The ISU swimming and diving team finds itself in a different situation heading into Saturday’s Nebraska Invitational than when it got its first win of the season two weeks ago – with a break between competitions.

The Cyclones haven’t competed since Oct. 27, when they were at South Dakota State, something diving coach Jeff Warrick thinks will be beneficial to the team.

“I think it’s good to get a break before a big invitational like this,” Warrick said. “It’s good to get that focus that we need to prepare for that next meet and look further ahead with a little bit more time in between meets.”

Head coach Duane Sorenson agrees that the two-week hiatus is greatly needed to prepare for such a large invitational.

“The two-week break is designed to be that way,” Sorenson said. “We had two good weeks of competition, and we wanted a good two weeks of solid training because we have this meet that is a bit more important for us to do well in.”

The invitational is a meet to get swimmers more prepared for the Big 12 Championships.

“Like we’ve mentioned, we’ve had two great weeks of training, so we are really pleased with that, and we are going into this meet basically getting ready for the Big 12 Championships,” Sorenson said. “It’s a preliminary-final format extended in the morning, afternoon and evening, and that’s the same format as the Big 12 Championship. It will be getting our freshmen excited for that because they have never experienced that and it’s exciting for one day, but you have to do it over the course of three days and you have to be prepared to swim and race.”

The Cyclones hope to carry some of the excitement from their road win at South Dakota State to do equally well this weekend.

“I think they have just been really coming together well as a team and pushing each other,” Warrick said. “They’ve just been working really hard and enjoying practices through that South Dakota meet, and I think that’s why they did as well as they did.

“We want to carry that [excitement] over and because we’ve had two weeks off in between that meet. We’ve been able to focus just on the practice and getting them prepared for just this meet.”

Sophomore diver Tien Tran said coming off a win should help the team’s confidence heading into Nebraska.

“It’s always good to end with a win going into an invite,” Tran said. “I think we just need to stay confident and act like we can do our best, and I think we already are starting off better than we did last year.

“And we need to be consistent and continue that through our hard practice and into this weekend’s meet.”