Missouri and Purdue dual it out at first home meet of the season

Oct 27, 2024 | Uncategorized

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Missouri men and women lose, but the high potential of both teams was clearly evident.

Missouri Swimming & Diving officially opened its home campaign with a dual meet against Purdue on Friday, October 25. Overall, both teams secured a total of 12 event victories, but it wasn’t enough to defeat the Purdue Boilermakers, who excel in diving events, among other categories.

The No. 25 Tiger women were bested by a score of 161-139, while the men lost by a narrow margin, 151-149.

However, Coach Grevers says the loss will teach both teams how to handle adversity and continue to push against hard competition.

“I mean, very proud of the whole team as a whole, but to be honest, I really wish we’re walking out of here with two wins today, and instead we’re walking out with two very, very close losses. It’s the right time of year for that,” said Grevers. “If we would have slid with two wins today, we may not have learned some of those lessons about being touched out at the end, a breath at the wrong time, lacking an extra dolphin kick, all those fine details. I do believe these losses help us hold on to that and learn from it a little bit better.”

Strong Start

The meet opened up with both the Men’s and Women’s 200 Yard Medley Relay, and Missouri’s relay teams were quite successful, sailing through the water. The women took first and third. Helmed by a team of Sydney Bales, Lina Bank, Grace Hanson, and Francesca Smith, Missouri secured a winning time of 1:40.89. While they won, it was two seconds slower than their time at Arkansas.

Meanwhile, the men swept the event. The A-team of Grant Bochenski, Logan Ottke, Jaden Pospishil, and Luke Nebrich went a blistering 1:27.76, enough to grab the win by more than a second.

The energy of the crowd was electric and it propelled the Missouri women to a 1-2 finish in the 1000 free. Zoe Schneider won the event by more than 8 seconds and came within tenths of a second of breaking her season fastest. Freshman Philipp Peschke, who missed the Black & Gold meet a few weeks ago, came up with an impressive second place finish in the 200 free with a 1:37.50 but Missouri struggled to take the top spot in an event until Grant Bochenski won the 100 back in event 8, though.

From there, the Tigers continued their short run of dominance with wins in the men’s and women’s 200 fly by Jan Zubik (1:44.40) and Taylor Williams (2:01.28). Zubik earned his first NCAA “B” cut of the season with this performance.

At the break, both Missouri teams led against Purdue, but their momentum was thwarted thanks to a slew of Boilermaker wins.

Abbey Taute was able to help claw back with a big win in the 200 back with a time of 1:59.31, holding off three charging Purdue swimmers by over a second-plus, and were equally as successfully in the men’s 200 back as Jan Zubik collected his second win of the day and held off his teammate, the aforementioned Peschke, by 0.60.

Missouri also had major success in the women’s breaststroke events thanks to Lina Bank. After taking care of business in Arkansas, winning three events, and continued to blow through the competition against Purdue. She snagged wins in both the 100 and 200 events.

She spoke post-meet about how these victories against a team like Purdue will prove beneficial.

“In the long run, I think it just teaches us how to race and really put ourselves out there and get our hand on the wall first, no matter what time it is,” said Bank. “It’s definitely good practice for the end of the season.”

After the second break, Missouri only captured a win via the 400 free relay, the meet’s final contested event. However, Missouri should be proud of where they stand heading into their first conference meet next week.

For one, the Tigers battled through illness.

“We’ve got a lot of sickness going around. A lot of people haven’t had full training schedules for the first or the last few weeks, and the fact that we’re still able to pull out a win and race a good team like Purdue is really exciting,” said Grant Bochenski. “It’s a lot better than where we were last year. All in all, just a lot of big improvements in a lot of big areas that we’re definitely seeing some growth in individually.”

Bochenski himself was dealing with these sorts of issues, but was able to walk off the pool deck with three major wins.

Other Takeaways

Diving Deep

On the diving side of the meet, Collier Dyer earned his first season win with a score of 356.03 in the 1-meter. He also placed second in the 3-meter.

Freshman Megan Jolly improved her 3-meter from 297.60 against Arkansas to 309.08.

The Boilermakers amassed a great amount of points from their strong diving team. In the women’s 1m springboard, Purdue actually took 1st-4th, but because you can only have three scoring competitors, the 4th place finisher was exhibition. In the men’s 1m springboard, while Dyer from Mizzou took top billing, they placed 2nd-4th and would have taken 5th as well had another diver counted.

In the 3m springboard competition, Purdue men and women took both 1st, 3rd, and 4th. So, for those keeping track at home, Purdue women scored 30 points on diving alone, while the men tallied 23. It’s simply hard to keep up with that kind of scoring effort.

Suit Up… or not

Additionally, Mizzou didn’t race in tech suits against the Boilermakers.

So while they were beating times from Arkansas, they still weren’t reaching their season-bests from the Black and Gold meet because of the tech suit differential.

Coach Grevers mentioned how their philosophy is to normally don the racing suits, which for men go from waist to knee and for women from shoulder to knee.

Purdue doesn’t like to suit up all the time, however, and therefore Grevers did not ask his team to suit up either so they would have to deal with the challenge of racing with someone in their face.

It was a challenge Missouri wanted to capitalize on and could prove to be an advantage the next time they race in the tech suits.

Looking Ahead

A big crowd is expected again next Friday against Texas A&M, which could propel Missouri to a massive conference win. Grevers knows exactly what they want to pinpoint for the Aggies. First, is the energy. He spoke to the team about maintaining energy for an entire meet, not just the first three events (200 medley relay, 1000 free & 200 free).

“I think we were getting a little beat up on some of our transitions and in some cases, we’re doing better, but I know what we’re capable of,” said Grevers. “I’ve seen what we’ve been doing in practice, and we weren’t quite as sharp as we’re capable of in that specific area.”

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