The Auburn men's swimming and diving team followed it's strong performance at the conference championships with a top six finish at the 2011 NCAA Championships.
The Tigers have a sixth place finish to show for its performance, marking the 10th consecutive year Auburn has finished among the top six teams in the nation.
"It was a great way to finish the meet, and I am very proud of our seniors like Adam Brown and Kohlton Norys for the way they stepped up and led this team to a top-six finish in the meet," said Auburn head coach Brett Hawke. "We also got a great glimpse of the future this week with some great swimmers like Max Murphy, Kyle Owens and Zane Grothe working their way up."
The University of California claimed the title, joining the women who claimed their title last week in Texas.
The University of Texas took second place, followed by the Stanford Cardinal, Arizona Wildcats and the Florida Gators to round out the top five.
Brown was a big part of Auburn's success, scoring 62 of the Tigers' 269.5 points while tallying six All-American honors.
"In a short two years, Adam has gone down as one of the greatest sprinters to ever come through Auburn," Hawke said. "He has a bright future ahead of him, including the Olympics in his home country of England next year. I'm very proud of Adam for what he has accomplished at Auburn."
Brown finished second in the 50 yard freestyle with a time of 18.72 and clinched his second top-three finish of the championships in the 100 freestyle with a time of 41.84.
Brown was just short of his time of 41.75 from the morning preliminaries which ranks third all-time behind Cesar Cielo (40.92) and Matt Targett (41.55).
"It was a tough race," Brown said. "I really wanted to win that one with it being my event.
"I swam my competitor's race instead of my own, and it caught me in the end. My hat's off to Nathan Adrian, though, he swam a great meet."
Freshman Zane Grothe scored 25 points for the Tigers while setting two new Auburn records and earning two All-American honors at the championships.
Grothe finished sixth in the 1650 free, setting a new Auburn record with a time of 14:47.09.
This makes him one of just four Tigers ever to earn first-team All-American honors in the 1,650 free event.
"It felt pretty crazy; I was going so hard, I felt numb for most of it," Grothe said. "I knew I had to go out hard, and it is like Coach said, 'You don't die, it just hurts more.' So, you just have to go out for it. I did, and my first 500 was four seconds faster."
Grothe also set a new record in the 500 freestyle, where he finished seventh with a time of 4:16.82, beating Texas sophomore Michael McBroom by a total of 4.21 seconds.
"Overall, I was really proud of the way this team battled when things were not going our way," Hawke said. "But, we know we have to get better and get stronger moving forward from here."
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