2B — February 22, 2016
SportsMonday
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
able to help her team capture a Big
Ten title. She fell ill earlier in the
week, putting the chance to swim
at Canham for the last time as a
senior in serious danger.
But by the time the meet
started, DeLoof was determined
to compete. Not only did she
swim, but she excelled and
capped off her Big Ten career
by anchoring the pool record-
setting 400-yard freestyle relay,
with a time of 3:13.81.
“My freshman year, I didn’t
think I was going to make it at all,”
DeLoof said. “ ‘Those who stay
will be champions’ — it’s really
what’s been with me all year and
even this week.”
Though
the
program
had
shown clear improvement this
year, winning all but one of its dual
meets, it was an underdog to the
Hoosiers going into this weekend.
Bottom and his team knew they
needed to step up, and both
swimmers and divers answered
the bell.
In the 1,650-yard freestyle,
freshman Yirong Bi bested her
seed time by 20 seconds to finish
second. Smiddy just missed a pool
record in the 200-yard backstroke
when she beat out Indiana’s
Kennedy Goss to win the event.
And the dive team impressed
a sold-out Canham crowd by
qualifying four divers for the
platform finals.
Bottom, the long-time men’s
coach, took control of the women’s
team in 2012. He took over a
team that had fallen off since the
success of the early 2000s and was
closer to the bottom of the Big Ten
than the top.
Drenched from his victory
leap into the pool, Bottom was
hit with a wave of emotions
when talking about how far the
program had come.
“It’s absolutely a dream to
reality,” Bottom said. “Our first
year, we didn’t have people in the
final. I think we had two, maybe
three people in any of the finals.
Tonight, we had people in almost
every final.”
For
Bottom,
getting
this
far was not only in his mind,
but also in plain sight — the
2004 Big Ten Championship
banner has beckoned at every
training session and every home
meet during his time with the
Wolverines. Every Saturday for
the past four years, his team has
stood under that banner and sang
the Michigan fight song together.
It took Bottom, DeLoof and
the rest of the program four
years to get there, but the hard
work has paid off. Saturday,
they could look at the banners
on the wall, and for the first
time in 12 years, know that
there will be a new place to sing
“The Victors.”
Mike Bottom’s ever-growing empire
T
uesday afternoon,
one day before his
women’s swimming and
diving team won the Big Ten
Championships in its home pool,
Michigan
coach Mike
Bottom
stood on the
pool deck
at Canham
Natatorium,
watching over
his empire.
Right in
front of him
were the
qualifiers for the Big Ten meet,
and the ‘B’-level qualifiers for
the NCAA Championships who
didn’t make the Big Ten meet. On
one wall, a clock counted down
until this summer’s Olympics in
Rio de Janeiro, and on the other
side of the pool, Club Wolverine
— the Olympic hopefuls training
at Canham in preparation for this
summer — swam alongside the
current Wolverines.
“And this is just the men’s side,”
Bottom said. “And then we have
the women’s side of things ready
to go here.”
Bottom and his swimming
dynasty are well-established.
Three years ago, his men’s team
reached the peak of college
swimming, winning the national
championship. The previous
summer, he coached in his fifth
Olympics, putting him among the
greatest swimming coaches in
the world.
That year was the culmination
of his previous journey. It was
also the first year of his next one.
In the 2012-13 season, Bottom
took over the women’s program
in addition to the men’s. That
year, while the men won the
national title, the women were
an afterthought, finishing 36th.
There, Bottom found himself in
an unfamiliar position.
“It wasn’t easy,” Bottom said
Tuesday. “It wasn’t easy for me,
and it wasn’t easy for the rest of
the coaching staff. … Every time,
our gut aches, just like everybody
aches when you don’t do what you
want to do as a team. But that’s
OK. That’s sport.”
Coaching both teams also
meant twice the work, twice
the time commitment and twice
the number of athletes. It’s a
testament to Bottom’s methods
that the men’s team won the
national title in the first year he
led both programs. The biggest
challenge now, according to
Bottom, is finding time with his
three daughters, ages 10, 9 and 5.
Four years ago, he was already
the successful head coach of a
thriving men’s program. So why
did he add the women’s program
to his schedule? What, after
five Olympics and a national
championship, did he have left
to prove?
“I don’t think I have anything
to prove, right?” Bottom said.
“I think at this point in my life,
I’ve done what I’ve done. So I
don’t feel like I need to prove
(anything), but I feel like it’s an
opportunity.”
The Big Ten title Michigan
won at Canham Natatorium on
Saturday seemed like a long shot
four years ago. The year before
Bottom took over the women’s
program, the Wolverines finished
eighth in the Big Ten and hadn’t
won the conference since 2004.
