GENEVA, Ohio— A night after sweeping the 200-yard individual medley titles, the Colorado Mesa University Mavericks fared quite well in preliminary heats of the 400-yard distances on Thursday morning at the NCAA Division II Swimming & Diving Championships.

Those efforts highlighted an up-and-down session for the Mavericks, who qualified four swimmers for the evening's championship finals and two others for the consolation final.

The biggest CMU highlight of the morning came from Benedict Nagy, who posted the top overall qualifying time in the 400 IM after winning the NCAA Division II title in the 200-yard event on Wednesday night.  She swam to a time of 4:13.99 in the 400 on Thursday morning, 3.39 seconds quicker than the next fastest qualifier— Maria Fe Munoz of Drury.

Meanwhile, teammate Sophia Bains qualified third overall, shaving two full seconds off her former personal best, winning her heat in 4:18.67, well quicker than her seed time of 4:21.19, which positioned her ninth on the psych sheet.

Minutes later, Ben Sampson cruised to a time of 3:48.53 in the men's 400 IM preliminaries, qualifying second.  The 16-time all-American successfully defended his national title in the 200 IM on Wednesday night and will be looking to improve upon his third place finish in the 400 IM at last year's NCAA Championships.

Aziz Ghaffari also reached the championship final in the 200 free, qualifying seventh in 1:35.63.

The Mavs will also have two swimmers in the consolation finals as sophomore Kiara Borchardt set a massive personal-best time of 54.48 second in the 100 fly, well under her former best of 54.72.  She finished ninth overall in the preliminaries and will have the middle lane in the consolation final.  Borchardt was seeded 13^th coming into the meet.

Lauren White also reached the consolation final in the 200 free, qualifying 13^th in 1:49.80.

However, teammates Ada Qunell (1:50.40), Katerina Matoskova (1;50.91) and Olivia Hansson (1:51.39) failed to do so, finishing 20^th, 30^th and 33^rd, respectively.

In the men's 200 free, freshman Jameson McEnaney originally tied for 16^th in the preliminary heats with a time of 1:36.90, just off his seed time of 1:36.79.  However, he would later fall short in a swim-off for the last spot in Thursday night's consolation final despite posting a new personal-best of 1:36.78.  He led through the first three laps of his swim-off dual with McKendree's Mario Perez, who out-touched McEnaney by just six one-hundredths of a second in 1:36.72.

Other Maverick results from Thursday morning included a 35^th place finish by Dejan Urbanek in the 100 fly (49.09).  He then came back to take 37^th in the 200 free (1:41.94).

Meanwhile, Luka Samsonov finished 18^th in the 400 IM preliminaries and will be the second alternate after recording a career-best time of 3:56.97, which moved him up a spot to eighth in program history, ahead of former No. 8 Jacob Troescher, who finished 27^th in 4:01.70 on Thursday morning.

Kuba Kiszczak also swam on Thursday morning, finishing 22^nd in the 200 free with a time of 1:37.66, just off his season-best of 1:37.51.

Maverick divers Ally Hrncir and Mimi Licht will compete in the women's 3-meter preliminaries at 1 p.m. EDT (11 a.m. Mountain).  The consolation finals will follow that in the afternoon while the championship finals will be a part of the evening session, which will get underway with Borchardt's 100 fly race at 5:30 p.m. EDT (3:30 p.m. Mountain).

The Mavericks will also be represented in the 400 medley relays, which will cap the session.  The Maverick women are seeded second in that event while the men are seeded sixth.