Southern Illinoise University Athletics
Swimming & Diving To Compete At Northwestern Invite
11/14/2001 | 12:00:00 | Swimming & Diving
Nov. 14, 2001
Carbondale, Ill. - The SIU men's and women's swimming and diving teams will face Northwestern, Purdue and Louisville at the Northwestern Invite at Northwestern University on November 16-17 at the Norris Aquatics Center. The event will run all day Friday and Saturday.
The SIU men will face #20 Northwestern, #24 Purdue and Louisville in their toughest test of the season.
"We match up pretty well with Northwestern and Purdue but they are very deep Big Ten teams. Louisville is someone we are deeper than. We are going to go compete and at the end of the day see where we are as a team," said Rick Walker, SIU men's swimming and diving head coach.
"Individually we want to compete well against good competition. We're getting pretty focused on the events our guys will swim. I want us to be a little sharper than last week and the team is looking forward to competing with some nationally ranked teams."
The SIU men are coming off a second place finish at the Fall Illini Classic, coming up just 18 points short of Missouri.
"I'm very pleased with the way we competed last week. Missouri is a good team and we beat Northern Illinois which was good," added Walker.
The SIU women will face #21 Northwestern, #31 Purdue and Louisville in their toughest challenge of the season.
"We'll be facing strong, powerful Big Ten teams in Northwestern and Purdue as well as Louisville in a great facility. The kids are very excited about this meet, the competition will be better than last weekend at Illinois and I expect us to swim better than we did last week" said Jeff Goelz, SIU women's swimming and diving head coach.
"We've rested a bit this week so we should swim better. We will still try some people in different events and I expects good swims in this facility. We want to face the best and this is a good stepping stone to the MVC meet."
The SIU women finished second to Illinois last weekend at the Fall Illini Classic.
The Northwestern Invite will serve as an SIU reunion of sorts with nationally-ranked Northwestern and Purdue having SIU connections on their coaching staffs.
"Jimmy Tierney, the Northwestern coach, used to coach at SIU when I swam here and Tim Kelly, the assistant at Purdue, used to swim with me at SIU so most of the teams has some affiliated with them that at one point was once a Saluki. It'll be like a homecoming," Goelz added.
