CLEVELAND, Miss. – Missouri S&T added two more NCAA Division II provisional qualifiers Saturday as its swimming team concluded its first semester competition at the Delta State Christmas Invitational, where the Miners finished fourth as a team.

The two that made the list were Mark Cavanaugh (Papillion, NE/Papillion-LaVista) and Connor Wiedemeier, both of whom reached their qualifying time in the preliminaries of the 200-yard backstroke.  Cavanaugh had a time of 1:49.33 and Wiedemeier posted a mark of 1:49.66, allowing them to join 10 other Miners who had already made at least at B-cut for the national meet.

Tim Samuelsen (Stavanger, Norway/St. Svithun VGS) recorded a second place finish and provisional qualifying time in the process in the 1,650-yard freestyle with a time of 15:34.02, while Alex Graham (Parker, TX/Homeschooled) also made a B-cut time in the event of 15:47.45 as he finished fifth.

Aside from the 1,650-freestyle and Aaron Taske's (Fairfield, OH/Saint Xavier) second place finish in the 200-yard butterfly -- where he made a B-cut with a time of 1:47.86 -- the Miners competed in only the preliminaries on Saturday.  During that time, the Miners were able to add two additional provisional marks as Andy Huffman (Lee's Summit, MO/Lee's Summit) recorded the fastest time in the 200-yard breaststroke in the morning of 2:00.47 that surpassed the qualifying standard and Chris Betts (Katy, TX/Cinco Ranch) made a B-cut in the 100-yard freestyle with a time of 45.13 seconds.

Alex Chavez was second in the preliminaries in the 200-breaststroke with his time of 2:02.54 and Jay Mercer (Kansas City, MO/Whitefield Academy) was fifth in that event at 2:02.96, while Nolan Fergus (Aurora, IL/Marmion Academy) had the second-fastest morning time in the 200-yard butterfly of 1:51.93.

Marco Flores (San Pedro Sula, Honduras/SERAN Private Bilingual School) had the fifth-best time in the morning session in the 100-freestyle of 45.85 seconds, where he was followed by Alec Davis (Joplin, MO/Joplin) at 45.97 and Colten Becker (Overland Park, KS/Blue Valley Northwest) at 46.10.  Dylan Friesz (Round Rock, TX/Hutto) was eighth in the 200-backstroke with a time of 1:51.48 as was Josh Umrysh in the 200-breaststroke at 2:06.57.