OMG Michigan is Worse than A High School Team

Obviously this was just intended to be a workout, not an all out effort.

They'd be lucky to be top 5 in D1 Cal State meet.

read the quotes at the bottom.

Yeah. so how does Forys expect to be top 10 in the country or win big tens. what a joke. he's the only one with any talent on that time. never heard of the other guys.

sopathetic wrote:

Yeah. so how does Forys expect to be top 10 in the country or win big tens. what a joke. he's the only one with any talent on that time. never heard of the other guys.

Forys only one with talent? Either you're nuts, or you haven't been paying attention. Bowden ran 3:46.98 at age 16. If he can ever get his stuff together he'll be damn good. I'm pretty sure that would be considered having talent...how many Americans ever ran under 3:47 at age 16?

Michigan has had the 2nd most "talent" in the conference behind only Wisconsin for the last decade. The problem is nobody has gotten much better WHEN IT COUNTS. Lex Williams is best example, NATIONAL LEADER IN 10K AND DOESN'T SCORE A SINGLE POINT AT CONFERENCE LAST OUTDOORS!

I would think Ohio State would contend with Michigan for next best talent in the big 10. That is, at least recently.

4:03 jeff see

4:07 cory leslie

4:07 jake edwards

8:50 Chad Balyo

To go along with several other studs. They have done slightly better in improvement than the Michigan crew but nothing to write home about.

Is Gibby making them pound 130 miles a week at 5:50 pace yet?

See was stud, Balyo was 10th when he ran 8:55, but rest of "talent" is middle distance. Leslie down to 4:02 from 4:07/1:50, but didn't score at Big 10's! Edwards ran 13:57 last spring from 4:07 mile and not good high school cross country runner, but hasn't scored in Big 10's. Rest of team is 9:20 and 4:18 high schoolerson average.

They have underpeformed a little in track and over-achieved in cross country just from having such a small team and not enough cross country high school talent I would say.

Leslie was state cc champ - 15:30 or so, only a few seconds off from what See won with.

Green was Indiana state cc runner-up and 9:12

They also usually get the best small town kids in Ohio, who obviously have huge upsides.

Peaking in track is below average. Strategy in cc is similar. If they would run a bit more conservative early on, they wouldn't blow up as much as they normaly do. Don't know what I am talking about? Go check out pictures from big 10 and regional races and see what team has entire top 7 up front.

OSU gets stud middle and long distance runners. Few make it big and most improve a little. Could be that it is a huge school with lots of distractions but overall, a very average performance for the cc/track mid/long distance team.

The Wolverines have a terrific group of incoming freshmen and some upper classmen that should help them finish mid-pack in the Big 10 this year. This meet was mostly contested by UM 'hopefuls' & the top guy in the meet is from Alanson, a tiny speck of a town in northern MI, about 30 miles south of the Mackinac Bridge. I'll bet his win is BIG news up there.

Just who exactly is talented among the Michigan Freshmen? Haven't heard of any of these guys. Also, who other than Forys did NOT run this time trial?

Returning top 5 should be Forys, Aprill, Blacklaws,Bowden, and Ornelas. Only Bowden ran this "race." Freshmen and Sophs are definitely going to have to step up to fill out top 9. Will be interesting to see how the team transitions to Gibby's program.

I think its obvious this meet was for 2 reasons.

1. NCAA rules only allow you to practice 21 days prior to your first competition.

2. NCAA rules require you to run 5 athletes at 6 meets.

This race if you want to call it that probably accomplished both of these goals in helping them be better when it counts. Now they can train more and race less to be where Gibby wants them at Big Tens. The W&M squad was so deep they ran their C squad in races early in the year and the real guys wouldn't hit a XC race till a couple of weeks before Pre-Nats.

I bet they do the same thing at Michigan, but with so few guys in comparison to what they had at W&M they will look like hell until they put the real guys out there.

if guys like this want to run in college, i dont understand why they dont go to some crappy d2 school isntead of getting blown away in practice and not getting to race except for these early season "races." cant be fun....

dehiba wrote:

if guys like this want to run in college, i dont understand why they dont go to some crappy d2 school isntead of getting blown away in practice and not getting to race except for these early season "races." cant be fun....

There are several holes in your 'argument' friend, so I'll focus on just 2 - the part where you 'don't understand' and saying 'crappy d2 school'. You don't understand because you haven't spoken w/each of the guys that ran in the meet. You don't know how & why they ended up in Ann Arbor. You don't know their motivation, you don't know if they're there on academic scholarship, you don't know what you don't know - which clearly is a lot.

Crappy d2 school...hmmm, a sweeping, offcolor and unfair generalization like that completely diminishes your argument.

Leslie was D2 State Champion in XC and nowehere near as good as See in cross country (See won Midwest Footlocker when leslie finished 37th).

Green was not runner up in cc. Ran 9:12 and it was his only time under 9:23. Last year was runner-up in Big 10 3k and ran 8:48 for steeple.

They do not get the best small town Ohio kids and aside from See and Balyo, rarely get the very best in Ohio because every small MAC school gives them a full.

Dan Huling and Brian Olinger are big studs (not sure Myers trains there anymore, but the certainly was as well).

They won Drake Relays 4 x 800 and 4 x mile last year. See was a stud in all 3 seasons. 800 guy ran 1:48 indoors and ran 3:48 in 1500 (huge PR). Fallon went 3:46 (huge PR). Julian Meyers missed making World Cross Team by 6 spots. Steeple times of 8:48, 8:49, 8:53 (Balyo), 8:55, and 9:00 (true freshman Roys). Should probably mention Hulings 8:13 because it's 5th fastest American ever.

I know a lot of these guys were upset with their years last year, but that is pretty good (especially considering their track team is always in the top 3 conference as well. Not National powerhouses but pretty good still.

XC had them 2nd in conference and 21st in NCAA!

I am not sure I would ever want to be a coach at schools like that. Everything is expected and everybody is so smart about the inner-workings of these kinds of programs and Universities (sarcasm). The fact is, at both these schools, tons of people improve and all different kids out of high school succeed and fail. Look at even Oregon and Stanford, probably 15 guys on each team at least running under 4:12 and 9:05; at least OSU and Michigan only have a couple on each!

As for crappy D2, plenty of these schools would beat up on D1 (and of course vice versa). Couple Big 10 schools in fact (Purdue, Penn St, Illinois couldn't win NAIA or D2!)

I'm interested to see how Nathan Karr does, as he really improved a ton last year and is a bit of an unknown to many still.

Not sure of his prs, just remember seeing him do a 4:10/9:18/800 leg in 7:44 triple taking 2nd in both indiv. races. Nice to see all the stars of one HS team going to their home town college with the Kerns going there as well.

Karr is an up and coming star possibly...keep an eye out for him.