Both the Texas and Texas A&M men’s programsgot their seasons off to a solid start at the Southwest Collegiate plunge, where they faced Big 12 foes Missouri and in-state rivals SMU, with a partial Texas squad coming away with the win. Scores:
1) Texas 796
2) Texas A&M 750
3) Missouri 624
4) SMU 621
The Texas men were without a lot of big pieces on the roster, the most notable of which are NCAA All-Americans Jimmy Feigen, Eric Friedland, Jackson Wilcox, Michael McBroom, and Cole Cragin. There’s not much of a story there – the number of meets on an Eddie Reese schedule is always a touch misleading (9 this year), because in the early-season, he tends to sit some of his stars out of different meets. They were also without diver Drew Livingston, who was still in Guadalajara, Mexico closing out the Pan Ams diving competition.
Still, there’s enough firepower (both in Texas’ lineup, and in the other more-complete squads) to make these meet results interesting.
Texas junior Dax Hill was locked in some good battles. In the 100 free, he battled his SMU counterpart Mindaugas Sadauskas in the 100 freestyle, with Sadauskas coming out ahead by time of 44.54-44.69. In the 100 breaststroke Hill, who was a top high school breaststroker before coming to Texas finished in 56.43 for 2nd to Texas A&M’s Amini Fonua (56.06). And finally, in his 3rd individual event the 50 free, he took a solid victory in 20.44. In that race, he outswam three potential NCAA scorers -Sadauskas (20.71), A&M’s Kyle Troskot (20.71), and A&M’s John Dalton (20.80). Dax’s younger brother, Kerrington Hill, finished 5th in 21.00.
Hill would later anchor Texas’ 400 free relay in 43.54. That Texas relay touched in 3:00.33, which actually gave SMU the win in 3:00.06. At full-strength, Texas’ relay is almost surely better, but the SMU quartet is a very good one (albeit young) that has a shot at NCAA qualification this year.
On the freshman watch, Texas rookie Kip Darmody took runner-up position to sophomore teammate Patrick Murphy in both the 100 (50.08) and 200 (1:49.75) backstrokes.
In the men’s 200 fly, Texas senior Neil Caskey put up a 1:48.49 that ranks him 7th in the country this year. He placed ahead of two outstanding Missouri freshman in that race: Neil O’Halloran (1:50.78) and Mack Darragh (1:51.40).
Missouri also has an extremely strong, and probably deeper though not as potent at the top, freshman class when compared to Texas. They showed this off with a win by Eegan Groome in the 500 free in 4:26.34. In that race, he showed-down against a familiar foe: Texas freshman Jake Ritter. The pair are familiar foes as they both hail from the Houston area, but in this race Groome out-touched his opponent by a slim .03 seconds.
Full results are available here.
The Texas men will next be in action this upcoming weekend in a two-day tri meet against Indiana and Michigan in Ann Arbor. The Texas A&M men will next take a training-trip to the Boston area and compete against Harvard on November 11th. Missouri’s next encounter will be against Southern Illinois and Kentucky, in Lexington, on Friday. SMU will welcome in Wyoming on Friday for a dual meet, and then have their alumni meet on Sataurday.
Texas left most of the big dogs at home to train. Pretty typical lineup for them at this meet. Mostly younger guys with a veteran or two sprinkled into the mix.
What is the status with D’innocenzo? He did not swim at nationals and no word from him since NCs.
Did Clay Youngquist not swim?