Zeng Takes Fourth on 1-Meter at NCAAs

Wednesday, March 21

Minneapolis, MN

All Day

University of Tennessee

NCAA Men's Championships

March 22, 2018 | Swimming & Diving

Results Photo Gallery

MINNEAPOLIS — Zhipeng (Colin) Zeng finished fourth on 1-meter springboard to lead Tennessee on Thursday at the NCAA Men's Swimming & Diving Championships at the Jean K. Freeman Aquatic Center.

Through two days of the meet, the Vols are in 13th of place out of 31 scoring teams with 35 points. Indiana leads with 169.

In an eight-diver field stacked with three Olympians and rising international-caliber stars, Zeng picked up momentum in his final three dives to finish with a six-dive score of 437.70 points. He missed his final dive in the afternoon preliminaries -- an inward 2 1/2 somersault pike -- but he hit it at night for 8s and 9s across the board for a score of 86.70.

With the fourth-place finish, Zeng earned his first All-America honors as a Vol. After starting his career at Ohio State, he now has six All-America diving honors, five of them first team.

Indiana senior Michael Hixon won the 1-meter title with a score of 464.40. The 3-meter springboard competition is Friday.

The Vols led off the night session with a 12th-place finish in the 200-yard freestyle relay. The team of Ryan Coetzee, Kyle DeCoursey, Braga Verhage and Alec Connolly swam in 1 minute, 16.79 seconds, good for fourth place in the consolation final.

Tennessee's 400-yard medley relay team scored points to end the night for the Vols. Joey Reilman, Peter John Stevens, Verhage and DeCoursey placed 15th with a time of 3:06.54.

UP NEXT: Events Friday include the 400 individual medley, the 100 butterfly, 200 freestyle, 100 breaststroke, 100 backstroke, 200 medley relay and 3-meter diving. Preliminaries start at 11 a.m. Eastern (10 a.m. Central) with finals at 7 p.m. Eastern (6 p.m. Central).

2018 NCAA MEN'S SWIMMING & DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS
Thursday's Tennessee Results

200 Freestyle Relay: 12. Tennessee (Coetzee, DeCoursey, Verhage, Connolly), 1:16.79.

200 IM: 25. Sam McHugh, 1:44.00.

50 Freestyle: 33. Kyle DeCoursey, 19.46.

1-Meter Diving: 4. Zhipeng (Colin) Zeng, 437.70; 21. Liam Stone, 321.90.

400 Medley Relay: 15. Tennessee (Reilman, Stevens, Verhage, DeCoursey), 3:06.54.

QUOTES
Tennessee Head Coach Matt Kredich:
"I think we're certainly pleased that we got a couple swims back. In each of the relays, three of the four legs went faster. It was nice to see improvement in competitiveness and speed. Colin competed like he did all season and gave us a real shot in the arm heading into the last relay. I'm happy with the way we're swimming. We have a lot of potential points tomorrow. We've got a feel for the meet, and we can come out and be really aggressive. We have to be ready to go tomorrow morning."

Tennessee Diving Coach Dave Parrington
(On Zeng's fourth-place finish)
"That was by far the deepest final I've ever seen. Eight phenomenal divers going head to head. I was very proud of Colin's competitiveness and his effort this evening. He could have been a little sharper in his first three rounds, but I tell you, his second dive was a foot to foot and a half higher than normal. He put a great kick on it, but it was a little higher. I thought he was set up for 10s, really, but he went a little long. I thought he turned up the heat and made a valiant comeback, but he needed a little more. The great divers ahead of him were hard to catch. I'm really pleased with what he did in day one."

(On final dive)
"In the afternoon, we didn't initially have that dive in the list. We were going to go with an easier dive, but we decided he was in pretty good shape and we wanted to do a practice run for this evening. He left it a little short, but he made the correction big-time tonight for 8s and 9s. It was a great note to finish on and leads us into tomorrow."