ever, and Michigan’s first-ever as a program, 50-point swim with a 50.95 for silver. McHugh and Chan are now 1-2 in the country, while Indiana’s Zane Backes is fourth (51.04) and Ohio State’s Jason Mathews is sixth (51.30).
Indiana won the 200 free relay, with Purdue making their presence known with a big second-place effort there. Six men broke 19 on flying starts, while OSU’s Hunter Armstrong had the quickest lead-off leg (19.17).
200 FREE RELAY SPLITS
Lead-off leg denoted*
| TEAM | SWIMMER | SPLIT |
| Michigan | Gus Borges | 18.56 |
| Indiana | Jack Franzman | 18.59 |
| Ohio State | Sem Andreis | 18.65 |
| Penn State | Jake Houck | 18.82 |
| Penn State | Will Roberson | 18.96 |
| Purdue | Nick Sherman | 18.98 |
| Indiana | Van Mathias | 19.00 |
| Purdue | Ryan Hrosik | 19.07 |
| Purdue | Ryan Lawrence | 19.07 |
| Ohio State | Hunter Armstrong | 19.17 *lead-off* |
| Indiana | Brandon Hamblin | 19.23 |
| Wisconsin | Andrew Benson | 19.25 *lead-off* |
| Michigan | Will Chan | 19.26 |
| Michigan | Cam Peel | 19.30 *lead-off* |
| Wisconsin | Dylan Delaney | 19.33 |
| Ohio State | Colin McDermott | 19.37 |
| Ohio State | Justin Fleagle | 19.38 |
| Purdue | Nikola Acin | 19.38 *lead-off* |
| Minnesota | Eitan Yudashkin | 19.39 |
| Indiana | Tomer Frankel | 19.42 *lead-off* |
| Iowa | Seth Miller | 19.47 |
| Michigan | River Wright | 19.48 |
| Penn State | Gabe Castano | 19.52 *lead-off* |
| Iowa | Sergey Kuznetsov | 19.63 |
| Minnesota | Max McHugh | 19.63 |
| Iowa | Aleksey Tarasenko | 19.66 *lead-off* |
| Michigan State | Bradley Sanford | 19.68 |
| Wisconsin | Erik Gessner | 19.68 |
| Michigan State | Kevin Mills | 19.71 |
| Minnesota | Kaiser Neverman | 19.73 |
| Michigan State | Evan Stanislaw | 19.76 |
| Penn State | Zane Sutton | 19.77 |
| Wisconsin | Wes Jekel | 19.77 |
| Iowa | Will Myhre | 19.78 |
| Minnesota | Lucas Farrar | 19.80 *lead-off* |
| Northwestern | Andew Zhang | 19.80 |
| Northwestern | Collin Schuster | 19.87 |
| Northwestern | Ezra Mizgala | 20.00 *lead-off* |
| Michigan State | Aidan Farley | 20.06 *lead-off* |
| Northwestern | Ethan Churilla | 20.15 |
Does anyone have video of McHugh’s 50.19?
Great Big 10 Championship Meet! Go Boilers & SAVE IOWA & MSU SWIMMING!!!
Get ready for a photo finish tomorrow, 3 teams with a shot at the title (IU, Michigan, OSU). Loving it.
Shoutout to Purdue. They finished 7th last year, and are in 4th position right now. They have been in 3rd or 4th the entire meet. The relay took 2nd ahead of strong OSU/Michigan/PSU teams, not everyone saw that coming. Everyone on the relay stepped up and performed well. 5 teams got A cuts in that relay, most out of all relays so far this meet.
Seeing some great performances from all teams this meet!
Let’s go Hoooooosiers!!!! Bring it home fellas!
IU is really performing and exceeding my expectations.
Great article!
For the sake of correctness (and not to be nit-picky since you guys have been on top of these articles), I just wanted to point out that Aidan (not Aiden) Farley’s 20.06 was MSU’s lead-off leg in the 200 Free Relay!
Thanks, got that updated!
IU IS THE BEST TEAM IN THE COUNTRY, WATCH OUT CAL AND UT, IU WILL DESTROY YOU!!!!
HoosierDaddy, “WE’RE ALL FOR YOU, BABY!”
I’m absolutely dying about not being able to watch in person! Congrats to all the teams on an exciting meet so far. Hoping to buy celebratory drinks for all at Nicks tomorrow night when the Hoosiers bring it home!