To say that the Wisconsin men’s track and field team dominated the Big Ten Conference Indoor Championships would be an understatement.
The Badgers scored a meet-record 174.5 points to win the meet by more than 50 points. Minnesota came in second with 122 points while Michigan finished third with 94.5 points.
“What can you say, that was just an unbelievable team effort from top to bottom,” said UW coach Ed Nuttycombe. “I don’t think I could imagine scored 174 points. We pretty much dominated from start to finish. We got off to a quick start and kept coming.”
The Badgers won four events on Sunday to bring their meet total to six.
“Today we had three or four key events,” said Nuttycombe. “We scored well in the distance area, the jumps, the heptathlon but there were a lot of key events. All of them are key when you’re in a conference championship.”
After two third-place finishes at Big Ten championships, senior Ashraf Fadel finally won a Big Ten title in the multi-events. Fadel recorded personal bests in six of seven events, winning the heptathlon with a UW record and NCAA automatic qualifying mark of 5,549 points. Fadel finished second in the heptathlon 60-meter high hurdles in a personal best 8.37 seconds. He was second to teammate Ryan Tremelling in the pole vault with a best of 15 feet, nine inches and ran a personal best of 2:55.52 in the 1000 meters to finish 10th.
“It was nice to win but more importantly, it was good for the team,” said Fadel of his win. “I’ve been in four (Big Ten) indoors and this is the first time I’ve placed. I kind of got the elephant off my back.”
Tremelling came back with a strong second-day performance to finish third with an NCAA provisional qualifying mark of 5,362. The senior from Arena, Wis., won the heptathlon pole vault with a personal best mark of 16-0 and finished second to sophomore Ben Roland in the 1000 meters in 2:44.87.
Roland improved his personal best heptathlon score by 350 points to finish fourth with 5,201 points. He won the heptathlon 1000 meters in a personal best of 2:44.60.
Sophomore Joe Detmer won the indoor title in the 600 meters after finishing second in the same event last season. Detmer ran the event in 1:17.55 ? the second-fastest time in UW history.
Sophomore Alonzo Moore led the Badgers to 23 points in the triple jump with his first-place finish. Moore came from third place for the win, leaping 51-8 on his final jump.
“It was the last jump,” said Moore of his win. “I was watching my teammates run and they were doing good so I thought I gotta do good.”
Sophomore Rick Bellford moved past Michigan’s Michael Whitehead to finish second on his last jump of 51-0. Freshman Paul Hubbard finished fourth at 49-11.
Wisconsin also scored 23 points in the 5000 meters behind individual champion Matt Tegenkamp. Sophomore Simon Bairu finished second in 13:59.48.
“Simon and I were leading the Big Ten going into this race so we knew that we needed to get out and clear some of the field,” said Tegenkamp of the race. “At a mile and a half, I took over the lead again. I knew before the race that at the pace we were running I could go after the Big Ten (meet) record. When I took the lead again, I started cutting down the pace and ended up getting the record by over three seconds. It was a great race. It was a lot of fun.”