COLUMBUS — Freshman Mike Swain summed it up best.

“Swim fast, and your season goes on," he said.

Michigan coach Mike Bottom took 12 members of the team to swim in the Ohio State Winter Invitational. They competed for the four remaining spots on the team’s roster for the Big Ten Championships later this month. Michigan is allowed to bring 24 athletes to the meet, and the Wolverines have chosen to bring 23 swimmers and one diver.

The two-day meet had featured preliminary races in the morning and finals at night. The meet was not scored, but in addition to the Wolverines, Ohio State, Indiana and Purdue all brought swimmers to help finalize their Big Ten Championship teams as well.

“What we want to do is just pick the team that we feel is going to win us the most points at the Big Ten Championships,” Bottom said. “They’re shaved and tapered and having some fun to end the season but they’re also competing in their last meet here too if they don’t make a 'B' standard NCAA time and they don’t make the Big Ten team.”

An NCAA "A" time automatically qualifies a swimmer for the NCAA Championships. A "B" standard time is a slower cut, which is a consideration time. The NCAA will announce how many "B" standard times will qualify for the NCAA Championships about a week before the meet, in late March.

Overall, the team secured seven individual “B” standard times. Freshman Roman Willets put himself into contention for a spot on the Big Ten team by swimming a personal best time of 44.49 in the 100-yard freestyle.

Nearly every swimmer had a personal-best time without wearing the high-tech swimsuits that were recently banned from the sport. Bottom sees this as a sign the team is moving forward better than last season.

Junior Tony Wahl dropped over 2.5 seconds in his 500-yard freestyle and freshman Mike Swain also caught Bottom’s attention by dropping more than two seconds in the 400-yard individual medley. His time of 3:55.10 was good enough for a 'B' standard time.

Though Bottom would not make an immediate decision about which swimmers had earned an invitation this weekend to the Big Ten Championships, he did say that junior James Ridgeway had most likely secured one. Ridgeway had personal best times in 100- and 200-yard breaststrokes and the 100-yard backstroke.

Ridgeway said he was glad to have the opportunity to show his coaches that he wanted a spot on the Big Ten team. But equally as important he said was the message he sent to his teammates who had already qualified for the meet, but didn’t attend.

“We got the ball rolling for the end of the season,” he said. “We showed the guys at home that the coaching is working. Maybe some of them were wondering if they were going to swim fast but we proved that the taper is working and they have to be thinking to themselves now, 'Wow, they swam fast, I can’t wait to see how much time I drop in a few weeks.’ ”