in 2006 the texas men DQd the 800FrR, giving our guys the Big12 chamionship in that event. if i remember correctly, they might have actually lapped us on that race...in my mind, THAT was a "gifted" relay, and could be discredited without contest. would we have won if Feigen had swam? no way. BUT, we did outswim the team they put up even if we might have been overmatched. its not like they threw up a bunch of walkons and knew they were going to lose. i guarantee you the entire texas team was still expecting to win that race, and every single one of them (including Eddie) were PISSED that they lost. i read somewhere that was the first time in BigXII history that texas has lost that race...

moving on...glad i didnt have to listen to the FSN commentary, sounds worse than usual from Davis. girls fought hard all the way to the end. still amazes me that the texas girls were favored (heavily some outside the Ags might say), and some of them still consider that 17pt win a "dominant" victory. next year is gonna be an even better meet im sure.

interesting to see all the freshman times that Apoco posted, on both sides. sign of many good things to come in the next few years if/when the recruiting/developing process continues strong. girls still need some sprint freestyle help (which i think is on the way next year?), and the guys will still need their stroke help.

guys had a roller coaster of a meet, some really great swims and some very less than desirable swims. as usual, its gonna take a last chance meet to get the majority of guys to NCs (which usually works well for us ironically enough). its ridiculous that tu didnt get the mens last chance session on Sunday "NCAA Certified", so now we have to go all the way to Auburn next week. i know we shouldve gotten guys in during the meet, but to not even have the option of swimming sunday as a last chance time trial is bogus.

ya'll are understandably putting a lot of emphasis on the relays because that is what gets us to NC's, but how about some of the lesser known individuals like max lewis and nick han really stepping it up and posting some really respectable times. 1:47 in that 200 fly for lewis and 48's in both the 100 fly and 100 back for han.

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Swam4UT so why didn't Eddie keep Feigen on the relay? If he needed the relay win to win the meet, wouldn't he have put his fastest 100 free guy on the last relay of the meet?

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Again, I will make no apologies for four great guys winning a Big XII title for Jay and Doug.

Let's just chalk that whole debate up to a miscommunication. Anyone who's been on this board long enough knows that Spice is just as big of a supporter as anyone. He didn't mean "gift" in the way in which it's been characterized I'm sure, he simply meant to point out that we wouldn't have won the relay if Feigen had swum the relay rather than an irrelevant B-relay instead. The guys swam great, and I think if you look at it from the perspective of they won out a very tight race with their freshman holding off of one of Texas' best, it's worth just as much, if not more, than an even faster time in a loss to Texas with Feigen. Jay's anthem all season long has been about racing, racing, racing, racing. He's said it in just about every AA press release it seems like. And that's exactly what they did: race. SO let's all just agree that it was an awesome swim and hug it out.

Anyways, it's sort of unreal how good this freshman class has been for the women. I thought it would take at least until next year for the women to get back to the top-7 level at NCAA's, but man, they really shot some adrenaline into the rebuilding process. 09, you're right that there's already some serious sprinters on the books for next season, and at worst, Ibanez looks more than apt to replace Sommer next season. I think a few of these other girls (Dittmer, Miller) will develop into very good sprint freestylers too.

agreed, very surprised with the girls this past week, the freshman picked up all of the slack. they made the upper classmen seem all but irrelevant. they own the team now.

Men's Side:
So what relays can the Ags depend on to make NCAA's?

Somebody who swam very well was Ariens, dropping over a second in his 100back. Anybody know why he didn't do the lead off in the 200medley?
Fonua also sprinted a powerhouse featuring in three relays doing three different strokes!
Wagner posted a very fast 200breast. It'd be interesting to see what he can do in a 100. Snowden and Lavery will have graduated. They need guys in the breaststroke spots.

What guys are sitting on the border in the individual events for NCAAs?

On the Women's side:
These freshman girls are rivaling the '09 class with the likes of Wilkinson, Heiss, and Aljand.
Adams bounced back from having shoulder surgery and made it clear to everybody in the Big XII that she is a force to be reckoned with. 500free meet record and 1:53 200fly!? She has future national champion material and I think she can definitely stand up to challenge Hersey next year at 2012 trials.
Coach Bultman needed a breastroker and he found a very talented one in Larson. This girl has the talent to be an NCAA Champion already beating Atkinson's times.
Henry like Adams is bouncing back from surgery this summer and again proved she is also a very strong force for the lady ags. Huge potential to be National Champion and her versatility is sublime.
Miller is another versatile fly, free, back sprinter. Ibanez is also extremely talented.
All they're missing now are some sub-50 100freestylers and this team WILL be national champions very, very soon.

