For the second straight year, junior Matt Grevers provided the highlight of the NCAA Championships for NU when he defended his 100-yard backstroke title Friday.
Grevers became the first Wildcat since Bill Heusner in 1948-1949 to claim back-to-back NCAA victories.
The All-American posted a time of 45.93 in the finals, defeating Doug Van Wie of eventual-NCAA Champion Auburn by .29 seconds.
Grevers placed in the top 10 in every race he swam, taking sixth in the 100-yard freestyle and 10th in the 50-yard free in addition to his win in the 100-yard back. “(Winning) was pretty much what I thought it’d be,” Grevers said. “There was a lot of pressure from everyone to win it, and from myself, but it’s kind of good pressure. But it was definitely a relief when that part of the meet was over.”
Northwestern finished in the top-10 at NCAAs for the second year in a row with a 10th place showing in Atlanta.
“I think it was one of those meets where we weren’t swimming great,” NU coach Bob Groseth said. “But with a small team like we had, to be able to do what we did and get 10th place with just five guys is a pretty good performance.”
NU junior and All-American Mike Alexandrov took sixth in the 200-yard breaststroke and ninth in the 100-yard breast. All-American sophomore Kyle Bubolz captured fifth place in the 100-yard butterfly for the Cats, breaking the school record with a time of 46.36 seconds in the prelims.
Despite these performances, the consensus on the team was that NU stumbled in the individual events.
“The usual energy just wasn’t there for our team,” Grevers said.
While individual accolades supplied some of the brightest moments of the championships, it was the relays that put the Cats into the top 10. All four NU relays, the 200-yard medley, the 400-yard medley, the 200-yard free and the 400-yard free, made it to their respective championship heats and earned critical points for the Cats.
Alexandrov, Bubolz, Grevers and senior Ben Dexter made up three of the relays, including a 200-yard medley squad that twice broke the school record. Freshman Eric Nilsson joined Alexandrov, Bubolz and Grevers on the 400-yard free relay to earn the first All-America of his career.
“Every time our guys got on a relay, no matter how bad they were feeling, no matter how tired they were, they elevated their performance and kept us in the team race,” Groseth said. “I think that was the key to where we finished.”
NU was also the victim of some near-misses. Alexandrov placed 17th in the 200-yard individual medley, falling just short of qualifying for points. Nilsson also finished 17th in the 200-yard free despite taking over a second off his personal best.
But while the Cats ended the meet just 13.5 points behind ninth-place Georgia, Groseth minimized the loss of the potential points.
“We would have been a little bit better, but to be honest with you ninth or 10th is where we belong.” Groseth said. “If we had swum extremely, extremely well we could have been seventh. But given the team that we sent there, that’s probably about where we belong. You always like to do better, but you also have to be realistic.”
In the women’s NCAA Championship, sophomore Andrea Hupman and freshman diver Chelsea Davis earned All-America honors for NU. Hupman was an honorable mention All-American in the 100-yard free with a time of 49.64, good for 16th place. Davis was also an honorable mention All-American as she finished 14th in the 1-meter event.
Reach Ben Larrison at [email protected].
