ST. PETERS, Mo. - Matt Zieger faced plenty of pressure on Friday at the Missouri Swimming and Diving Championships in St. Peters, Mo. As a senior who's built plenty of expectations up for himself and the program, this weekend marked Zieger's last chance to live up to the high standards he's set for himself.

Zieger did that and more. He set personal bests in both the 50- and 100-yard freestyle events and earned spots in the finals for both events today.

Zieger's 47.72 placed fourth in the qualifying rounds of the 100. His 21.67 in the 50 positioned him in eighth place after the first day.

The top eight swimmers advance to the finals.

"Last year, Matt kind of had the ninth-place curse," Central coach Marnie Lucas said. "He did great but kept getting stuck in ninth-place, just out of the finals. But (on Friday) he was outstanding.

"It was really, really exciting."

Lucas said Zieger and the other Central swimmers had some trouble with the pool at St. Peters.

"It's just a real tricky; the bulkhead where they do their flip turns is really slick," Lucas said. "I think Matt had a bad flip turn in his 50 free.

"But if we improve a little on that (today), I could see him definitely being in the top three in the 100 and maybe up to fourth in the 50."

Central's 200 relay also met its goal. The team of Zieger, Mitch Evans, Brian Jungk and Joe Smith placed 16th in the qualifying rounds, which gave them a spot in today's consolation finals.

"I think everyone's done great," Lucas said, "and we still have a chance to improve on that some even (today)."

The other two relays - the 200 medley and 400 freestyle - failed to qualify for the finals.

The 400 free relay of Zieger, Andrew Zeiler, Evans and Jungk came the closest, turning in a 3:24.22, good enough for 19th place and less than a second away from 16th place. The 200 medley team, consisting of Smith, Zeiler, Evans and Andrew Nordbye, came in 32nd at 1:49.68.

Jungk and Evans also competed in individual events.

In preliminaries for the 100 butterfly, Evans came in 40th (57.33), while Jungk also placed 40th in the 100 freestyle prelims (51.27). Jungk also swam in the 100 backstroke, placing 45th (1:01.99).