Tennessee Sweeps Home Invitational

Saturday, December 2

Knoxville, TN

All Day

University of Tennessee

Tennessee Invitational: Day 3

December 02, 2017 | Swimming & Diving

Photo Gallery Final Results

Brown, Zeng set program records on final day

KNOXVILLE, Tenn.—Tennessee set two new program records, as the team won 10 out of 14 events to finish the Tennessee Invitational with a convincing victory Saturday at Allan Jones Aquatic Center.

Sophomore Erika Brown put a ribbon on an impressive showing by setting her third program record in as many days. She swam a 47.54 in the 100-yard free, replacing Lindsay Gendron's 2014 record of 47.66. Thursday, Brown set a program-record in the 50 free, and Friday her 100 butterfly set both a UT record and the fastest time in the NCAA this year.

Junior Colin Zeng put together a three-day sweep of men's diving in record-setting fashion. He won his first platform competition for Tennessee in 460.20, breaking all-time great Gabi Chereches' 2001 mark by a point. Current Vols hold all three diving records; senior Liam Stone owns the records on 1-meter and 3-meter.

Tennessee won in dominating fashion, as it took the six-team men's competition with 1,288.5 points and the seven-team women's competition with 1,075 points. Second place went to Denver in the men's competition and Duke in the women's, scoring 740 and 827 points respectively.

The men nearly swept as they took six out of the seven total events on the final day. Victories in addition to Zeng's are: Marc Hinawi in the 1650 free (14:55.99), Kyle DeCoursey in the 100 free (42.30), Mathew Dunphy in the 200 breast (2:10.33), Sam McHugh in the 200 fly (1:42.52), and the 400 free relay (2:51.70).

Junior Rachel Rubadue swept the women's diving competition. The 2016 SEC platform champion won on tower with a five-dive score of 280.15. Additional victories were: Micah Bohon in the 200 back (1:53.33), Alexis Yager in the 200 breast (2:10.33), and the 400 free relay (3:13.68).

QUOTES
Tennessee swimming coach Matt Kredich
"I think we saw a lot of progress at the meet. The most important takeaway from the meet is that we have a realistic view of where we are. There's quite a bit we can work on. The goal is to move forward from here, not relax back and try to get here again. That's tough with finals and Christmas around the corner. Across the board, we had quite a bit of success at the meet. What championship teams do is they take success, learn from it and allow it to make them more hungry instead of satisfied … One of the reasons we hosted this meet is that we wanted swimmers to have the opportunity to swim multiple races in a day. In the last session, there was a little more accumulated fatigue than you might have otherwise. The goal is to try to handle that, and I feel like we handled that really well tonight. This morning, we were a little flat but tonight we were quite a bit better. … Once we started to get into dual meets, it became clear that Erika had reached another level. She struggled with illness a lot last year, and we really didn't see her at her best until NCAAs. She's been healthy. She's been really focused. I'm not surprised at this point."

Tennessee diving coach Dave Parrington
"It's very exciting to see Colin break one of our long-standing records held by one of our all-time great divers, Gabi Chereches. That was really cool. I'm proud of him for doing that. All three of our record holding divers are current Vols, which is pretty unusual. There's more to come. It was good to get up on the tower. We had Will [Hallam], who hasn't dove on tower since he was 13. He showed fantastic potential. Keegan [Richardson] showed some rust and needs to get things going again. Liam is in the process of putting his list today.

"On the women's side, I'm very pleased with Rachel for finishing off the sweep in highly confident fashion. It wasn't her best score, but she hasn't competed her platform list since NCAAs. This is the most confidence I've seen from her on tower since late in her freshman year, which is good to see. It was good to see Lily [Schneider] do some promising stuff and Sean [Meyers] coming off summer knee surgery and toughing it out."