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