Big Ten Weekly Preview: Michigan-Ohio State; Purdue-Indiana Highlight Rivalry Week

blake-pieroni-
Indiana's Blake Pieroni. Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

It is another rivalry week in the Big Ten, this time with two of the biggest in all of college sports.

On Saturday, Purdue swims at Indiana and Michigan swims at Ohio State.

It doesn’t get much more heated than those rivalries. It will be the Big Ten at its best.

The Michigan men are coming off of a close loss to No. 4 Indiana, while the Wolverine women knocked off Indiana in their top-10 battle.

The Michigan women were led, as always, by their distance and middle-distance freestyle.

The Wolverines built their edge in the five freestyle events, going 1-2-3 in both the sprint (50, 100) and distance (500, 1,000) varieties. Four different swimmers won: senior Gabby DeLoof in both the 100-yard freestyle (49.17) and 200-yard freestyle (1:46.21), junior Yirong Bi in the 500-yard freestyle (4:44.53), freshman Sierra Schmidt in the 1,000-yard freestyle (9:50.11) and junior Catie DeLoof in the 50-yard freestyle (22.77). Senior G Ryan was third in both distance events, while the team also got a boost from freshman Daria Pyshnenko in the sprints, who was runner-up to Catie DeLoof in the 50-yard freestyle. They also went 1-2 in the 400-yard freestyle relay to end the meet, with Gabby DeLoof, Catie DeLoof, Bi and sophomore Vanessa Krause clocking in at 3:19.36.

Ohio State is coming off of a strong performance that saw a trio of Buckeyes earn Big Ten weekly honors. Meg Bailey (swimming), Camryn McPherson (freshman) and Michael Salazar (swimming) earned the accolades after last weekend’s triangular meet against Kentucky and Toledo.

Bailey picked up two individual wins over the weekend in Lexington, Ky., in the 200 butterfly and 400 individual medley. She was dominant in both races, clocking times of 1:58.37 in the butterfly and 4:14.85 in the individual medley, to finish more than two and a half seconds ahead of the next closest competitor in each event. The senior from Australia all claimed a silver in the 200 individual medley with a readout of 2:00.72.

McPherson was brilliant on the one-meter and three-meter diving boards in Kentucky. The freshman of the week scored a total of 305.60 on the one-meter board to get the meet started with a win; her score of 305.60 was 13.40 points better than the runner-up tally. She then returned shortly after to the three-meter and scored a 302.00 for her second gold of the meet. McPherson has won three diving titles during her freshman campaign.

Salazar specialized in the butterfly over the weekend and placed first and second in his only two individual races. The California native collected his second 100 butterfly gold of the season when he clocked a time of 47.62 to edge the rest of the field; he was the only swimmer to go sub-48 seconds. In the 200 butterfly, Salazar registered a time of 1:48.82 to come in second place.

Meanwhile, Purdue had its senior night last week and will look to have a strong performance against the Hoosiers. The Indiana men did well against Michigan last week, led by Blake Pieroni. The women came up short but had strong performances, including victories from Lilly King.

Rivalry week starts on Thursday with a non-conference rivalry between Ohio State and Alabama.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, Iowa swims at Northwestern, Oakland swims at Michigan State and Illinois swims at Nebraska.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

Welcome to our community. We invite you to join our discussion. Our community guidelines are simple: be respectful and constructive, keep on topic, and support your fellow commenters. Commenting signifies that you agree to our Terms of Use

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x