“From day one of practice, this (meet) was the goal in mind, so everything I’ve done the entire year helped me prepare for this,” Puskaric said. “That’s why I feel confident and good about going, because I’ve done all the work possible.”

Representing MSU in five total events, Puskaric qualified in the 100- and 200-yard breaststroke, while Jarzen will swim the 100-yard butterfly and the 100- and 200-yard backstroke. Jarzen also swam the same events at last season’s championships.

Although head coach Matt Gianiodis said it would have been nice to add relays to the NCAA lineup, keeping the swimmers’ events purely individual has its advantages too.

“(Practice) has been really race specific stuff, and the cool thing about the NCAAs for these two is that there’s not relays they have to worry about,” he said. “It’s really just straight up individual events.”

Since qualifying for NCAAs at the Big Ten Championships in February, Puskaric and Jarzen have had a solid month of practicing and tapering down for competition.

As the only qualifying Spartan last season, Jarzen no longer is preparing alone, and he and Puskaric help motivate each other everyday.

They’ve been able to take advantage of the extra pool space and the attention they’ve received from the coaching staff, who said the pair are looking better than ever.

“We’ve shared the excitement of being able to go together and … he’s really excited,” Puskaric said. “I think that will help both of us swim faster, just having one another there.”

Gianiodis said the two have practiced harder and performed better.

“They’ve been able to feed off of each other, and they’ve done a really good job of not pushing each other, but motivating each other through a really tough time,” Gianiodis said. “When you come off of the Big Tens, everybody else leaves for spring break, so they were on campus all by themselves, so that kind of camaraderie has really helped.”

On Friday morning, Puskaric will swim the 100-yard breaststroke, and Jarzen will have the 100-yard backstroke and butterfly. The swimmers’ 200-yard breaststroke and backstroke will be Saturday morning.

To make it back for finals each evening, they will have to finish in the top 16 in the preliminaries.

While Jarzen already has the school records in his three events, Puskaric will be going for the 100-yard breaststroke varsity record at 53.77, which he missed by .06 at the Big Ten Championships.

“(Puskaric) has the 200 breaststroke varsity record right now, and he’s right there with the 100,” associate head coach Kathleen Milloy said. “The 200 has been his best event for most of his career here, but he’s shown the speed that he can get that (record).”

With Puskaric and Jarzen being very competitive in their races and having strong work ethics, Gianiodis said he expects their hard work to translate into dropping significant time.

He said both swimmers have had a great month of practice and tapering, and they’ll be ready for the NCAAs.

“The energy and the competition — I swim for the competition, and that’s the best in the world pretty much this weekend,” Puskaric said. “So I’m excited to race against those guys.”