March 27, 2003
AUSTIN, Texas - Sophomore Louis Paul scored a 16th place time of 1:47.61 Thursday in the 200 individual medley during the opening night of competition at the NCAA Swimming Championships in Austin, Texas. Auburn freshman George Bovell won the race with an NCAA record mark of 1:42.66, finishing nearly two seconds ahead of runner-up Joe Bruckart of California.
Paul qualified for the finals after recording his second best-ever time of 1:46.73 during the preliminary round. He posted a varsity and career best mark of 1:46.07 in the 200 IM several weeks ago at the Big Ten Championships.
"It's not that Louis did anything wrong tonight, but he may not have done enough right," said Purdue head coach Dan Ross. "At this level everyone has four good strokes (backstroke, butterfly, breaststroke and freestyle); this is not like the Big Ten where you might be able to get away with being weak in one particular area.
"I'm proud of Louis' effort. This is his first time here and that was his first race. He put us on the scoreboard, and we still have six races left in which we're capable of scoring."
All three Boilermakers will compete Friday. Paul races first in the 100 backstroke while teammates Tamas Bessenyei and Giordan Pogioli face each other in the 100 breaststroke.
"Our guys have been training extremely hard the past couple of weeks," said Ross. "Hopefully Louis' performance gives us something to build on going into tomorrow's races."
Swimming preliminaries begin each day at 11 a.m., and are followed by the diving preliminaries at 1 p.m. Finals for both swimming and diving begin every night at 7 p.m. Results from the NCAA Championships are posted shortly after the end of each event on the University of Texas web site, www.texassports.com.