The Iowa State men’s swimming and diving team is preparing for a battle. It’s a battle for the mythical state championship and swimming bragging rights in the state of Iowa. It takes place tonight.

The University of Iowa Hawkeyes will visit ISU’s Beyer Hall Pool at 7 PM.

The Cyclones go into the meet with a 3-1 dual meet record and a No. 24 national ranking according to the late November poll by College Swimming Association of America

ISU has beaten Missouri, Northern Iowa, and St. Olaf, but it lost to Wisconsin.

The Hawkeyes come into the meet struggling a bit. Iowa is 1-3 overall and got its first win on Saturday by defeating the Kansas Jayhawks 137-106.

The Hawkeyes have lost meets to Wisconsin and nationally ranked Indiana and Purdue.

As good as it may look for ISU, the Cyclones cannot look past Iowa. It does not look like that will be the case either.

“We never look past Iowa,” head coach Trip Hedrick said.

The series has been very intense the last few years. In 1997, ISU defended its home pool advantage with a 132.5-110.5 victory over Iowa.

Last year the Hawkeyes turned the tables. Iowa edged ISU 123-120 in Iowa City in an upset.

“It’s (referring to the Iowa/ISU meet) always very intense,” senior Bryan O’Neill said. “Being intrastate rivals, we both want to win really bad. It’s always a fun meet, and it’s always a good challenge.”

“It’s definitely the most intense meet of the entire season,” senior Mitch McGinty said. “It’s pretty exciting.”

The Cyclones expect Iowa to be very competitive when the Hawkeyes come to Ames.

“We expect some pretty incredible swims,” said senior Jim Sheehan. “They (Iowa) could break out some incredibly fast times.”

“I expect them to swim fast. They’re a talented team,” O’Neill commented. “I know they want to win this (meet) about as bad as we do. I expect them to come in here and lay it on the line.”

An intrastate rivalry such as Iowa vs. ISU can bring out a lot of emotion.

The crowd is usually a big part of this emotion and can sometimes make the difference between a win and a loss.

There have been a lot of other memorable moments. One of these happened in Ames.

“One of my memories is when we broke Iowa’s win streak against us at the Beyer Hall Pool,” Hedrick said.

Winning is definitely a goal for the Cyclones, but Iowa State also has other goals for this intrastate clash.

“We should just have solid swims, swim the best we know how to, and the best we can,” O’Neill said.

“I think, as far as the team, I’d like to see everybody go out there and improve and put their hand on the wall,” McGinty said.

“We just want to, as a team and personally, capitalize on all the hard work that we’ve put in this year,” Sheehan said.

“This is the best team chemistry I’ve seen in my four years here. We’ve put in a ton of work up front, from the beginning. We want to carry that out, carry through on all of our mechanics and focus on what we can control and that’s our swims.”