Before and after Ohio State's 52-14 rain-soaked trouncing of Illinois, other Buckeye sports were doing the same.
Ohio State Swimming Invitational
In their toughest competition of the season to date, the Ohio State men's and women's swimming teams took second and fourth place finishes respectively in their own Ohio State Invitational.
The No. 16 men's team was the runner-up to the fifth-ranked North Carolina State team, finishing with 1,180.50 points. The Buckeyes got top finishes over the three-day invitational from Christo Law in platform diving (1st, 382.25), Michael Salazar in the 200 butterfly (2nd, 1:44.91) and 100 butterfly (2nd, 46.36) and Paul DeLakis in the 200 breaststroke finals (4th, 1:58.04).
Salazar finished second in the 200 butterfly to 2016 Olympic gold medalist Ryan Held of NC State. Salazar had edged Held in preliminaries by less than .1 of a second and was the No.1 seed going into the finals, but Held came out on top in the end.
On the women's side, the No. 23 Buckeye finished fourth with 642 points behind No. 18 Notre Dame, No. 12 NC State and No. 17 Kentucky.
Meg Bailey was the only athlete swimming this weekend for Ohio State to win multiple events, as she took home gold in the 400m individual medley and in the 200m butterfly. Freya Rayner also took home gold in the the 100m freestyle, cutting more than two seconds of her personal best of 50.83 to finish with a time of 48.43 seconds.
On the diving side, Lara Tarvit pulled a gold for the Buckeyes, finishing with a final score of 267.65 in the platform dive.
Women's Volleyball Drops a pair
It was a tough week for the women's volleyball team, as they suffered a pair of conference losses that dropped their season record to under .500 at 14-15 with losses to No. 5 Nebraska and to Iowa at home last week.
The back-to-back losses on back-to-back nights started in the four-set loss to the Cornhuskers, 25-23, 25-12, 22-25, 25-23.
After playing the Huskers close through the first set of the match, being blown out in the second and coming out close in the third, the fourth set was all she wrote in an already back-and-forth match for the Buckeyes.
During the match senior outside hitter topped the thousand-kill mark during her 10 kill performance for the Buckeyes. Schirmer's performance was supplemented off 39 assists from Becca Mauer, who also helped in assisting 11 kills from Ashley Wenz, 9 from Madison Smeathers and 8 from Lauren Witte.
Buckeyes Swept Saturday Night by hawkeyes
Despite the Hawkeyes coming into the match a game behind the Buckeyes in the Big Ten standings — Ohio State was 7-10, Iowa 6-11 — Ohio State couldn't keep the momentum going during their four-set last loss the previous night to Nebraska. Iowa came into St. John Arena and defeated the Buckeyes 25-23, 25-23, 25-18 Saturday night.
A night after getting her 1,000th career kill, Luisa Schirmer must've felt like putting more into her name during the last month of her college career. She exploded for 16 kills in the loss.
Iowa had previously defeated the Buckeyes by a 3-1 score a week prior in Iowa City.
Ohio State next plays on the road Wednesday at Maryland before concluding their regular season next Saturday against Illinois at 7 p.m. in St. John Arena.
Christine Frederick finishes 167th at NCAA Cross Country Meet
The only representative from the men's and women's cross country teams to qualify or the NCAA Championships finished 167th last weekend. Christine Frederick — a senior from Cincinnati — finished with a time of 21:13.20 at E.P Tom Sawyer State Park in Louisville, KY. Frederick was the top finisher for the Buckeyes at the Great Lakes Regionals and finished 11th at the Big Ten Championships, good enough for second-team All-Big Ten honors.
Other Scores and News
- Ohio State women's basketball defeated Idaho, Quinnipiac and Washington.
- Women's hockey tied, then topped Bemidji State on the road.
- National champion men's volleyball took in their visit to the Oval Office.
- Pistol defeated Army 6420-6371 (OPEN) and 2752-2709 (women's) at the USMA.
