Feb. 13, 2018
Auburn's swimming and diving teams are in College Station, Texas, for the 2018 Southeastern Conference Championships, which begin on Wednesday and run through Sunday.
Auburn finished its dual meet seasons 4-3, 3-2 SEC for both the men's and women's teams. Auburn's men knocked off Texas A&M, Alabama and South Carolina in conference action while the women picked up wins over Tennessee, South Carolina and Florida.
"We feel great," Auburn head coach Brett Hawke said. "Coming off Florida there was some acknowledgement that we needed to rest and we did.
"We feel really good about the team that we are taking to SECs and we feel it is going to be very competitive," Hawke said. "Diving is going to be huge for us."
LISTEN AS COACH HAWKE PREVIEWS THE SEC CHAMPIONSHIPS
Aly Tetzloff heads into the SEC meet as one of the hottest swimmers in the country. The junior holds the SEC's third-fastest time in both the 50 free and 100 fly and the sixth-fastest 100 free time. Three times this year she has been named the SEC Women's Swimmer of the Week. She holds five of Auburn's 49 NCAA B cuts on the women's side, including provisional times in the 100 back and 200 IM.
Bailey Nero (200 back, 100 fly, 200 fly, 200 IM, 400 IM) also has five NCAA B cuts while Erin Falconer (50 free, 200 free, 100 back, 200 back) and Zoe Thatcher (200 free, 500 free, 200 IM, 400 IM) have four each.
On the men's side, Hugo Gonzalez is also one of the nation's best as the freshman from Spain has already collected three A cuts this season. Nationally he holds one of just two A cut times in the 400 IM with a national-best 3:39.28. He holds one of just four A cuts times in the 200 IM, holding the fourth-best time in 1:42.02, and is one of just five A cut times in the 200 back, holding the second-best time at 1:39.05.
Auburn also has posted an A cut time in both the men's and women's 400 free relay.
Auburn has 51 men's NCAA B cuts with Zach Apple, Peter Holoda and Liam McCloskey holding them in the same four events (50 free, 100 free, 200 free, 100 fly).
In the diving well Scott Lazeroff and Pete Turnham have already posted Zone Diving Championship score on all three boards. In his final conference meet, Turnham will look to finish in the top-8 on any board for only the second time in his career while Lazeroff has been in the top three of the platform each of the last two years. Alison Maillard also holds all three Zone scores and last year had three top-9 finishes at SECs.
"For whatever reason, our men's team, we generally have a great last day," Hawke said. "A lot of our big events are on that last day so we do have to pace ourselves and understand that some other teams may make a run early; be patient and get our points where we can."
Wednesday's competition begins at 10:30 a.m. CT with the women's 1-meter platform prelims. The men's 3-meter platform prelims begin at 2:00 p.m. The women's finals begin at 4:20 p.m. followed by the men's and women's 200 medley relay finals, the men's 3-meter finals and the men's and women's 800 free relay finals.
Beginning Thursday, prelims will be held at 10:00 a.m. and finals at 6:00 p.m.
Livestats are available each session through 12thman.com and each session will air on SECN+.