4 Takeaways from the Big Ten Weekend

By Andy Ross, Big Ten Beat Writer

It was a relatively quiet weekend in the conference as a few teams were idle and a few other teams were stuck at home due to the large snow storm on the east coast. We are closing in on three weeks from the women’s Big Ten meet and four weeks from the men’s.

Indiana picked up two big wins over in-state rival Purdue on Saturday. The Hoosiers had big wins from freshman Lilly King in the breaststroke events and sophomore Blake Pieroni in the 200 free. King took down Purdue senior Emily Fogle in both events who sits behind King in the conference standings in both events. Pieroni is building on his successful freshman season and he looks to be one of the favorites for the 200 free Big Ten title, as well as even an NCAA title in that event.

Purdue sophomore Kaersten Meitz swam a 9:44 in the 1000 free, which is fifth in the nation this season. The 1000 is not offered in the Big Ten championships or the NCAA championships, but she has already gone best times in the 500 and 1650 this year so she could be a favorite at Big Tens. She has rapidly improved since joining John Klinge’s distance program and she is one to watch in the future.

Rutgers and Penn State were forced to stay at home as the Snowpocalypse caused their respective meets to be cancelled. Rutgers will make up its meet with New Hampshire on Saturday the 30th. Penn State will make up its meet with Navy on Friday the 29th.

Iowa internationals Roman Trussov and Jerzy Twarowski had another solid weekend in a win over Northwestern. Both of those guys are dark horses to win titles at Big Tens with Kazakh Trussov in the breaststroke events and Polish Twarowski in the butterfly events. Trussov went 55 and 2:02 this weekend while Twarowski went 49 and 1:49.

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