May 31, 2006
COLUMBIA, Mo. -
After completing a 2005-06 campaign that was one of the program's best in recent years, Missouri head swimming and diving coach Brian Hoffer and his staff have announced a challenging schedule that will pit the Tigers against some of the nation's toughest competition in '06-07.
"We really want to challenge our team and find as many new environments for them to swim in as possible," Hoffer said. "We proved last year that we can go out and swim with the top teams in the college ranks, and we don't want to shy away from that now."
In the regular season alone, the Mizzou men will face five teams - Southern California (4th), Georgia (10th), Indiana (11th), Virginia (13th) and Harvard (22nd) - that finished ranked in the College Swimming Coaches Association of America (CSCAA) final top-25 poll, in addition to a Texas A&M squad that received votes on that ballot.
The Tiger women have an even more impressive gauntlet to run, highlighted by a Georgia team that finished atop the last CSCAA poll of the year. Five other teams that found spots in the final CSCAA poll also appear on the Mizzou women's schedule in '06-07: California (3rd), Texas A&M (11th), Indiana (16th), Virginia (19th) and Minnesota (23rd).
The Tigers open up the schedule in traditional fashion with the Black & Gold intrasquad meet on Sept. 29 and the Alumni Meet the following day.
On Oct. 7, the Tigers will host the second-annual Show-Me-Showdown, which brings in college teams from all over the state for a day-long competition. The Mizzou men and women both took first in last year's Showdown, the inaugural holding of the event.
"The Showdown is just a great way to pay tribute to the amount of college swimming talent in the state of Missouri," Hoffer said. "It's by no means an easy meet to win because of the caliber of the programs that will be there, but our team loves to race and compete."
The Tigers hit the road a week later, traveling to Lincoln, Neb., for the Big 12 Relays on Oct. 13. The Tigers will stay in Lincoln the following day, when both the men and women will battle Texas A&M in a neutral-site dual meet. The Mizzou women were defeated by the Aggies last season, but the Tiger men claimed their first conference dual win since the Big 12 realigned at the hands of Texas A&M.
On Oct. 27, the Tiger women will look to earn Border Showdown points and avenge last season's loss to Kansas when the Jayhawks make their first dual appearance at the Mizzou Aquatics Center.
The MAC will be the site of larger meet one week later, when the Tigers will host the Mizzou Dual Challenge from Nov. 3-5. The weekend will mark the first home dual extravaganza in the program's history, and will feature matchups with Iowa, Southern Illinois, Louisville and Drury. The Tiger men went a combined 2-1 against those schools in '05-06, defeating Iowa and Louisville and not facing Southern Illinois, while the women won dual meets against Drury and Iowa but did not face Louisville or Southern Illinois last season.
"We've never hosted a meet like this, but our program has some history in this scenario because we used to go when Illinois hosted one every year," Hoffer said. "There's really nothing like this anywhere else in the country, and we wanted to start the meet again and see if we could get something fun going."
After the Mizzou Dual Challenge, both the Tiger men and women will take some time off before they host Truman State for a dual on Nov. 18.
After tuning up with the Bulldogs of Truman State, the Tigers will head south to face another set of Bulldogs - the ones from Georgia - along with a host of other top-notch competition at the Bulldog Invitational. Georgia, the event's host, finished second at last year's women's NCAA Nationals, while the men's squad placed ninth at their championship meet. The men's side also features USC, which finished seventh at the '05-06 national meet, as well as Harvard, Virginia and Georgia Tech. The Tiger women will face California, Minnesota, Virginia and Georgia Tech in addition to their hosts for the weekend.
"The Georgia invite is certainly one of the nation's elite meets and we're excited to be a part of it this year," Hoffer said. "There are going to be some great teams there, and we'll have a chance to show what we can do."
The turn of the calendar will find the Tigers back in dual mode, as they host a pair of matchups to begin the 2007 portion of the season. Missouri State will travel to the MAC on Jan. 12 take on both the Mizzou men and women, then conference foe Iowa State will take to the water in Columbia the next day to swim with the Mizzou women. The Tigers claimed road wins over both schools last season.
One week later, the Tigers hit the road for good, heading to Bloomington, Ind., to take on the Indiana Hoosiers on Jan. 20 and Lincoln, Neb., to square off with the Nebraska Cornhuskers on Jan. 27 before beginning to taper for conference championships.
The Big 12 Championships will be held in College Station, Texas, and hosted by Texas A&M for the second time in three years. The Mizzou men and women both took third in the meet last year, when Mizzou hosted the event for the first time in the 10-year history of the Big 12.
"It's going to be a challenging season, but at the same time it'll be a fun season," Hoffer said. "We've got some new meets, like the dual with Indiana and our own Dual Challenge, and we're going to keep our traditional rivals on the schedule. We're going to look to build on our success from last year against a schedule that will demand our best each week."
All home meets are held at the Mizzou Aquatics Center in the Student Recreation Center on the Mizzou campus. Admission to home meets is free.