Illinois swimmers and divers will host its third and final home meet of the season Saturday, taking on Indiana just two weeks after the two teams met in Bloomington, Ind.

Illinois competed at the Indiana Invitational from Nov. 19 to 21, where it placed fifth in the eight-team field. The No. 25 Hoosiers took first at home, but the Illini are not planning to make their visit to Champaign an easy one.

“They’re a strong team, they’ve got some top-ranked swimmers,” said head coach Sue Novitsky. “They’re down in numbers, which plays to our benefit. I like swimming against great competition, and that’s what we’re going to see here.”

One key area the Illini continue to improve in is relay competition. Novitsky said that while she is happy with how a few relays performed at Indiana, there is still much that needs to get better.

“Our 400 free relay on the last day, I thought we hit it on all cylinders,” Novitsky said. “The rest of the time, our exchanges weren’t very smooth all the time and things really just didn’t flow all the time. We’re still working on trying to get some combinations and trying to figure out some spots. We had an opportunity to swim all five relays, which doesn’t happen very often.”

Illinois’ strongest relays are the 200 and 400 free, both anchored by sophomore Barbie Viney. The 400 free relay, swam by senior Amy Downing, sophomore Meghan Farrell, senior Kirsten Koepcke and Viney, finished in 3:29.15 for third place at the Invitational.

The medley relay, however, is still being tweaked.

“Our medley, it’s going to take us a while to figure out some spots,” Novitsky said. “Some freshmen are coming in and getting faster, and with entry limitations, it’s just playing around to see what you want to have people swimming.”

But Novitsky thought the Illini did well as a whole, improving speed and cleaning up the little details that add time when not addressed.

“The thing I was pleased with is that we were very consistent from session to session, which was one of the things I wanted to see out of the meet, besides faster swimming, which we did. Our season-best times were pretty good, and we had a couple areas where we were a little bit rough still, but the team competed really well.”

While the squad is relatively young, Novitsky said they are slowly building confidence, approaching races with more mental readiness and converting that preparation to physical improvements.

“A lot of them are gaining those little bits of confidence – confidence is a big area we’re still working on,” Novitsky said. “It’s such a fragile thing, that you can lose at the drop of, well, anything. That’s why we keep working on it in practice; a lot of people were able to take some great steps forward in some competitive situations.”

Although the competition will be tough when the two teams face off in a dual meet Saturday at 1 p.m., Novitsky said her squad is moving toward an ultimate goal much later in the season.

“I’m very happy with where they’re at,” Novitsky said. “Their fitness level is very good. We have this last meet here for the fall semester this Saturday, and then with finals and everything that ratchets up the stress level very high, but we have a great opportunity right now to continue to hone in, keep sharpening that fitness and our endurance, and take a step back from the intensity, increase the volume a little bit, and get some nice aerobic swimming in, which we’ll need to be swimming off of come February or March.”