March 24, 2011
Dive-by-Dive Scoring & Results >>>> Boudia Photo Gallery (by Walt Middleton)
MINNEAPOLIS - Behind early in both the preliminaries and finals, Purdue's David Boudia rallied to the win the 1-meter diving national championship, his fifth career collegiate crown, on the opening night of the NCAA Championships Thursday.
Boudia was forced to dive third of eight in the finals after qualifying sixth in the afternoon preliminaries. And it took a pair of big scores in his final two dives of the preliminaries to even qualify for the finals. The junior posted consecutive scores of 72 to surge up the leaderboard of 35 competitors.
Boudia won the finals with a score of 461 points, improving on his preliminary round score by more than 100 points. He won the 1-meter finals by 35 points over second-place Grant Nel of Texas A&M.
Boudia got off to a much better start in the evening finals but still trailed Texas' Drew Livingston after the first three rounds. But Boudia's consistency allowed him to pull ahead after the fourth round. He scored no lower than 69 on any of his six dives in the finals, highlighted by an award of 84.80 on his second dive of the list.
"I struggled today, and I learned a lot from this morning," Boudia said. "I've just got to go out there and have fun, and that's what I did tonight. So looking at the 3-meter tomorrow, I'm just going to go out there and enjoy it for my last NCAAs."
Boudia won the 1-meter for the second year in a row. It was the fourth NCAA springboard title of his career. The junior is striving to become the first diver in NCAA history to win the national championship from all three boards at the same meet.
Fellow divers J.P. Perez and Danny Cox are also competing at the NCAA Championships this week. Perez finished in 17th place in the 1-meter preliminaries Thursday, coming up just one spot short of qualifying for the consolation finals. Cox was 24th in Thursday's prelims. Both seniors' strongest events are still to come, as Perez has enjoyed his most success on the 3-meter springboard and Cox the platform towers.
The 3-meter competition is set for Friday and the platform Saturday. Friday's action gets underway with preliminaries at 3 p.m. (EDT).
Purdue Competitors in 1-Meter Diving
David Boudia, 461 (353.10 prelims) - Won event
J.P. Perez, 321.55 prelims - Finished 17th in preliminaries
Danny Cox, 309.90 prelims - Finished 24th in preliminaries