Tom Molzahn knows he has one last chance to qualify for the NCAA Championships. Although he has waited for this opportunity for four years, he's never been more confident in his ability to do just that.

Having hung around so long already, waiting another day to get a crack at it shouldn't be too much of an issue for the lone senior on the UW men's swimming team.

The Badgers were flying through Minneapolis en route to Columbus to the Big Ten Championships this weekend. However, they were stranded in Minnesota along with the Golden Gophers' team when their flight was cancelled out of the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport due to severe weather problems in the Midwest, according to a statement by the Big Ten Conference office.

So instead of having the conference meet begin on Thursday with finals on Saturday, the entire event was pushed back a day.

"We were supposed to get in Tuesday, but there's no real adjustment, just move it back a day," Molzahn said in a telephone interview from Columbus, after the team arrived Wednesday afternoon.

The UW and UM teams were able to practice Tuesday in Minnesota, and according to UW coach Eric Hansen, things went pretty smoothly considering the circumstances.

"We've been here with Minnesota; it's familiar place to us," Hansen said Thursday from Columbus. "The people here at the university were great to us. It really was not a big thing."

With their travel troubles behind them, the Badgers now turn their attention to qualifying as many men as they can for the national meet. When looking at the competition in the conference — six Big Ten teams rank inside the top 20, including top favorites No. 6 Northwestern and No. 10 Minnesota — Hansen said his team isn't as concerned with the team scores as with individual results.

"We're young. With just one senior, the majority of our team are freshmen and sophomores," Hansen said. "It becomes a matter of trying to get as many people and as many relays to qualify as (we) can."

"There are gold medal winners on some of these teams; this is a very competitive conference," Molzahn added. "We're racing with some of the best in the country, so we're not as concerned with where we place."

Molzahn said earlier this season he placed a higher importance on watching his young teammates grow than on his own success this senior year, but now that his career is winding down, he has placed added emphasis on this weekend.

In the past, Molzahn has been dangerously close to qualifying for that national meet — missing marks by tenths of a second and beating times from previous years that no longer qualify that year — and knows he has the ability to make it happen in his final chance.

"The past couple years, I've come so close and missed it by a couple spots here and there," Molzahn said. "It's been so close that right now I actually have more confidence."

Molzahn, primarily an anchor on the relays and not an individual competitor, can't do it alone. Sophomores Mike Desautels and Scott Rice are expected to compete alongside Molzahn at some point, and other Badgers; Phil Davies, Kyle Sorenson and Mike Swanson, could play into the mix as well.

"If I don't make it, it's not the end of the world," Molzahn said. "But the other three guys on the relay have improved so much. I really feel this is the year to do it; I think we're going to turn out a good meet."

"He's going to be a significant player in all our relays," Hansen, who will not release his relay lineups until just before the meet begins, said. "He's obviously got the most experience on our team, and we look to him for a lot of our success."

Rice expressed confidence in Molzahn and believes UW's leader can accomplish the goal he's aspired to reach for so long.

"He's really excited about it; he was really close to being accepted last year," Rice said from Columbus. "Some of his meets have been a little off this year, but he's been training really well."

"At the end, I think he'll swim really fast and have a good chance to make it."

True to form, Molzahn was just as concerned with making sure his teammates perform well at the conference championships on top of his own goals for the weekend.

"For us right now, the pressure's on," Molzahn said. "We have to kind of jack ourselves even more just because we realize that this is our chance to get to the national meet, a little bit of added importance to this meet."