BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s swimming and diving fell to the Florida Gators, 135-98, on Thursday evening at the LSU Natatorium in their first home meet of the season.
The 23rd-ranked Tigers fell to 0-14 all-time versus Florida. The 14th-ranked Gators won 8 of 13 events in the meet, LSU’s first since the 2001 Nike Cup Invitational back in November.
“We were a little sluggish tonight, we have had such a long break without competing in a while,” said LSU assistant coach Lars Jorgensen. “We have been training pretty hard lately and we just were not very sharp tonight.”
The Tigers did receive strong performances in several events on Thursday evening. Sophomore Ross Buffington won the 1000-yard freestyle with a time of 9:20.59. Buffington also won the 500-yard freestyle with a time of 4:33.39. Steve Gluck won the 200-yard breaststroke with a time of 2:06.86, and junior Kyle VanArdsall won the 1-meter diving competition with a score of 294.23.
LSU’s team of Evan Martinec, Francisco Paez, Martin Latz and Chris Stanczyk placed first in the 400-yard freestyle relay with a time of 3:06.14.
“I think our performance in the 1000-freestyle was pretty good, but overall I think we could do better. I think we will bounce back and do better tomorrow, because I think they are motivated and challenged from tonight.”
“It will be a real test to see where we are, whether we will lay down or hopefully come back and fight and give a better effort,” Jorgensen said.
The Tigers fell to 2-3 overall on the season and 1-3 in the Southeastern Conference with the loss. LSU returns to action with a meet Friday at 11:00 a.m. versus Texas A&M at the LSU Natatorium. Both the LSU men and women will compete in the meet on Friday. The Lady Tigers are 5-1 on the season and 3-1 in the SEC.
“Friday’s meet against Texas A&M will be a great meet,” said LSU head coach Jeff Cavana. “They have a lot of depth and are a perennial top-10 program, so this is another big challenge for us.”
Texas A&M’s men are currently ranked 19th while the women are unranked.