Television announcers for both basketball and football will tell you time and time again how hard it is to win on the road in the Big Ten.

Men's swimming is no different.

For the second consecutive year, the host school for the event, this year the University of Minnesota, walked away with the conference crown. The Golden Gophers did it in record-setting style by capturing 797 points, the most scored by a team since 1974, and the most since the meet changed format in 1991.

The No. 13 Penn State men's swimming and diving team finished third in the field, trailing Minnesota and last year's host and champion, the University of Michigan.

Minnesota came into the meet ranked No. 16, one of five Big Ten teams nationally ranked, along with Penn State, No. 9 Michigan, No. 21 Purdue and No. 23 Wisconsin.

Michigan finished with 549 points and the Nittany Lions had 538. Wisconsin finished fourth with 321 points. Purdue finished a disappointing 8th with 269 points.

"It's great to win the Big Ten championship whenever you win it, but it was really a special feeling for us to win it in our pool and it's nice to win it at home in front of the home crowd," Minnesota coach Dennis Dale said.

Dale was named Big Ten Coach of the Year, while Minnesota's KZ Li was named Diving Coach of the Year, with Minnesota sophomore Todd Smolinski named Swimmer of the Championships, and Minnesota senior Dan Croaston named Big Ten Diver of the Year and Diver of the Championships.

Michigan's Chris Thompson was named Big Ten Swimmer of the Year. Thompson won a bronze medal for the United States at the 2000 Summer Olympics. His Big Ten winning time in the 1650-yard freestyle was the second-fastest time ever by an American, dominating the Big Ten field by over 20 seconds.

Individually, many Nittany Lions had solid performances. Martin Schierhorn's fifth place finish in the 1650-yard freestyle was second fastest in school history. John Retrum's seventh place finish in the 200-yard backstroke was also good for second place in school history.

Along with the numerous second place finishes, Penn State broke eight individual school records. On the first day of the three-day competition, the 200-yard freestyle relay of Brian Hostetler, Eugene Botes, Retrum, and Bob Molettiere broke the school record previously set at the 1999 Big Ten Championships.

Joe Peresan also eclipsed his own record in the 400-yard individual medley, with a time of 3:50.24.

Molettiere's second place in the 100-yard freestyle broke his own school record time at 43.72.

In the competition's final event, the 400-yard freestyle relay, the team of Molettiere, Botes, Todd Minnier, and Retrum broke a conference record set by the University of Iowa in 1994. The time also automatically qualified the relay for the NCAA Championships to be held March 22- 24 at Texas A&M University.

"The significance of that 400 relay is that it had stood for seven years and the reason that was is that (Iowa's team) had three Olympic team members on it," Penn State coach Peter Brown said.

While that time has already qualified the 400-yard relay for the NCAA Championship competition, many of the Nittany Lions will be forced to compete at the Last Chance Invitational in Cleveland, Ohio March 2 in hopes to qualify.

Diver Chris Alderman finished fifth in the 1-meter diving event and eighth in the 3-meter. Teammate Jeff Harrison finished 14 and 12 in the two events, respectively.

"Chris did as well as he could have, in the three-meter he was being very aggressive and he hit his feet on a dive, and it cost him, but it was an aggressive mistake. Our goal going in was form him to make it to the finals by being in the top eight, and he did that," diving coach Craig Brown said.

Both Alderman and Steve Bohner have qualified for the NCAA qualifying meet March 9 and 10 at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.