 "Photo: Paul Chouy, Daily Texan Staff")
The top-ranked men’s swimming and diving team will host the Washington Huskies (5-2, 0-2 Pac 10) today at the Lee and Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center at 3 p.m. This will be the first chance this season for the Longhorns (2-0, 0-0) to swim in front of a home crowd.
Swimming in hostile territory has not been much of a problem for the team. Texas is coming off two very impressive victories in the Big 12 Relays and against Michigan and Indiana in Ann Arbor, Mich. While mid-season meets mean as much in collegiate swimming, many individuals and relay teams have set national season-best marks. Some swimmers have even posted provisional cut times to make the NCAA championship meet in the spring.
Leading the charge for the Longhorns will be a host of upperclassmen, including three Olympians. Among them is junior Ricky Berens, the reigning Big 12 swimmer of the month. Berens was also named national swimmer of the week by collegeswimming.com after his performance in Ann Arbor, where he won all six races he participated in.
Having swum against West Coast powers University of California and Stanford in the past month, Washington is coming into the meet against its third-straight top-10 team. The Huskies are led by senior Scott Spansail, who specializes in the 500- and 1,000-meter freestyle events. He will be swimming against Texas senior Michael Klueh, who won both events at the meet in Ann Arbor.
Texas will be looking to continue its strong start to the season while still keeping up with its intensive practice regime, which will begin to taper off for meetings in January with highly ranked teams from Arizona and Auburn.
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