Away Game Briefs

Women’s Basketball

On Friday night, the Carnegie Mellon women’s basketball team traveled to St. Louis to take on Washington University. The 9th ranked Bears were the toughest of the teams the Tartans have played so far in University Athletic Association (UAA) conference play and it showed when Carnegie Mellon lost 73–49.

The Tartans were cold shooting the ball, with only three made baskets the rest of the half (and of those only a layup by freshman forward Kajae Jones came in the last five minutes) and found themselves down 14 at half, 39–25.

Any hopes of a comeback were struck down with a similar poor shooting effort to open the second half, again with only three made baskets in the half’s opening ten minutes.

The loss drops the Tartans to 11–6 on the season and 2–4 in UAA play. They traveled to Chicago on Sunday to finish off their road trip before returning home this weekend to face off against Washington and Chicago again on their home court.

Men’s Basketball

The Carnegie Mellon men’s basketball team continued their woes in UAA play as they traveled to Washington University in St. Louis to face off against the 7th ranked Bears. The Tartans ended up dropping their 4th straight game, 79–59, as they got blown out by ranked opponents for the second time in as many games.

The Tartans started off strong with sophomore forward Jack Serbin making the opening basket and a layup by junior center Blake Chasen, giving the Tartans a 4–2 lead. Unfortunately, this was the last time Carnegie Mellon would be ahead as Washington proceeded to tear off a 15–1 run.
Coming out of the half the two teams were fairly even, but with Washington already having a 10 point advantage, it just wasn’t enough. Halfway through the second half, the Tartans went cold from the field as they pushed a bit too hard to try and cut the lead. The points not off of free throws were a lone layup by senior Kevin Stursberg.

With the loss, the Tartans drop to 1–5 in UAA play and 10–7 on the season. Similar to the women’s team, the men battled University of Chicago on the road Sunday and will return back home this weekend to take on Washington and Chicago again.

Swimming & Diving

On Saturday the Carnegie Mellon men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams competed at University of Pittsburgh. The men competed in a tri meet against the University of Pittsburgh and Clarion University, and ultimately fell to Pitt 216–81 but beat Clarion 223–58. The women faced off in the quint meet with Pitt, Clarion, California University of Pennsylvania and Duquesne University in their tune up to UAA Championships in two weeks. The women lost to Pitt 234–60 and Duquesne 172–113 while defeating the California 214–61 and Clarion 185.50–105.50.

The men got their first win of the day from freshman Josh Taekman in the 1000 yard freestyle, where he dropped 4 seconds off of his seed time to win in 9:52.84. Sophomore Brian Jay and freshman Tyler Goulding took second and third in the 50–yard freestyle finishing with times of 21.42 and 21.74 respectively.

The only other top showing for the Tartans came from sophomore Brian Walsh in the 100–yard butterfly, as he touched the pad at the 51.06 mark. Walsh also placed third in the 200–yard freestyle with a time of 1:44.02. In the final event, the 200–yard freestyle relay, Carnegie Mellon took second when Goulding, Jay, junior Joseph Robinson, and freshman Kevin Steinhouse combined for a 1:25.58 time.

The weakness of the men’s team, the diving, continued to be problematic as the men’s divers were outclassed by their field, finishing in the last spots in both the 1 and 3 meter events, putting up scores over one hundred points behind the next competitor.

Due to the strength of the field, the women’s highest finish in an event was multiple third-place times. Freshman Sarah Winget earned two third-place finishes with a pair of season best times in the 200 yard butterfly and the 500 yard freestyle with times of 2:09.82 and 5:18.35.

Another pair of freshman picked up third-place finishes when Miranda Ford took third in the 1000 yard freestyle and Hannah Soltz took the 100–yard breaststroke with times of 11:15.59 and 1:06.19 respectively.
Machika Kaku was the top Tartan diver, taking fifth in the 1 meter with a time of 232.85.
Both teams next compete in the UAA Championships in Atlanta starting on February 11th.
Track & Field
On Saturday, the Carnegie Mellon men’s and women’s track and field teams traveled to Case Western Reserve to compete in the Seventh Annual Battle of the Obelisk. The women fell 81–55 while the men lost 70–66.

Junior Sasha Spalding was the first top finisher for the women at the meet with 5.27m leap in the long jump. Spalding followed this up with a 10.86m hurl to win the shot put. Senior Sara Kelly took the first track event for the Tartans with a win in the 1 mile run in 5:32.95.

It was a top-two finish for Carnegie Mellon in the 400-meter dash with freshman Sarah Cook and sophomore Ariel Tian taking first and second with times of 1:01.03 and 1:04.42 respectively. Spalding and Cook repeated the feat in the 200 meter dash with times of 26.63 and 27.71 respectively. The final win of the day came in the 4x400 meter relay where the Tartan ‘A’ team took the top spot with a time of 4:13.28.

On the men’s side, they struggled a bit more with field events, not taking a single event. But they more than made up for it on the track side. Freshman Jeffrey Chen took first in the 55 meter dash with a time 6.66 while sophomore Cutris Watro took the top spot in the mile run with a 4:28.31. In the 400 meter run, senior Thomas Vandenberg won with a time 48.90 and in the 800 meter run, junior Marc–Daniel Julien took the title in 1:57.97. Vandenberg also took the 200 meter dash in 22.72 seconds to cap off the Tartan domination in the dashes.

The Tartans dominated distance, starting with the distance medley with their ‘A’ team finishing in 10:34.74. Senior George Degen and sophomore Ryan Archer took first and second in the 5000 meter run with 15:13.63 and 15:16.37 respectively, while senior Eamon Cullinane, senior Joshua Antonson, Degen, and junior Brian Bollens, took the top for spots in the 3000 meter run with times of 8:53.07, 8:53.29, 8:53.75, and 8:56.94 respectively.

The teams next compete at Denison University on Saturday in the Bob Shannon Invitational.