Brendan Burns, B1G Breaststroke and Six 18-Splits at Big Tens Night Four | SwimSwam

By Karl Ortegon on SwimSwam

2021 BIG TEN MEN’S CHAMPIONSHIPS

• When: Tuesday, March 2nd to Saturday, March 6th | Prelims 11am | Finals 5pm Tues, 6:30pm Wed-Sat (ET)
• Where: Ohio State University (Eastern Time Zone)
• Defending Champion: Michigan (1x) (2020 results)
• Streaming: Big Ten Network
• Championship Central
• Live Results

TEAM SCORES (THROUGH DAY FOUR)

1. Indiana – 1036.5
2. Michigan – 1010
3. Ohio State – 1000
4. Purdue – 615.5
5. Wisconsin – 571
6. Northwestern – 554
7. Penn State – 496.5
8. Iowa – 444.5
9. Minnesota – 396
10. Michigan State – 149

The team race continued to swirl tonight, with the top three teams, and then the teams racing for fourth, trading leads back and forth. Indiana holds a slim lead over Michigan and Ohio State going into the final day of competition, while Purdue is ahead of Wisconsin and Northwestern.

A big story of the night came in the 200 fly, where the race wasn’t competitive, but the time out of winner Brendan Burns was. At 1:39.22, Burns undercut Vini Lanza’s school record and Big Ten record, a best by over a second for Burns and his first time under 1:40.

Burns is now #9 all-time, just .01 ahead of Texas A&M’s Shaine Casas.

The other big story tonight, one we’ve been noticing only in relays thus far in the meet, is the depth of the Big Ten in breaststroke. In the final, while a few swimmers added time, all eight finished under 52 seconds. Counting this morning’s prelims, nine swimmers from the Big Ten have dropped under the 52-second barrier this season, making up nearly half of the nation’s sub-52 swimmers.

Max McHugh leads the nation with his prelims time of 50.19, while Michigan’s Will Chan dropped his first-ever, and Michigan’s first-ever as a program, 50-point swim with a 50.95 for silver. McHugh and Chan are now 1-2 in the country, while Indiana’s Zane Backes is fourth (51.04) and Ohio State’s Jason Mathews is sixth (51.30).

Indiana won the 200 free relay, with Purdue making their presence known with a big second-place effort there. Six men broke 19 on flying starts, while OSU’s Hunter Armstrong had the quickest lead-off leg (19.17).

200 FREE RELAY SPLITS

Lead-off leg denoted*

TEAM	SWIMMER	SPLIT
Michigan	Gus Borges	18.56
Indiana	Jack Franzman	18.59
Ohio State	Sem Andreis	18.65
Penn State	Jake Houck	18.82
Penn State	Will Roberson	18.96
Purdue	Nick Sherman	18.98
Indiana	Van Mathias	19.00
Purdue	Ryan Hrosik	19.07
Purdue	Ryan Lawrence	19.07
Ohio State	Hunter Armstrong	19.17 *lead-off*
Indiana	Brandon Hamblin	19.23
Wisconsin	Andrew Benson	19.25 *lead-off*
Michigan	Will Chan	19.26
Michigan	Cam Peel	19.30 *lead-off*
Wisconsin	Dylan Delaney	19.33
Ohio State	Colin McDermott	19.37
Ohio State	Justin Fleagle	19.38
Purdue	Nikola Acin	19.38 *lead-off*
Minnesota	Eitan Yudashkin	19.39
Indiana	Tomer Frankel	19.42 *lead-off*
Iowa	Seth Miller	19.47
Michigan	River Wright	19.48
Penn State	Gabe Castano	19.52 *lead-off*
Iowa	Sergey Kuznetsov	19.63
Minnesota	Max McHugh	19.63
Iowa	Aleksey Tarasenko	19.66 *lead-off*
Michigan State	Bradley Sanford	19.68
Wisconsin	Erik Gessner	19.68
Michigan State	Kevin Mills	19.71
Minnesota	Kaiser Neverman	19.73
Michigan State	Evan Stanislaw	19.76
Penn State	Zane Sutton	19.77
Wisconsin	Wes Jekel	19.77
Iowa	Will Myhre	19.78
Minnesota	Lucas Farrar	19.80 *lead-off*
Northwestern	Andew Zhang	19.80
Northwestern	Collin Schuster	19.87
Northwestern	Ezra Mizgala	20.00 *lead-off*
Michigan State	Aiden Farley	20.06
Northwestern	Ethan Churilla	20.15

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