Official 2017 D3 Cross Country Thread

Wait whut wrote:

Wait, Paul Short has always been short? Can someone confirm this (no pun intended)

If so, jesus

As someone who ran the course yesterday with the GPS saying 4.99, I don't believe it's short.

Duhhh benches in cross country wrote:

Br0 wrote:

Alright bro, see you there. Hope it is 80 degrees, should make it a lot easier to warm the bench up for your more successful teammates

Uhhh where are these benches!?! My coach says we have to run the races WITHOUT stoping. I bet he would change his mind if there was benches on the course!!

I will bet my literal left testicle that you won't be racing come November.

I'm thinking that the expectations were a bit too high for Hopkins. They ran their best race of the season at Nationals last year, which is of course what you want to do (Props to them!), but maybe their true talent is a little below that performance. They had lost to Haverford at their Conference meet last year, and at regionals they beat Haverford by one point.

It also seems like some of the Haverford guys have taken steps forward, particularly Gearingher (sp?). Without actually looking, I think the Haverford guys were better than the Hopkins guys at their conference track meet last spring.

So maybe what we're seeing is:

-Hopkins regressing to the mean

-Hopkins not quite as race sharp as Haverford

-Haverford guys improving over 10 months

-Haverford guys having a great race

To me Haverford looks like a possible podium team, Hopkins more like a 8-15 range team (at this point).

The conditions were perfect yesterday at Paul Short. This would account for the fast times. On the rankings, it really is a crap shoot this time of year with the rankers relying on teams' own coaches' input and very few actual races to go on. I would disagree with the assessment that Amherst and CNU are overrated. They're both very good, well coached teams, and currently the best in their regions. I suspect both are potential top-5 teams in the end. Unfortunately, Hopkins has been ranked too high at this point, but should not be overlooked. Their coach has won 4 national titles on the women's side and is working with a lot of talent on the men's side. One not-great race doesn't define a team or a season. In fact, Hopkins looked better yesterday than they did this time last year, when they finished 8th at NCAAs.

Did IGC not race all out this weekend? He finished not nearly where he should've

I was in the start field of the race. Around 2 miles in he was sitting like 80th in the race running something like 5:15 or 5:20 pace. At 4 miles the dude was in like 20th. Didn't try to go out with the leaders at all. Their number 2, Burks, did the same things

IGCCCC wrote:

Did IGC not race all out this weekend? He finished not nearly where he should've

D3 Week of September 29-30

The big race of the week was Paul Short. Between the Gold and the Brown Race there were 9 D3 teams racing. The team that had the best race was Haverford – who finished 17th in the Gold Race. A number of teams did not have great days. This is an historically very fast course so it’s hard to make comparisons. But looking at past performance and that course, I add 2 minutes and 20 seconds to each team to get a relatively fair comparison with the rest of the D3 for the week. Even with that, Haverford should move into the top 5 if not the top 3 nationally after this weekend. Great work by Donnelly’s boys proving the master is still kicking!

Other Teams that proved their muster at Paul Short and should be moved up are Christopher Newport who I think should crack the top 10, Carnegie Mellon was 3rd in the Brown Race and should move into the top 15. St. Lawrence who should move into the top 25 if not 20. Amherst was solid and I think raced to their #8 current rank.

JHU was the team that had the comparative worst performance at Paul Short -- proving they were way over ranked -- and should be bumped out of the top 10. But Middlebury was not far behind. If I were the Middlebury coaches I would regret not being in the Brown race today. Williams might move up but given their talent a very uninspiring performance by the Purple Cow at Lehigh.

The other big D3 meets of the weekend were the Eau Claire Blue and Gold Invite, SCIAC XC Duals and the Wartburg Invite as each had 3 ranked teams. From my perspective the blue and Gold invite was actually the 2nd best meet of the weekend not just because of Lacrosse’s dominating performance but also because of the terrific runs by unranked Wisconsin Stout and Platteville. Both Stout and Platteville should crack the top 35 although in part their performance was made to look better by a bad day for St. Olaf. It looks like two of St. Olaf’s top 5’s were way off. This will cost St. Olaf in the rankings probably moving them down at least 8-9 spots. If they had a normal run they would’ve been close to challenging Eau Claire. So expect to see the Oles back in a couple weeks.

At Wartburg #10 Loras, Wartburg and UW Strevens Point competed. Loras held off the home team to win by a hair. I think that reflects that Loras is slightly over ranked. Likely top 15 but not a top 10 team today and Wartburg might move up a spot. UW Stevens Point was way back and probably should be bumped from the rankings for Stout or Platteville.

The SCIAC XC duals mostly proves that the Western schools are over ranked. Pomona is the best team of the west and Occidental and Claremont are not Very good. I would rank #35 Willamette over those two squads. There is no way Pomona should be top 5 even if that was a hard course. Maybe 10th at the best.

Two other meets had multiple ranked opponents. Mike Woods invite that was won easily by Geneseo also had a strong performance by Rowan. Rowan should definitely be in the top 30. And Saratoga Invite which was easily won by RPI had a strong performance by Bates. I probably wouldn’t move Bates up but it was a solid performance.

Other teams that ran above their rankings

Wash U dominated with the team taking the first 10 spots of the Millikan invite and their top 5 combined time of 2:04. It was probably a pretty flat course but they should definitely move into the top 10. Rhodes had a strong performance in Louisville being the top D3 team proving their might be some life in the south.