[This message has been edited by aggieswimfan (edited 2/28/2011 9:53p).]

-All of the guys relays are under the "invite" time from last season, except for the 200 medley (.02 off). 400 medley is only under by .07, so that'll be close too. After Pac-10's, 400 medley will probably be ranked 16th, 200 will probably be a little higher at around 14th.

-Though Fonua does mostly breaststroke individuals for us, internationally he is a backstroker and breaststroker. He swam both the sprint breaststrokes and backstrokes at the CG's last year (first qualifier from Tonga since 1946/ever, I've seen conflicting reports). He was also third in the 50 fly at the Oceania Championships last year. He's a candidate to be one of those short-course 100-IM specialist Peter Mankoc types after graduation.

-Ignoring relay bonus entries, because lots of these guys will be in on relays anyways (but isn't it cooler to get invited?) Dalton's on the right side of the bubble in the 50 free. Balazs is on the right side in the 100 free. Balazs is on the right side in in the 200. Omar is out in the 500, wrong side of the bubble in the mile. Ariens is out in back. Everyone is out in the 100 breast. Snowden is bubble: dead-center in the 200 breast. Everyone's out in the flys and the IM's. Some guys will definitely be feeling better if they can knock off a few tenths in the last-chance meet, and at that point Pac-10's will be mostly over with, so we'll have a pretty good idea of what the invite time will be. Last year, if I recall correctly, around the top 22-23 got invites.

WOMEN
-How about Dittmer in those breaststrokes too? Her and Larson are going to be a deadly 1-2 punch. This team really does have National Champion written all over it...they're already getting that kind of "two per event" depth that it takes to win those titles, with only one class. I would be flabbergasted if this freshman class didn't have a top 3 NCAA finish before they graduated.

coop is definitely right, we had some great individual swims go mostly unnoticed. gotta give props to the guys he mentioned for sure, those swims are up there on the all time top 10 list, as were many of the individual swims from the weekend.

i believe we had 2 breastrokers redshirt this year, Diego Suarez and Trevor Diehlman (sp?), so that will help ease the loss of Lavery/Snowden a little bit. Plus Amini will be back.

AgBlastoff - thanks. That men's 400 free relay was A&M's fastest ever.

Back to those amazing freshmen women....

I am simply stunned by how well they swam. We knew Henry was a 6 star recruit and she swam like one. Cammile Adams was the 5A 500 free champ (4:47), but dropping to 4:39 already is incredible. And hanging with Henry in the 400 IM is amazing.

Larson has been every bit as good as we hoped she might be - already scaring Sogar, even in the 200. And Larson has more 50 speed.

Paige Miller has outperformed Moldenhauer in both fly and back. And again - Miller is faster in 50s.

Dittmer has a much stronger IM than I thought - since she was a 50 free and 100 breast swimmer in high school.

And so on....

This class could be the nucleus of some great swimming coming up. But we need better sprint freestyle. Only two girls swam 100 free under 50 seconds. And right now no one seems anywhere near Bispo in the 200.

If it wasn't for that freshman class the girls would not have done what they did! This freshman class will take the team to new heights they never thought imaginable!

well after last year, it looked like losing that senior class was going to be all but a death sentence. and now with the entire freshman class performing at the level they are, that no longer seems to be the case. seriously impressive stuff from the women's freshmen this past weekend; there's definitely a bright future there.

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48's in both the 100 fly and 100 back for han.

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I'm not surprised, if you look at our dual meet results, you'll see that han was tearing up the fly and back, especially on our B medley relays. the guy obviously had a solid year, and it showed this weekend.

Our men's underclassmen look to improve greatly on the decent base we now have on that side of the pool.

It's nice to see absolute consistency from them, this should be the 4th year (I think) in a row that they achieve a top 15 finish (and look to push into top 10) and it seems they will repeat that next year with no problems.
That means no "rebuilding year" and that Jay and Doug can look to get to the next level, so overall congrats to them!!