A week before the NCAA Championships, freshman Scott Spann made one thing clear: in this sport, age doesn't matter.

Like it has all season, the underclassmen-dominated Michigan men's swimming and diving team proved him right at this weekend's championship meet.

The season that shattered everyone's expectations ended with an equally impressive performance, capped by junior Alex Vanderkaay's first individual NCAA title, as Michigan finished seventh at the NCAA Championships.

Auburn won its fifth straight NCAA title, outswimming second-place Stanford by 169 points. The Wolverines were the second-highest scoring team in the Big Ten with 207 points, beating Big Ten Champion Minnesota by 76, but finishing behind sixth-place Northwestern.

Seven Michigan athletes had at least one All-America performance, with sophomore Matt Patton and junior Alex Vanderkaay earning honors in three events apiece.

On Thursday, the first day of competition, Michigan's most successful event was the 500-yard freestyle. The team earned 28 of their 58 first-day points with Patton's fourth-place and Vanderkaay's sixth-place finish.

The following day, Vanderkaay was crowned the NCAA Champion in the 400-yard individual medley. He dropped almost four seconds off of that morning's preliminary time to finish with a personal-best time of 3:40.89.

"With 150 yards to go, I knew I was in the lead, and so I was just going as hard as I could," Vanderkaay said. "When I hit the wall, I kind of assumed that I had won, but I looked up and I didn't see (during the race) that there was a guy in lane one that was running me down, and he almost caught me. It was still a shock (to win)."

During the meet's final day, Patton had his second fourth-place finish of the competition in the 1,650-yard freestyle, swimming a personal best time of 14:49.10

The Wolverines broke three school records - in the 200-yard medley relay, 200-yard freestyle relay and 400-yard medley relay.

"To think that our team of freshmen and sophomores beat (existing school records), that's a really good step forward for our team," said sophomore Bobby Savulich, who swam in two of the three relays. "It was definitely a big surprise, but I think we deserved it."

Freshman Chris Brady was a member of all three record-breaking relays, while Spann, Savulich, Patton and sophomore Evan Ryser competed in two of the three.

"It was definitely the fastest NCAA meet yet, and I think that's a trend," Vanderkaay said. "A lot of people were surprised how fast it was this year, because a lot of people predicted it not to be that fast, but pool records, meet records and NCAA records were falling left and right."

Next season, when the Wolverines will finally have senior swimmers on the team, they hope to pick up where they left off - an expectation that will surely mean that they aren't the underclassmen underdogs anymore.

"Everyone knows that we're not graduating anyone and we're still hungry," Savulich said. "Next year, it's going to be a whole different story with the same team, plus more freshmen superstars. We're going to come back and fight."