It's been more than a month since the No. 3 Michigan men's swimming and diving team last competed. Five weeks ago, they lost to No. 1 Texas.

But after the U.S. Short Course National Championship meet this weekend, it was clearly worth the wait.

The Wolverines easily won the collegiate division of the meet, beating 13 other teams in the field, including No. 6 Florida, No. 8 Auburn and No. 20 Florida State.

The three-day meet in Atlanta at the Georgia Tech Aquatics Center included several 2008 Olympians, like gold medalists Ryan Lochte, Matt Grevers and Garrett Weber-Gale returning to U.S. swimming with their club teams.

The Wolverines won four events and had several impressive races in the finals. Michigan coach Mike Bottom said he was proud that the team was swimming better at this point in the season than they have the past couple of years.

"It was fun to see everyone swim season bests," he said. "Many people swam lifetime-bests, from our seniors to our rising stars."

Michigan started the meet Thursday by dominating the first individual event, the 500-yard freestyle. Six of the top eight swimmers in the prelims were either collegiate Michigan swimmers or members of Club Wolverine. Senior co-captain Matt Patton won the event with a lifetime best time of 4:12.80, and sophomore Tyler Clary touched second.

Pattton was also the national champion in the 1,650-yard freestyle with a time of 14:50.34.

"It was nice to see (Patton) transition from the Texas meet, where he didn't feel real great about his swims," Bottom said. "He had a little bit more rest before this meet, and he went back to work really hard after Texas, and he swam with a lot of determination."

In addition to the 500-yard freestyle, Clary also finished second in the 400-yard individual medley and the 200-yard backstroke. In the latter event, Clary broke Chris DeJong's school record but finished 2.36 seconds behind Lochte, the 2008 Olympic gold medalist and world-record holder in the event. Lochte also won the 200- yard individual medley and freestyle.

Michigan had two national championship relays. Juniors Chris Brady, Charlie Houchin, Alon Mandel and senior co-captain Bobby Savulich teamed up to win the 200-yard freestyle relay. Juniors André Schultz, Adam DeJong, Houchin, and Patton won the 800-yard freestyle relay.

"The thing that speaks most about our team is that we could have had any number of six or seven guys swim on the 'A' relay," Houchin said. "It happened to be the four that did swim, swam well. But you could have changed it with four other guys and had just as good of a performance."

Despite a field of Olympians and NCAA All-Americans, Patton said the atmosphere at the meet was "pretty relaxed" and lacked the intensity and excitement of the Big Ten Championship meet. Teams like Texas, California and defending national champion Arizona, which Michigan will likely face at the NCAA Championship meet, were spread around at other large competitions around the country.

The Wolverines will have another long break before their next meet on Jan. 3. Bottom said although there were several season-best times in the meet, there were still things that could be executed better.

"As a coach any time you see someone lift their head up, or miss a turn or a finish, for a coach, those are exclamation marks for training," Bottom said.