The past four years, the home school has won the Iowa State-Iowa swimming and diving meet, and that held true once again when Iowa upended the Cyclones 214-85 Saturday.

Last week, head coach Duane Sorenson said the scores of this meet never accurately reflect how close the meet really was, which was also the case this meet as the Cyclones came up with eight second-place finishes out of the possible 16, several merely a few tenths of a second apart.

Senior Brita Benson provided the only first-place finish for Iowa State, taking the win in the 50-freestyle.

“I thought we swam very well and competed well; we just came up short race after race,” Sorenson said. “Lauren Breunig swam very well in both the 100 and 200 free. She just got out-touched at the wall.

“When it’s a close race like that, you are going to win some and lose some.”

Benson also took second in the 100 butterfly with a clocking of 59.20 seconds and was part of the relay team of junior Kim Rogers, freshman Krista Fehl and senior Jenny Lindberg that finished in 1:47.92 for second in the 200-medley relay.

Breunig, a sophomore, took second in the 200-individual medley and 200 freestyle and third in the 100 freestyle.

“We just have to work on the little things like better starts and more aggressive turns,” Sorenson said. “We try to train for that, but sometimes, you just come up a little short.”

From the diving side of the meet, the Cyclones’ two divers couldn’t overcome Iowa’s championship pair.

“Their two divers are returning from the NCAA championships,” said head coach Jeff Warrick, “but we had a couple opportunities that we didn’t capitalize on when one of their divers missed a couple of her dives.”

Overall, Warrick said, he was happy with the way his divers performed.

“But we need to improve on a couple things,” Warrick said, “like our entries into the water and our takeoffs from the board. What they were doing in the air was good though.”

Junior Hillary Nichols collected 238.50 points on her way to a third-place finish in the 1-meter boards while taking fourth in the 3-meter with 242.48 points.

Senior Gail Olson took fourth in the 1-meter and third in the 3-meter with 234.90 and 255.38 points, respectively.

“I’m really happy with where Gail is at in her diving. We have plenty of time for her to fine-tune. I was happy with Hillary’s dives although she didn’t practice on Friday,” Warrick said. “We changed her list to some easier dives, and I thought her 3-meter scores were really good considering her list.”

Warrick said Iowa State needs to get Nichols and senior Katie Herman healthy again.

“I tried predicting when someone could come back from an injury before, and I wasn’t even close,” he said.