Before NCAAs each year 25 years ago, my collegiate coach would say that we were going to do well at NCAA XC simply by having our best (or near best) races of the season, while most athletes/teams at the meet would run poorly. He'd say that we were really only competing against 25% of the teams as 75% of them would have regressed to running much slower than they had at the big early season invitationals. I always felt this was pretty accurate.
Is this true? Is it the same teams that always run well (or poorly) at NCAAs? If so what programs routinely perform at NCAAs? Which routinely underperform?
Most importantly, why doe this happen?