After giving No. 7 Florida a scare, Northwestern posted a second-place finish at the Dallas Morning News Swimming and Diving Classic.
In a meet featuring four ranked teams, the No. 17 Wildcats held the lead with four events to go, only to slide back to second and finish 11.5 points behind the Gators, 342.5-331.
“I thought our guys did a really good job,” coach Bob Groseth said. “Florida’s one of the premier teams in the country, and even though we didn’t beat them we took them right to the wall, so that was a lot of fun.”
The highlight of the weekend came in Friday’s 100-yard backstroke showdown between Florida’s Ryan Lochte and NU’s Matt Grevers. Lochte, a senior and U.S. Olympian, was out-touched by Grevers at last year’s NCAA Championship in the 100 backstroke, and the much-anticipated rematch amounted to the same result. The Cats junior took the race in 47.16 seconds, an NCAA ‘A’ standard time that edged Lochte by .09 seconds. The ‘A’ standard gives Grevers a spot in the 2006 NCAA Championships.
“(Lochte and Grevers have) had three great races that have been won by less that one-tenth of a second, and it’s just fun watching those guys,” Groseth said. “They’re both tough swimmers and they don’t like to lose.”
On Saturday, Grevers won the 200 backstroke, in which Lochte did not compete, with an NCAA ‘A’ standard time of 1:43.66 to shatter both pool and meet records. In his final event of the meet, the junior captured the 100-yard freestyle in 43.68 seconds to temporarily give the Cats the lead.
Grevers finished the Classic with three individual triumphs and was also a member of two victorious NU relays.
However it was Lochte who took the Outstanding Swimmer Award for the meet. The 2004 Athens gold medalist in the 800 freestyle won two events and was a part of two first-place relays to lead Florida. Lochte also established himself as the Dallas Morning News Classic’s all-time individual title leader.
“It was his senior year and we went head-to-head in two races, and we eached grabbed one from each other,” Grevers said. “But I mean, just the way he raced in his relays, he did really well too. And I have no sour feelings about it, especially since it’s his senior year.”
The Cats got another solid performance from three-time Big Ten Swimmer of the Week Mike Alexandrov. The junior won the 100-yard and 200-yard breaststroke, but it was the two individual events in which Alexandrov took second that got his coach excited about NU’s showing this weekend.
Alexandrov lost to Lochte, who Groseth termed “one of the great swimmers in the United States,” in the 200 freestyle, and Florida’s Bradley Ally, a Barbados Olympian, in the 200 individual medley.
“The fact that we were able to swim a team like Florida nose-to-nose says a lot about our guys,” Groseth said.
NU was greatly helped by younger swimmers, especially in consolation heats. In a meet where the Cats had no seniors competing, freshmen swimmers Adam Beckman and Eric Nilsson stepped up and scored points for their team.
“I really put a lot of pressure on the older guys to more or less show them the ropes on how to be good competitors and to challenge the freshman to step up, and I think they did,” Groseth said.
While Groseth said he’s pleased with his team’s progress so far this season, but still feels the need for improvement before February’s Big Ten Championships. In the three remaining meets before Big Tens, all home duals, the coach is hoping for improved results from his younger swimmers.
“We’ve got a lot of guys who’ve been training hard,” Groseth said, “and we need to see (the young) guys make the same competitive advances as those (who went to Dallas) have.”
Reach Ben Larrison at [email protected].
