(Photo: Alli Cline/WCSN)
The Arizona State men’s swim team started off the day in fifth place following two school-record performances last night. Today’s meet brought a lot expectations to swim fast, especially in the 50-yard freestyle. However, ASU failed to perform amongst their competition.
ASU had two swimmers in the top eight with Richard Bohus ranked third and Tadas Duskinas ranked sixth. This event was scheduled to be one of ASU’s best events with the amount of swimmers competing near the top. However, Coach Bob Bowman made the decision to remove Bohus out of the event and put him in all of the relays, forcing Duskinas and Patrick Park to pick up the slack in the sprint event.
That plan didn’t work out well for ASU when Duskinas was out touched by many swimmers, which landed him in 15th place during the prelims. Earning that spot made him unable to compete in the championship final that evening. He eventually went 20.28 in the consolation final and got 16th place
“Step one is, when you have an opportunity to swim in the finals, you must swim faster.” Bowman said. “We almost across the board did not do that tonight. That is something we have to work on tomorrow. We have to put some people in and we have got to put someone in the top eight final, and the people that comeback to swim at night need to swim much faster.”
The team needed a strong answer to some of their early struggles, but that performance didn’t come. The 200 yard freestyle relay team of Duskinas, Bohus, Park and Thomaz Martins swam a fast time, but they finished second to last
“We prepared for the Arizona dual meet, and that has compromised somewhat our preparation for this meet,” Coach Bob Bowman said. “However, we have some people that are not on the top of their game skill wise, and this morning I would say we had a relatively good session in terms of what they have done this year. Tonight has probably been our worst session since I have been coaching here. Almost nobody improved their times and that is what has to change.”
The Sun Devils are currently in last place. Tomorrow will be a very important day when they have many of their key swimmers competing near the top in their premier events. Park and Duskinas will swim the 100-yard butterfly. Bohus will swim the 100-yard backstroke, and Christian Lorenz will swim the 100 yard breastroke. All of the mentioned swimmers have school records in these events.
You can contact Ryan with recurry@asu.edu or follow him on twitter with @ryancurry25
