11/23 at 12:13 AM

TUSCALOOSA - The No. 7 Auburn swimming and diving teams retained second-session leads to defeat rival and host Alabama in the two-day, 36-event dual meet held at the Alabama Aquatics Center on Saturday.

The Auburn women defeated the Crimson Tide 232.5-165 after leading wire-to-wire through all three sessions, while the men won 206-165 after a late surge put the men ahead in the latter stages of day one.

“The outstanding performance of the meet was clearly Matt Targett today in the 100 freestyle,” said Auburn head coach Richard Quick. “He went 49.4 unshaved in a regular suit and not a lot of people in the world can do that.”

Quick was also pleased with the balanced performance of the team, especially from the freshmen and sophomores.

“On the men’s side, I thought it was a good balanced effort. We had a solid performances from sophomores Kohlton Norys in the backstroke and Adam Klein in the 100 breaststroke,” said Quick. “On the women’s side, freshman Micah Lawrence did a real good job in the 100 breastsroke today and another freshman, Arianna Vanderpool-Wallace, did a good job in the 100 free. We also had a good meet from sophomore Micah Martindale in the distance freestyle events.”

Auburn won 10 of the 16 events staged Saturday, including a sweep of the day’s first event, the women’s 1500m freestyle. Micah Martindale (17:09.08) won the event, followed by Maggie Bird (17:34.74) and Chelsea Haser (17:43.25) finishing second and third, respectively.

The Auburn women also won the 400m freestyle relay as Alana Dillette, Rachel Goh, Melissa Marik and Ava Ohlgren swan a 3:54.63. Auburn’s B squad of Margo McCawley, Emilie Ewing, Micah Martindale and Arianna Vanderpool-Wallace beat out the Crimson Tide A squad for second with a 3:55.03.

Emile Ewing swam the top time in the women’s 200m backstroke with a 2:20.13 to win the event followed by teammate Erica Meissner who took second with a 2:20.55.

Freshman Micah Lawrence (2:26.33) and Abby MacGregor (2:41.40) finished first and second in the women’s 200m breaststroke.

In the women’s 100m freestyle, Auburn’s Arianna Vanderpool-Wallace (57.47) and Rachel Goh (58.56) claimed first and third, respectively.

Five events after the women swept the 1500m freestyle relay, the Auburn men’s team put up a sweep of its own as Matt Targett led the pack, picking up a B cut time with his 49.46 in the 100m freestyle. Gideon Louw (51.38) and Karl Krug (53.02) came in second and third, respectively.

The men’s 400m freestyle relay team of Gideon Louw, Karl Krug, Tyler McGill and Matt Targett earned Auburn’s second B cut on the day as the group won the event with a 3:24.35, under the B cut time by 2.49 seconds.

Auburn’s Kohlton Norys (2:05.96) and Max Murphy (2:06.59) finished first and second in a near sweep of the men’s 200m backstroke.

In Saturday’s diving events held at the Georgia Tech Invitational, Auburn split 2-of-4 with Alabama. Kelly Marx won both men’s events while Anna Aguero was the only Auburn diver to score a top-three finish in the women’s events.

Marx took the men’s 1m event with a total of 334.80 and followed by teammate Dan Mazzaferro who put up 327.15. Marx would follow suit in the men’s 3m totaling 393.40 with Mazzaferro again in the top-three, posting 337.00 for a third place finish.

In the women’s 3m event, Aguero posted a 252.75 to finish third after just missing out on the top-three with a fourth-place finish in the 1-meter.

“Everybody showed good improvement,” said diving coach Jeff Shaffer. “This is the time of season to get back in competition shape, focus on what you did right and look at the technical mistakes you made to get better in the next competitions.”

While the dual meet is the last for the Tigers until January, Auburn’s swimmers will return to action Dec. 4-6 at the USA Swimming Short Course National Championships in Atlanta. The divers return to action today in the final session of the Georgia Tech Invitational.

Men’s Tennis plays well again
The Auburn men’s tennis team picked up six more singles wins and a doubles victory Saturday at the Auburn Fall Classic.

Auburn took on SEC rival South Carolina in the second day of competition. Troy and Samford battled in the first half of the day, with the teams finishing evenly at four wins each.

South Carolina came out strong in doubles action winning all three matches. Diego Cubas and Ivan Machado took down Alexey Tsyrenov and Alex Stamchev on court one, 9-7.

Michel Monteiro and Milan Krnjetin then fell to South Carolina’s Perdo Campos and Joe Veeder 8-2. On the last court, the Gamecocks finished the sweep as Chris Sheehan and Johannes Pulsfort defeated Nick Maurillo and Alex Petropoulos, 8-5.

The momentum carried in South Carolina’s favor as Thomas Stoddard defeated Powell Porter, 4-6, 6-0, 7-6, for their first singles victory.

The momentum stopped there, however, as Auburn took the reins and rallied for four straight wins.

Monteiro breezed by Veeder, 6-0, 6-2, to start it off and the wins kept coming from there. Petropoulos took down Pulsfort, 6-1, 6-4, and Maurillo defeated Sheehan, 6-3, 3-6, 6-0.

Then, on court two, after battling point-for-¬point Stamchev overcame Campos, 6-3, 6-4, for the Tigers fourth victory.

Tsyrenov and Krnjetin fought hard through three close sets before they were finally defeated by each of their opponents.

Cubas sneaked past Tsyrenov 1-6, 7-6, 6-7, and Machado come from behind to defeat Krnjetin, 6-3, 6-7, 7-6.

Final-day competition will begin at 9 a.m. today with Samford taking on South Carolina. Auburn will then play Troy at 1:30 p.m.