The Hawkeye women swimmers will face another tough challenge in West Lafayette today, as the Boilermakers enter the weekend ranked No. 16 in the country by CollegeSwimming.com.

Iowa is coming off of a 192-105 loss to Minnesota last weekend, which brought their record to 3-1.

The Boilermakers face the Hawks on the heels of triangular meet victories against Ohio State and Notre Dame, bringing their record to 4-1 on the year. They also took first-place at the annual Indiana Intercollegiates.

Iowa head coach Marc Long said his squad knows how tough Purdue has been, but he is confident that the Hawks can put up a fight.

“[Purdue] is so well rounded and they’ve got a ton of depth,” Long said. “Their diving is exceptional as usual, and they’re just a really solid Big Ten team.”

After the Minnesota meet Oct. 30, Long said the team had a wake-up call of sorts. It became clear what the Hawks needed to work on to compete with the upper-tier teams in the conference.

Purdue certainly qualifies as one of those teams.

“We need to work on a lot of little things,” sophomore Tereysa Lehnertz said. “We’re in really great shape; that’s not the problem. Just some technical details need some work.”

Long said that the Hawkeyes need to focus on the events that they know they can challenge the Boilermakers in, and everything else will work itself out.

“The success of this meet will depend on the individual efforts first, then on the relay front,” he said. “We really need to compete in the events that we know we can win.”

The No. 22 men’s swimming and diving team will travel to West Lafayette this weekend as well.

Coming off of a tough home loss to No. 20 Minnesota, the Hawkeyes hope to get back into the win column against another tough Big Ten opponent.

Long was quick to point out that the men’s squad earned a lot of victories against Minnesota but did not do a great job of placing numerous swimmers in the top four.

A win earns a team 10 points, but if the opponent places swimmers second, third, and fourth, the advantage is gone in a hurry.

“Really, we raced well against Minnesota,” Long said. “There are a lot of factors that go into wins and losses, and Minnesota was one of those cases in which we raced well but couldn’t get the win. So I know the guys will be ready to go, and I expect them to compete really well this weekend.”

Iowa will bring the fifth fastest 400-medley relay to the pool against Purdue. The team of redshirt freshman Kenneth Mende, senior Roman Trussov, sophomore Jerzy Twarowski, and freshman Jack Smith claimed first place against Minnesota in a time of 3:15.96.

Senior Jackson Allen said it was little tweaks, not big adjustments, that the Hawkeyes need to make to come out on top against No. 49 Purdue.

“We all know there are some things that we can do to get better,” Allen said. “It’s just working the little things to make sure we’re ready to go against Purdue and get that win.”