The diving portion of the 2005 Big Ten Men's Swimming and Diving Championships saw 33 athletes compete in the one-meter spring board preliminaries. The six round prelims saw eight earn spots into the event finals Thursday evening. Ohio State's Mitch Richeson, who finished second at last year's championships, led four divers who made the event finals last season. In the prelims on Thursday, Indiana dominated the scoring by earning five of the eight spots in the evening finals.
After taking last season off to train for the Olympic trials, Indiana senior and 2003 Big Ten Diver of the Year Marc Carlton led the way with the highest cumulative score of the prelims with a total of 341.15. Teammate Brian Mariano finished the preliminary round second after scoring 336.25. Purdue sophomore Steven LoBue broke up a quartet of Hoosiers, finishing third with 330.15 points. Junior Jesse Rappaport continued the Indiana qualifications finishing fourth with a score of 317.00 and Hoosier freshman Taylor Roberts finished in the fifth spot with 315.90 points. Minnesota's John Schmidt came in sixth with 314.65 points. Richeson finished the prelims in seventh position, scoring 309.60 points. IU senior Brian Metzler rounds out the event's finalists scoring 304.35.
The divers' preliminary scores will not carry over to the finals this evening. The finalists will have another six dives and will compete in reverse order from their preliminary finishing scores. This is the first year that judging is not being done by conference diving coaches, five outside judges score the performances. The highest and lowest totals are eliminated, then the three middle scores are added together and then multiplied by the individual dive's predetermined degree of difficulty to produce the divers final score.
Tonight's diving finals begin tonight at 7:45 p.m. Central Time. Check back to BigTen.org for live results and continuing coverage of the 2005 Big Ten Men's Swimming and Diving Championships.
|
|
 |
