Watson Finishes Fourth at Nationals

COLUMBUS -- With a fourth-place finish on the 3-meter springboard, BYU sophomore All-American Brandon Watson ended his competition at the men’s swimming and diving NCAA National Championships Saturday.

“We felt really good about Brandon getting All-American in both of his events here at Nationals,” said BYU head coach Tim Powers. “Brandon did great this season and we are so proud of how he represented our men. Keith also did a great job in getting Brandon back in shape to do even better than he did his freshman year.”

Finishing in sixth in the preliminaries (431.15), Watson moved up two places to finish fourth with a final score of 440.05 on the 3-meter. Placing high both on Friday and Saturday, Watson automatically earns first-team All-American honors for both events.

Although given the opportunity to compete in the 5-meter platform event Saturday night instead of Sunday when all the other schools will dive, Watson and the BYU coaching staff decided Watson would not compete in the event.

“The main thing is the NCAA tried as best it could to make this situation as fair as it could for everyone,” said BYU diving coach Keith Russell. “Platform is a little different diving event, though, and there just wasn’t any way to make this fair for everyone and right for everyone. We appreciated that we had the option to dive on a different night. We just decided to concentrate on events Brandon had the best chance to score points in, the 1- and 3-meter events. Although he possibly could have scored on platform.”

Because of the nature of the platform event and how hard it is on the body, Powers also expressed that it was best to keep Watson healthy and free from possible injury.

After the championships conclude Sunday, BYU will find out what overall national ranking it will have acquired because of Watson’s stellar performance on both the 1-meter and 3-meter springboards.

Event 13  Men 3 mtr Diving
===============================================================================
   NCAA Meet: M 493.10   3/27/2009 David Boudia, Purdue                        
    Name                    Year School               Prelims     Finals        
===============================================================================
A - Final
  1 Boudia, David                PUR                   438.95     494.90M 
  2 McCrory, Nick                DUKE                  467.70     459.15  
  3 Nel, Grant                   TA&M                  435.15     450.50  
  4 Watson, Brandon              BYU                   431.15     440.05  
  5 Horner, Terry                FSU                   451.75     439.50  
  6 Grado, Benjamin              ARIZ                  422.30     432.00  
  7 Marx, Kelly                  AUB                   417.00     414.85  
  8 Fleshner, Aaron              BAMA                  434.35     394.85  
B - Final
  9 Constantin, Blaha            ASU                   402.25     457.05  
 10 Ross, Reuben                 MIAM                  379.60     447.20  
 11 Destephen, Gregory           UMIZ                  384.15     433.65  
 12 Colturi, David               PUR                   394.10     424.70  
 13 Jefferson, Ryan              OSU                   408.55     410.40  
 14 Wieser, Weston               OSU                   390.15     384.75  
 15 Marzullo, Landon             FSU                   383.35     383.60  
 16 Cooper, Matthew              TEX                   377.70     371.35  
 
Men - Team Rankings - Through Event 14                     
 
  1. California                        348.5   2. Texas                               330
  3. Arizona                             269   4. Florida                             264
  5. Stanford                            221   6. Auburn                            215.5
  7. Michigan                            160   8. Virginia                            100
  9. Ohio State                         96.5  10. Georgia                              92
 11. Southern California                86.5  12. Texas A&M                            86
 13. Purdue                               58  14. Tennessee                            56
 15. North Carolina                     47.5  16. Minnesota                            41
 16. Kentucky                             41  18. Florida State                      34.5
 19. Duke                                 32  20. Nevada, Las Vegas                    30
 21. Cincinnati                           29  22. Georgia Tech                         28
 23. Brigham Young                        27  24. Louisville                           22
 25. Miami                                21  26. Missouri                             16
 27. Louisiana State                      14  28. Alabama                              11
 29. Arizona State                         9  30. Northwestern                          2