Vols, Lady Vols Lead After Day 1 of Tennessee Invite

KNOXVILLE, TN - 2018.11.09 - Tennessee vs. Texas and Auburn

Photo by: John Golliher/Tennessee Athletics

November 29, 2018 | Swimming & Diving

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – The Tennessee swimming and diving team won seven of 12 events on Thursday to start the Tennessee Invitational at Allan Jones Aquatic Center.

The Lady Vols compiled 424 points to lead the women's standings, as Duke trailed behind in second place with 309 points. The Vols men's team tallied 374 points for a first-place finish, with Penn following in second place with 199 points.

Tennessee notched four wins on the women's side: Meghan Small (200-yard individual medley), Erika Brown (50 freestyle), 200 freestyle relay (Bailey Grinter, Madeline Banic, Stanzi Moseley, Brown) and the 400 medley relay (Small, Nikol Popov, Brown, Moseley). The Vols' men finished the meet with three wins: Zhipeng (Colin) Zeng (3-meter springboard), 200 free relay (Braga Verhage, Kyle DeCoursey, Joey Reilman, Alec Connolly) and the 400 medley (Matthew Garcia, Matthew Dunphy, Verhage, Connolly).

LADY VOL DOMINATION: Tennessee dominated the 200 individual medley with a one-through-six finish and the 50 freestyle with a one-through-four placement in the championship finals. Small led the way in the 200 IM (1:55.41), and Brown won the 50 free (21.65).

During the morning preliminaries, Brown recorded a season-best time of 21.52. It stood as the fastest time in the NCAA this year until California's Abbey Weitzel scored a 21.46 in the evening finals at the Georgia Invitational.

The Lady Vols kicked off the evening with a victory in the in the 200 freestyle relay, as the team recorded the fifth best time in school history (1:27.84). Tennessee continued to make history in the 500 freestyle event, in which Amanda Nunan took second (4:43.61, eighth fastest in school history) and Sinclair Larson finished third (4:44.27, ninth fastest in school history).

The women's team finished out the first day with a win in the 400 medley relay by a near six-second margin. The team of Small, Popov, Brown and Moseley reached the wall in 3:31.12 with Popov splitting a blistering 57.81 on the breaststroke leg, more than two seconds faster than any other breaststroker in the heat.

MAKING HISTORY: The Tennessee men got off to a hot start, opening up the meet with a win and the fourth best time in Vols history in the 200 free relay (1:17.30). Tennessee followed up with a second through fifth finish in the 500 freestyle event led by junior Taylor Abbott (4:19.78).

Senior diver Zhipeng (Colin) Zeng took home yet another first-place finish for the Vols in the 1-meter springboard (428.55), and Tennessee rounded out the night with a convincing first place finish in the 400 medley relay (3:08.63).

Kyle DeCoursey recorded a season-best time (19.42) in his second-place finish in the 50 freestyle on day one. Matthew Garcia also made Vols history with the fifth-fastest time in the 200 individual medley in school history (1:45.86). He also finished second.

COMING UP FRIDAY: Competition resumes Friday with swimming preliminaries at 10 a.m. and diving preliminaries at noon. The final session is at 6 p.m. Friday events include the 200 medley relay, 400 IM, 100 butterfly, 200 freestyle, 100 breaststroke, 100 backstroke, women's 1-meter diving and 800 freestyle relay. Note that the men's 3-meter diving competition will be at 5 p.m.

Quotes:
Dave Parrington, Diving Coach
"I'm really happy putting four guys in the final today, and Nick Rusek coming up just a little short of joining them. That was a bit of a disappointment, but he did do some good stuff in the meet, showed some progress. The other four guys, every single one of them bumped their scores up in the evening. Keegan Richardson got a qualifying score for a second meet in a row on 1-meter. He never got it last year. That was good. Will stepped up his game, and Matthew improved his performance. Colin was in a tight competition until round 4. He went from two down to 43 or so up. The door was open and he stepped through it. That was really good to see him take that challenge and bring it home.

"On the women's side, we were a little depleted today. I was very happy with Rachel's performance all day long. Very consistent. She came up a little shy tonight but showed improvement in the stuff we've been doing. I was really happy with what Sean Meyer did today making the final on the final dive of prelims and then improving her score 29 points tonight. It was a good, solid first day."

Ashley Jahn, Associate Head Coach
(On Day 1)
"The women did a great job today. One of the things we wanted to do was give everybody an opportunity to really race today, whether it was a primary event or maybe a secondary or third event they're preparing for SECs or NCAAs. ... We're blessed right now; we've got a lot of people who can swim a lot of different things, which is leading to the depth in some of those events. It's really fun to have a 200 freestyle relay tonight where no one was slower than 23-something. We put 20 people in that event. We got it off to a great job this morning. They were really competitive and wanting to execute race plans. Some of that went better than others, but we were able to make great adjustments coming into tonight."

(On Bailey Grinter's improvement)
"She learns something new every day. Not only does she learn something new, but she applies it. She's just getting better and better. She's just swimming better than she was last year. Certainly we're seeing it in the times, but you can look at how she swims, and it's much different than last year. She's hanging onto a ton of water, and she's doing a wonderful job."

(On Nikol Popov's breaststroke split)
"We've had a lot of lifetime best times, but one that stands out to me is -- not to take away from others -- one of our 100 breaststrokers (Nikol Popov)on the last relay split a 57.8. She had a wonderful, wonderful swim, and she's just getting better and better. It was really exciting to watch Nikol do that. You could probably feel the energy on the deck. When she did that, everyone was thrilled for her. It was a big deal. Not a lot of people in the country right now are 57 in that event."

Lance Asti, Associate Head Coach
(On Day 1)
"We wanted to give the guys an opportunity to race some things they don't often get to race, to challenge them with more events back to back and they did a good job racing. We had guys doing off-events and throwing down lifetime bests, some times that are relevant in the SEC, and that's great. I'm excited about that."

(On Joey Reilman's sub-20 50 free)
"That's what all our guys are trying to do. We're trying to compete no matter what event we're in. For Joey to show that kind of speed this time of year is just fantastic. No one's relay spot is safe. Joey has range, from the 50 to the 200. He can probably throw a 500 if we asked him too. For him to do that, it was a big deal."

(On Matthew Garcia's 200 IM)
"We had a lot of standout performances. Matthew Garcia in that IM, that was fifth all time at UT, and he wasn't even on the list before. To come back and go under 46 for the first time in the 100 back, it's a nice time drop for him, but to do it after the IM was a big deal. I'm excited to see what he can do tomorrow with some fresh legs under him."

Tennessee Invitational
Tennessee Winners (Thursday)
Women
200 free relay: Tennessee (Grinter, Banic, Moseley, Brown) (1:27.84)
200 individual medley: Meghan Small (1:55.41)
50 freestyle: Erika Brown (21.65)
400 medley relay: Tennessee (Small, Popov, Brown, Moseley) (3:31.12)

Men
200 free relay: Tennessee (Verhage, DeCoursey, Reilman, Connolly) (1:17.20)
1-meter: Zhipeng (Colin) Zeng (428.55)
400 medley relay: Tennessee (Garcia, Dunphy, Verhage, Connolly) (308.63)