Jan. 8, 2008
COLUMBIA, Mo. - The 18th-ranked Missouri women's swimming and diving team (7-1, 1-1 Big 12) will open the 2008 portion of its season by welcoming Arkansas and Missouri State to the Mizzou Aquatics Center, Saturday at 1 p.m. The Tigers look to ring in the New Year by doing much of what they did in 2007: Win.
The Tigers broke open their 2007-08 dual campaign with a huge 150-93 victory over defending Big Ten Champion Indiana on Oct. 12. The women returned to the friendly confines of the Mizzou Aquatics Center the following day to cruise to a third straight Show Me Showdown title, taking 14 of 16 events along the way. After suffering a tough loss to national power Texas A&M a week later, the Tigers paid a visit to Lawrence, Kan., where they unleashed for just their second win ever against archrival Kansas in Robinson Natatorium. The women's victory also marked their seventh in the last eight matchups with the Jayhawks.
November brought much of the same success for the 2-1 Tigers. The Mizzou Dual Challenge, and five meets in three days, was up first for the women. For the second consecutive season Mizzou broke out the brooms for a weekend sweep, capped off by a routing of top-25 Virginia Tech during Sunday's events. Two weeks later the Tigers headed to West Lafayette, Ind., for the Boilermaker Invitational. The women dominated from day one, accumulating 821.5 points over the weekend to roll past second-place Purdue by nearly 200 points and claim their first Invite title.
The 7-1 Mizzou women look to carry the success gained in the dual season's first half into 2008. Saturday's meet against the Razorbacks (4-2) and Bears (3-4) will be the first test of the New Year for the Tigers. The women have met the 20th-ranked (Division I Mid-Major) Bears three times this season, but only once in a dual setting. Missouri State took second at the Show Me Showdown and finished sixth at the Boilermaker Invite. They fell to the Tigers by a triple-digit score of 124-24 at November's Mizzou Dual Challenge. This will be the first meeting between Mizzou and Arkansas since 2003, when the Tigers came out on top (81-59).
Mizzou will use Saturday's test and the remainder of its dual season to prepare for next month's Big 12 Championships, set to take place in Austin, Texas, from February 27 through March 1.