Miller Leads Jayhawks on Day Three of Championships

March 1, 2013

Complete ResultsGet Acrobat Reader

AUSTIN, Texas Freshman Chelsie Miller recorded 17 points for the Kansas swimming and diving team to lead the Jayhawks on the third day of the 2013 Big 12 Championships, Friday night at the Jamail Texas Swimming Center in Austin, Texas.
Miller, a Houston, Texas native, returned to her home state to take second place with an NCAA B time standard of 4:15.01 in the 400-yard IM. The Jayhawks scored 201 total points on the meet’s third day, giving them a total of 326.5 heading into the final day of competition.

“That was an outstanding swim,” Kansas head coach Clark Campbell said. “That was an outstanding effort by her and it really got the session started off on the right foot and got a lot of energy going.”

Including Miller, Kansas (6-4, 2-0 Big 12) got a total of 37 points in the 400-yard IM thanks to a season-best effort from junior Alison Moffit (4:21.38, fifth) who earned 14 points and a career-best effort from senior Rebecca Swank (4:24.60, 11th) who added six points for the Jayhawks in the night’s first event.
KU tallied 15 more points in the second event of the evening when junior Sofiia Filatova (54.95, ninth) and sophomore Deanna Marks (55.44, 11th) put up season-best times in the 100-yard butterfly. The Jayhawks got another career-best effort from junior Morgan Sharp in the 200-yard freestyle (1:48.99, 8th) to add 11 points to the Kansas total while freshman teammate Haley Molden (1:50.74, 11th) tallied six.

Three more season-best times from junior Alison Lusk (1:02.96, sixth), senior Brittany Rospierski (1:03.25, ninth) and freshman Bryce Hinde (1:03.52, 10th) in the 100-yard breast stroke added 29 points to bring them within two of Iowa State. Another NCAA B time standard from senior Brooke Brull (55.05, 9th) lead the way for the Jayhawks in the 100-yard backstroke where they also got scoring efforts from Filatova (56.22, 12th) and senior Alyssa Rudman (59.11, 16th). In the nights final event, the 200-yard freestyle relay team (Golovchun, Brull, Sharp and Molden) finished fourth and earned the Jayhawks 30 more points with a season-best time of 1:32.91.

“This was our best session by far,” Campbell said. “The team is firing on all cylinders and looking really good, so we want to continue this momentum into tomorrow.”

For the second day in a row, the KU divers were led by freshman Meredith Brownell who added 12 points to the Kansas total by finishing seventh in the three-meter event with a score of 276.25. Freshman Madeline Martin (232.15) and senior Christy Cash (222.90) also scored for the Jayhawks, finishing 14th and 15th respectively.

“I was really proud of (Meredith),” Kansas diving coach Eric Elliott said. “She did really well in the final to move up a spot. I am really looking forward to tomorrow, it should be a really good event for us and we did really well yesterday.”

The Jayhawks’ 326.5 points after day three keeps them in fifth place behind Texas (732), West Virginia (375), TCU (369) and Iowa State (341.5) heading into the final day of the championships.

“Meets like this are won and lost in preliminaries,” Campbell said. “We have to step up tomorrow morning and be in scoring positions tomorrow night. We need to come in with a lot of energy and put up our best times in the morning and come back up put up points at night.”

The Jayhawks will be back in the pool Saturday morning for the fourth and final day of the Big 12 Championships, with preliminaries beginning at 10 a.m. and finals starting at 6 p.m. The order of events is as follows:

Preliminaries (10 a.m.)
200-yard backstroke
100-yard freestyle
200-yard breaststroke
200-yard butterfly
400-yard freestyle relay
Platform diving (12:15 p.m.)
Finals (6 p.m.)
Platform diving (4:30 p.m.) 200-yard backstroke
100-yard freestyle
1650-yard freestyle
200-yard breaststroke
200-yard butterfly
400-yard freestyle relay

KUAthletics.com:The official online source for Kansas Athletics, Williams Education Fund contributions, tickets, merchandise, multimedia, photos and much, much more.