But there were more teams that had bad weeks – other than the ones I mentioned already Carleton is at the top of that list. Carleton seems to be missing 2 of their top 5 but their 6th place finish at the Running of the Cows means they should be out of the rankings for next week.

And two teams that should be considered to be in the rankings due to strong performances at the Running of the Cows are Carthage and Cornell. Carthage nipped Cornell but Cornell had a faster 1-5 Cumulative time.

My 2 cents.

Br0 wrote:

Duhhh benches in cross country wrote:

Uhhh where are these benches!?! My coach says we have to run the races WITHOUT stoping. I bet he would change his mind if there was benches on the course!!

I will bet my literal left testicle that you won't be racing come November.

"I will bet my literal left testicle" that you get picked on for your short-fuse and small penis that you have to act like a big shot on running forums to feel better about yourself.

You forgot about Calvin at Notre Dame. They would have taken anywhere from like 4th-6th based on total and average time. Could be a solid team if they could find a 5th. Their current 5th is 20 seconds back from their 4, but is a 9:07 steeplechaser. If he learns how to run cross country they would have a 25 second spread on 5 with the top two being 25:0x.

To be honest, I did not know what to make of Calvin's performance at ND. It does not look like they appear in the results -- do non-Catholic schools not get a team score? They certainly could crack the top 10 in future. But in my top 35 with some teams moving down and such strong performances from Haverford CNU, Carnegie Mellon and Wash U, Calvin actually loses a spot

Anyway here is my top 35

1 North Central

2 Geneseo

3 Haverford

4 UW Lacrosse

5 RPI

6 Wash U

7 Eau Claire

8 Amherst

9 Christopher Newport

10 Pomona

11 Carnegie Mellon

12 Johns Hopkins

13 Calvin

14 MIT

15 Williams

16 Loras

17 Wisconsin Stout

18 Wartburg

19 Middlebury

20 Bates

21 Rhodes

22 St. Lawrence

23 Wisconsin Platteville

24 Rowan

25 St. Olaf

26 Dickinson

27 Brandeis

28 Albion

29 Willamette

30 Occidental

31 Nebraska Wesleyan

32 Claremont

33 Carthage

34 Cornell

35 TCNJ

Our team is in the SUNYAC and we've noticed that they usually do this sort of thing at an easy early season meet with the whole team. They kind of sit around for three miles, and then go hard for the last 2. I guess they decided to let their top 2 guys do a workout for the day since there was pretty much no chance they were gonna lose their home meet. I heard some of the guys talking after the race and they said that Burks broke 9:40 and IGC broke 9:20 for the last two miles.The course historically runs pretty quick and is probably short, but IGC running 25:13 for a workout is pretty solid regardless.

I C IGC wrote:

I was in the start field of the race. Around 2 miles in he was sitting like 80th in the race running something like 5:15 or 5:20 pace. At 4 miles the dude was in like 20th. Didn't try to go out with the leaders at all. Their number 2, Burks, did the same things

IGCCCC wrote:

Did IGC not race all out this weekend? He finished not nearly where he should've

CNU is the most overrated team in d3. They'll be lucky to finish top 20 this year. Chances are their top 5 will all be injured by the time regionals rolls around, so they likely won't even qualify for nationals. They are the stress fracture kings of d3.

LAX who? wrote:

Anyone see LAX this week?? Top guy barely broke 27, thought they were good and were going to compete this year, guess not.

10 under 26minutes at eau claire but yeah like you said..."guess not"

A pretty good list though no way central region has 6 ranked with Olaf getting blasted like that. Also no way TCNJ is still ranked (though NYU was right behind SLU so they prob will be in there). Prob see ONU move in as the next best in what is prob the worst region (or the south). Hard to think either has a chance at more than 3 teams.

What do we think on the individual side?

Darin Lau and IGC have to be the favorites for the title and I would probably give Lau the slight edge right now. But how about other contenders? Dylan Gearinger (24:17) Grayson Reid (24:40) and Henry Woods (24:43) all seem like contenders after Paul Short. North Central will have 3 or 4 guys in the mix as well it seems.

Dropping Loras down to 16th seems like a bit of an exaggeration. Yah it was close, but if you look at the times, Loras would kill them in a bigger meet. Loras' 3rd was 25 seconds ahead of Wartburgs 3rd. And everyone else person to person was within a few seconds. It looked like essentially a dual meet

Caleb Appleton of Wartburg had a rough day. He was a 25mid guy as a freshman last year. When he gets back to where he should, be Wartburg can and will beat Loras

IndiChamp wrote:

What do we think on the individual side?

Darin Lau and IGC have to be the favorites for the title and I would probably give Lau the slight edge right now. But how about other contenders? Dylan Gearinger (24:17) Grayson Reid (24:40) and Henry Woods (24:43) all seem like contenders after Paul Short. North Central will have 3 or 4 guys in the mix as well it seems.

Grant O Connor. RPI might not be in the mix for hugely competitive teams but he is definitely a prime candidate for the individual winner.

24:59 at SPAC well within his capability. That 29:40 strength also puts him up for a solid contender. He's got a wide range, I wouldn't put him out of the pool yet.

I think you are on point on some of the teams in your rankings but missing a few

that I would put in there. One of them being Washington and Lee. Looking at their times from Paul Short they are ahead of 9 teams. I would also put Trinity in there too. This Wednesday will show the accurate rankings.