Bottom believed the pieces
were in place to reach that level
again, but he had to bring the
team to believe that it could do it.
That wasn’t easy, though. After
the meet Saturday, senior Ali
DeLoof, whose first year was also
Bottom’s, admitted she never
thought she’d make it.
“Twenty hours a week in
this pool, it hasn’t been easy,”
DeLoof said. “It’s been a process.
It’s tough to keep your head up
sometimes, but you’ve got the
girls motivating you every day,
and I’m going to miss that.”
The Wolverines made
incremental improvements every
year, from 36th to 30th to 22nd at
the NCAA Championships, from
sixth to fifth to third in the Big
Ten. As Bottom’s methods paid
off, his swimmers bought in more
and more each year.
But the last step was the
toughest. As Bottom spoke
Tuesday, Indiana entered
Canham Natatorium. He ran the
scores before the meet and wasn’t
sure his team could beat the
Hoosiers. Neither was his wife.
“She said, ‘Mike, you’re going
to lose by 100 points,’ ” Bottom
said Saturday. “I go, ‘Come on,
sweetie, you gotta help me out
here! Give me some confidence!’ ”
Going into Saturday, the
fourth and final day of the
championships, Michigan led
Indiana by 45.5 points. Still,
Bottom thought the Hoosiers
could catch his team if things
went wrong.
Saturday morning, in the 200-
yard backstroke, Marie Georger
beat her seed time by 4.56 seconds
to sneak into the ‘B’ finals, where
she’d earn at least 11 points. In
the 200-yard butterfly, Astrid
Swensen did the same. It was then
that Bottom knew his team could
pull it off.
Senior captain Sarah Kamstra
said the Wolverines went into
the finals saying it was still 0-0.
They did it to make sure they still
fought until the end, but maybe it
was also because they had never
won before. Bottom spent four
years building up all the belief he
could in his team, but maybe just
a hint of doubt remained until the
victory was secure.
Around 8 p.m., with an hour
still left in the meet, that moment
came. Indiana had no divers left,
and even if the Hoosiers won
the final event — the 400-yard
freestyle relay — and Michigan
was disqualified, the Wolverines
would still win.
Then Michigan won the relay
by two seconds anyway.
So the final moments of the
meet weren’t a conclusion as
much as they were a coronation.
The Wolverines stood on the pool
deck as the conference handed
out the relay awards, and then the
individual awards, and then the
other 12 team awards, one by one.
They wore shirts that
read, “Those who stay will be
champions,” because they all
stayed, and they were champions.
When the moment came, they
ran up to the podium, giddily
cheering and singing and dancing.
They threw on their Big Ten
Championship hats and shirts and
posed for a photo. And then they
dove in the pool.
“There (were) tears, and there
was laughter,” Kamstra said. “And
that was just something I’ll hold
with me forever.”
Bottom dove in, too, just as he
always does when his team wins
a championship. Before he did,
though, he spoke for a moment
with associate coach Rick Bishop.
He told Bishop to look at their
swimmers’ faces.
“This has been a four-year
process,” Bottom said. “Now, they
can understand they’re champions.
Not that they weren’t champions
before this, but this solidifies it. And
I said, ‘This will change their lives.
They’ll have this moment in their
lives forever.’ ”
That moment was what Bottom
dreamed about when he took over
the women’s program, no matter
when it came, no matter how far
it took to get there. Tuesday, on
the cusp of that milestone, he was
asked if he ever thought twice
about it, about the early struggles
or the long hours or the drain of
the journey.
Just then, his 5-year-old
daughter ran up to him on the pool
deck and jumped into his arms,
watching the swimmers along
with him as he beamed with pride.
“Maybe, in a few years, I need
to do something different,” he
said. “But right now, the thrill of
seeing these women get better,
climb the ladder of success in
their own lives … I get to be a part
of that. That’s a thrill. That’s a
thrill you can’t buy.”
Lourim can be reached
at jlourim@umich.edu and
on Twitter @jakelourim.
SPORTSMONDAY COLUMN
AMELIA CACCHIONE/Daily
Mike Bottom won his first Big Ten championship as coach of the women’s swimming and diving team on Saturday.
‘M’ prevails on Senior Day
By CHRIS CROWDER
Daily Sports Writer
Even though the Michigan
band jeered, “We’re not Penn
State” while the Nittany Lions
took free throws, Penn State
and
the
Michigan
women’s
basketball team played strikingly
similar. Both struggled to shoot
from behind the arc, take care
of the basketball and played
through their stars.
