NCAA Division 1 Top 25 Rankings (as of 01/09/01)
The traditional winter break for college swimmers means travel to exotic locations (Hawaii and Puerto Rico, for example) and lots of hard training sessions. But this edition of the Speedo/CSCAA Top 25 list shows that some fast times were, nonetheless, turned in by swimmers in early January.
Probably the biggest upset of the weekend was the last-event upset of No. 1 Texas men's squad by No. 6 Tennessee. The Volunteers were down by eight points when the 200 yard free relay began. They placed first in that event (1:20.20), gained nine points and squeaked out a 1-point victory over the Longhorns (121-120). Chris Kemp of Texas owns the top time in the nation in the 200 free (1:36.40). Other top 10 times were turned in by Texas' Nate Dusing (third, 200 IM, 1:48.87) and Matt Ulrickson (seventh, 200 back, 1:46.16), as well as Tennessee's Brendan Hansen (ninth, 200 breast, 2:00.13).
Auburn made a clean sweep of two dual meets and one tri-meet against Florida and Arizona State last weekend. On Jan. 5, Auburn defeated Florida's teams (131-110, women; 137-106, men). The tri-meet, held the next day, saw the No. 5 Auburn women score 151.5 points to No. 10 Florida's 127 and No. 13 Arizona State's 73.5. On the men's side, No. 4 Auburn scored 155 points, No. 10 Florida posted 125 and No. 12 Arizona State came away with 72 points. On Sunday, Auburn improved their record to 5-0 by deafeating Arizona State (131-106, women; 128-115, men). Over the weekend, Janelle Atkinson of Florida recorded a No. 1 time in the 1000 free (9:41.77), as did Maggie Bowen in the 400 IM (4:12.37). Michigan's men's team traveled to Northern California and lost two dual meets. On Friday, despite Chris Thompson's nation-leading time in the 1000 free (8:57.18), the Wolverines lost to Stanford by a score of 135-100. The next day, Michigan traveled to Berkeley, where they were defeated by the Golden Bears 130-113.
USC's Erik Vendt has the No. 2 time in the 1000 yard free (9:00.91) and teammate Mark Warkentin is ninth in the same event (9:12.76). Both times were swum at the USC-UCSB meet in Santa Barbara. USC defeated UCSB's men's squad 182-80. The Trojan women also were victorious over UCSB (158-104).
The next edition of the Speedo/CSCAA Top 25 list will be published Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2001. Please e-mail all corrections to swimworld@aol.com no later than noon Mountain Standard Time Monday, Jan. 22, or fax results/corrections to 520-284-2477.