Meet Results
 
SOUTH BEND, Ind. – The Missouri State men's swimming and diving team closed out the regular season with a fifth-place showing at the Shamrock Invitational at Rolfs Aquatic Center, Saturday afternoon.
 
Host Notre Dame won the invitational with 988.5 points while Ohio State tallied a total of 933.5 points in second place. Iowa finished third overall (691), followed by Wisconsin (601) and Missouri State (409).
 
"I think our coaches and athletes are excited to get into the final phase of the season and rest," head coach Dave Collins said. "We have high goals for the Mid-American Conference Championships and NCAA Championships so this should be a fun set of weeks."
 
Altogether, MSU brought in six top-10 individual finishes while three Bears – Artur Osvath, Antonio Thomas and Minki Kang – recorded B-standard times. Claiming the 200 breaststroke, Osvath was masterful in the event once again. Meeting NCAA B-standards with a time of 1:54.65, he was the only swimmer to finish the race in under two minutes.
 
Missouri State's distance swimmers tallied three top-10 finishes on the day. Sophomore Antonio Thomas led the charge for the Bears as he touched the wall second in a time of 15:02.59. Minki Kang followed just after Thomas in third (15:30.01) while junior Bryce Blattner took home eighth place, as well as a new personal record (16:19.01).
 
"Overall, I think we have room for improvement," Thomas noted. "We had some good swims but I think we all wish did better. This is the spark that will propel us towards conference. We all want to do better and win and this is a meet that makes us hungry for more. In that respect, I think this meet was really good for us."
 
Junior Phillip Willett led the Bears in the 200 butterfly with a fourth-place finish and senior Kacper Cwiek finished 15^th overall. Other top-15 finishers were Blair Bish and Christopher Heye – Bish finished 10^th overall in the 200 breast (2:03.33) while Heye took 15^th in 2:04.23.
 
"I was pretty pleased with how we did this weekend," Heye said. "This meet served as good preparation for our conference championship meet in a couple of weeks. I am really excited to see how we all finish out the year."
 
Coming Up Next
The Bears will return to competition on Feb. 28 for the MAC Championship at the campus of Miami (OH) in Oxford, Ohio. For all the latest information on the Missouri State swimming and diving team, visit missouristatebears.com or follow @MoStateSwim on Twitter.