But on the Wolverines’ Senior
Day, Michigan outperformed
its counterpart in the fourth
quarter to pull off a 78-73 victory.
After the Wolverines started
the game on a 10-3 run, the
Nittany Lions called a timeout.
After the Penn State players
stepped onto the floor again,
their
defensive
pressure
intensified, bringing the action
more up-tempo.
Michigan, a team that usually
prefers to play in transition, looked
rushed with the change of pace as
it missed a wide open layup, turned
the ball over six times and missed
five 3-pointers in the first quarter
alone to fall behind, 17-15, at the
end of the period.
Both the Wolverines and
Nittany Lions struggled to make
baskets as both suffered from
shots rimming out and poor shot
selection. Midway through the
second quarter, Michigan was
shooting 33 percent (8-for-24)
and Penn State was shooting
at a 35 percent clip (7-for-20).
To add to the lackluster start,
the Wolverines made careless
passes in transition, stunting
opportunities
to
develop
a
rhythm when they were not
making baskets to begin with.
“In the first half we struggled
with wide open shots. I don’t
think we’ve been that wide open
all year,” said sophomore guard
Katelynn Flaherty.
Michigan ended the half down
37-32, but it took momentum
into the locker room as Flaherty
knocked down a jump shot to beat
the buzzer. The shot capped off
an average half for Flaherty, who
had nine points but also three
turnovers. The Wolverines had 11
turnovers in the first half, nearing
their average of 15.4 a game.
After
junior
guard
Siera
Thompson fired a pass that was
intercepted by a Nittany Lion
to give Penn State a 5-0 run to
start the third quarter, Michigan
coach Kim Barnes Arico called a
timeout as the coaches met up
separately from the team before
grouping up as a whole.
“In the first half we got a
lot of shots and we couldn’t
get a lot of those shots to fall,
and that was
discouraging
and
affected
us
on
the
defensive
end,”
Barnes
Arico
said.
“We still came
out
flat
to
start the third
quarter,
so
when we came
out,
I
just
told them that they had to give
better effort.”
Thompson
followed
her
mistake
with
a
3-pointer,
giving Michigan the jolt it
needed to cut the deficit to two
by the next timeout. After an
and-1 by sophomore forward
Jillian Dunston and a 3-pointer
by
freshman
guard
Boogie
Brozoski, the Wolverines took
the lead with 3:35 left in the
third quarter.
The Nittany Lions took a
55-52 lead going into the fourth
quarter, but Michigan ended the
third quarter on a 20-12 run.
Freshman
center
Hallie
Thome began the fourth quarter
with an off-balance and-1 to tie
the game. Flaherty backed up
the effort with a 3-pointer to
continue the hot start. Three
minutes later,
Flaherty
knocked down
another
3
to
give
the
Wolverines
a
six-point lead.
“I
think
once one of us
gets going —
today it was
me
—
that
everyone gets
more confident and shots start
to fall all around,” Flaherty said.
Added Barnes Arico: “In the
fourth quarter, our team did a
great job of finding Katelynn,
who has such a high percentage
shooting, and Hallie and got her
touches inside … We really found
them and that was important
for us to be able to score the
basketball better.”
Penn State had an opportunity
to tie the game with just under
three minutes left in the game,
but the layup attempt rimmed
out.
On
Michigan’s
next
possession,
Flaherty
struck
again from behind the arc for
her fifth 3-pointer of the game.
She ended with 30 points. On
the Wolverines’ next possession,
senior guard Madison Ristovski
sunk a floater at the buzzer to
give Michigan a seven-point lead.
“There were only five seconds
left on the clock and I was like,
‘I missed all day, maybe I’ll try
one more time,’ ” Ristovski said.
“It was cool because I beat it off
the buzzer, but I think it was at a
really important time in the game.
We were in a scoring drought and
I had no idea. I’m happy it helped
propel the team to win.”
Dunston stepped up to the line
with the Wolverines up by four,
but missed both free throws.
The Nittany Lions attempted
to cut the lead to one, but the
3-point
attempted
touched
nothing but air. Penn State’s next
desperation 3-pointer wouldn’t
fall either.
In the waning minute, Flaherty
was fouled and made both of her
free throws. The band chanted to
the Nittany Lions, “See ya.”
SWIMMING
From Page 1A
AMELIA CACCHIONE/Daily
Michigan won its first Big Ten Championship since 2004 on Saturday.
DAVID SONG/Daily
Senior guard Madison Ristovski’s basket helped the Wolverines clinch a win in her last regular-season home game.
“I don’t think
we’ve been
that wide-open
all year.”
JAKE
LOURIM