The University of Connecticut is getting ready to take on the University of New Hampshire in Durham, New Hampshire at 1 p.m. on Saturday. The Huskies hope to continue their winning ways in defeating the Wildcats, coming off of a three-meet winning streak, where they’ve outswum Southern Connecticut State University, the University of Rhode Island and Seton Hall University.
UConn is riding a big wave of momentum, coming off a weekend where they beat two solid swim squads in URI and Seton Hall thoroughly. Last Friday, they defeated the Rams 190-105, in a dominating showing, and then came into the Pirates’ building and beat them by a score of 167-128. The brightest spots for the Huskies came in the form of the entire diving team, as they placed well all weekend. Swimmer Niamh Hofland contributed to the Huskies’ success as she took the gold in four races. Were it not for the diving team, UConn would not have had such decisive victories that boosted their confidence heading into this meet.
The New Hampshire Wildcats enter this meet with a 3-2 record on the season, not yet having competed against another team in their America East Conference, where they started off the season hot with three straight victories, but have faltered as of late. Their downtrend started with a disappointing last place finish at the Bruno Invitational, where they finished behind Brown University, the hosts of the event, New York University, and Johns Hopkins University, in that order. As a matter of fact, of fact, Brown more than doubled New Hampshire’s point total, with the score going 1351-636. Most recently, they are coming off a tough meet loss to Northeastern University, where those Huskies defeated them 166-125. It seems as though, for now, the winds are not at their backs, but they hope to change that, hosting this event.
The UConn Huskies and the New Hampshire Wildcats have not faced each other in quite a while, at least since the 2008-2009 swim season. Thus, both teams would like to put this meet in their record books as their first win in quite some time against their opposition.
The opposing sides come into this meet with different mindsets: the Huskies will be looking to continue their impressive swimming under head coach Christopher Maiello, showing progression for this season and beyond, while the Wildcats are looking to get their heads back on straight and try to rattle off a couple wins before tournament season starts. It will be very interesting to see how both these teams keep their attitudes and emotions at bay as they swim Saturday afternoon.
