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Sports

Cougars swim west to face Nevada, NMSU

UH must overcome altitude to break two-game losing streak

by JONG LEE
The Daily Cougar

The University of Houston swimming and diving team (7-7, 0-3 Conference-USA) will take a road trip this weekend to Reno, Nev., to face Nevada (10-1, 5-0 West Atlantic Conference) and New Mexico State (2-5, 1-4 West Atlantic Conference) at 1 p.m. at Lombardi Pool.

The Cougars are recovering from two losses to Rice and LSU and looking to gain some momentum as they look toward the conference championships.

"Well we know what kind of programs Rice and LSU are," head coach Mark Taylor said. "We almost won more individual events in the competition against Rice and LSU than they won. Our depth just isn't there yet, and so when we see things like that we can see the fact that two years ago we didn't win any events and now we're winning majority of the events.

"Andrea Pa'lmai got another B qualifying time for the NCAA championships," Taylor said. "Marit Bloemer did great in the distance freestyles. Szintia Szanto is close to some of her life time bests as a Cougar. Lauren VanCleave and Sasha Schwendenwein did times that were ranked right up there with their fall meets."

Nevada will enter the meet winning their last four competitions, averaging 198.875 points while allowing only 96.625 points. The Wolf Pack managed to suffer only one loss this season, dating back to Oct. 27.

New Mexico State is not faring as well as Nevada this season, coming off an 89-22 defeat against San Jose State after edging out 57-54 against San Diego.

"Both teams are pretty close to our level of competition," Taylor said. "We think we're pretty equal to them, and we've shown quite an improvement over the last three or four meets."

This will be the first time the Cougars have faced altitude problems, and their late flight plans might hurt them as they prepare for the Saturday meet.

"We're not going to get in until late Friday night about midnight our time and we have to compete midday Saturday," Taylor said. "Most of the girls sleep early and wake up early. We're getting in so late, it's going to affect their biorhythms a little bit. It's also up in Reno, so we're going to be in a little altitude."

Houston will make their way home after this meet to take on Tulane on Jan. 28 at 11:30 a.m. in the Campus Recreation and Wellness Center Natatorium.
 

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