The No. 4-ranked University of Michigan men's swimming and diving team dominated the first day of competition, winning four of the six events at the Big Ten Championships Thursday in Canham Natatorium. Headlining the night for the Wolverines were sophomore Chris Brady and juniors Bobby Savulich, Curtis Dauw and Jamie Martone, who won the 200-yard freestyle relay title, marking the first time Michigan has won the event since 1927.

From the opening event the Wolverines set the tone and put up a potentially insurmountable lead. 

Is it insurmountable?   Michigan head coach Bob Bowman opted for the politically safe answer “I think we can continue to do this well. Our job is to come in tomorrow morning and have the same enthusiasm and fire that we showed this morning. And if we do, we’ll be in a good position.”  

“We definitely knew it was possible from all the work that we put in and the meets we’ve had this year," said Michigan Senior Alex Vanderkaay. "To see it happen was kind of a relief and it was just really good to see it happen."

But I think to put four guys in top heat of the 200 IM, I probably wouldn’t have thought that. Sophomore Scott Spann probably dropped about three seconds to make it in the final heat. A lot of people stepped up and had break-through swims.”

The opening event was the 200-yard freestyle relay that was dominated by the Maize and Blue with an NCAA automatic qualifying and pool record time of 1:18.33.

Michigan's Matt Patton won the 500 freestyle in pool record time.  Considering the Michigan history in the event, the junior felt no pressure to win, “It’s not really pressure, it’s more like you have to do it there’s just no excuse not to. I’m happy I got another Big Ten title and set a pool record, it’s quite an accomplishment. I kind of wanted to be a little faster but at NCAAs I’ll come out I think and I’ll be faster. I’m just happy to be a part of the sweep really.” On Michigan’s strong performances on day one … “I think the relay kind of set the mood for the whole meet to say we’re here and we’re not going anywhere.”

By winning the 200 IM, Michigan's Alex Vanderkaay moved one step closer to one of his goals - a clean sweep. Personally, I want to win every one of my events. Definitely tonight was an obstacle. The 200 IM I don’t have as much experience in so that was a big one tonight. I think as a team it’s pretty obvious we want to win the meet but the relays are really big for us. To come out tonight and win both relays, especially the 200 free. I was talking to Jon (former U-M swimming coach Jon Urbanchek) and he said he’s never seen it (U-M winning that event). That got the ball rolling. Definitely the relays are big for us this weekend. The goal is to come in in the morning and get guys into the top heats. Every heat scores so to make it back is one of our goals.”

Northwestern's Kyle Bubolz won his fourth -career individual Big Ten championship Thursday night, beating out teammate Bruno Barbic for the crown in the 50 freestyle.

Bubolz's time of 19.64 was the senior's career-best in the event, giving him a low NCAA `B' provisional qualifying standard and a .05 of a second edge over Barbic's second-place effort of 19.69. Both swimmers had turned in identical `B' cuts of 19.66 during the preliminary heats.

"We knew it was a possibility [going 1-2] and that’s always been a big goal of ours.  Last year Bruno (Barbic) and Matt Grevers did it and my freshman year we went 1-2. Northwesterns’ been doing really well in the 50 and it was nice coming in here and doing it again.”For Indiana, freshman Landon Marzullo took home the 1-meter diving title and Todd Patrick set school records in the 50-yard freestyle and 200-yard individual medley on the opening day putting the Hoosiers in second place with 206 points.

"We had a really nice performance tonight," said head coach Ray Looze. "We had a couple of things we had to overcome, like Ben (Hesen) slipping on his start there (in the 400-yard medley relay). But I thought he did a phenomenal job of pulling himself together. To go 46.9 and slip, most people are out; they are done.

"Tomorrow morning we need to make a stand. And our guys know that. Tomorrow is a good day for us, and we need to bring the heat. We need to make them (Michigan) start looking back. We need to put the heat on Michigan and see how they perform under pressure. Someone has to and we can be that group."

Ohio State University men's swimming and diving team sits in third place, just two points back of Indiana. Highlighting the day for the Buckeyes was the performance of George Markovic in the 500-yard freestyle. After breaking the school record with a preliminary time of 4:20.52, the sophomore earned a fifth-place finish with an NCAA ""B"" cut time of 4:21.19. Classmate Stefan Sigrist took eighth in a career-best time of 4:21.95, while Mark Neiman took 10th in 4:24.05 and Jacob Busch finished 11th (4:24.51).

"All of our distance swimmers had excellent swims for us tonight," Bill Wadley, Ohio State head swimming coach, said. "George Markovic's swim in the preliminaries was great. It was really exciting to watch the guys do such a great job."

The defending Big Ten champion Minnesota men's swimming and diving team sits in fourth place. Northwestern sits in 5th.

Despite having an emergency appendctomy a couple of weeks ago, Purdue Junior Andrew Langenfeld was on deck at Michigan's Canham Natatorium celebrating history with his Boilermaker teammates.

The West Virginia transfer completed his quick recovery by recording a new varsity record of 19.90 seconds in the 'C' final of the 50-yard freestyle at the Big Ten Championships. His mark is the first of the program's 81-year history to be under 20 seconds and eclipsed Frank Smardo's former record of 20.08 set in 1997.

"Andrew's swim was just outstanding," head coach Dan Ross said. "It was just unbelievable and nice to see him get this accomplishment after getting his appendix taken out. He's been through a lot."

Wisconsin and Penn State sit 7th and 8th respectively with Iowa and Michigan State rounding out the top ten.