Today the O’Connell Center will host the 77th men’s and 43rd women’s dual meets between the Gators and Seminoles swimming and diving teams at 1 p.m.
Florida’s men’s team (4-0, 3-0 Southeastern Conference) begins the latter half of their season ranked third and will be looking to push the 19-straight dual meet win streak one more against No. 16 Florida State (3-0, 2-0 Atlantic Coast Conference).
No. 23 FSU women (5-1, 2-0 ACC) will look to put UF below .500 and will likely lean on their strong sprinting to do so.
The fifth-ranked Gator women (2-2, 2-1 SEC) haven’t been as successful as their male counterparts on paper, but have set eight school records this season and notched five NCAA automatic qualifying times – one more than the men.
Florida coach Gregg Troy has both teams focused on getting 2014 off to a good start, but he’ll be using this meet against a quality opponent as a barometer for how hot they are after a long break from competition.
“We have not competed since the end of November. We’re real tired because we trained very well in December,” Troy said. “Tomorrow will give us a chance to see where we are after training hard for six weeks. I am looking forward to going against a good opponent and evaluating what we need to do from this point forward.”
It won’t, however, be the first time UF and FSU have faced each other this season.
Each school opened its swimming and diving seasons at the Pinch A Penny All Florida Invitational during late September in the O’Connell Center. Florida’s men and women came away with victories while Florida State picked up second place for both respective teams.
The Gators combine for 11 swimmers across 21 events ranking in the national top-5 times this season along with four relay teams.
The women will be sporting six of those events today – 100-and 1,000-yard freestyle, 100-yard butterfly, 200-yard backstroke, 400-yard individual medley and 400-yard medley relay – to go with six more from the men’s side – 500-and 1,000-yard free, 100-and 200-yard fly, 200-yard breast and 400-yard IM.
Follow Logan McGuire on Twitter @loganjmcguire
