Stanford's Miltenberg Rebuilds the Machine....What a joke

Are you kidding? Stanford has gone 2, 3, 2, 4 over the last four years and you think that’s bad? What team has done better? More, their top 5 this year are all coming back next year, and presumably Ratcliffe. Come on, man. Milt is doing just fine.

Whatajoke wrote:

I love the video Miltenberg recently put out about "Rebuilding the Machine". The dude is delusional. He showed up in 2012, and has had 6x NCAA Men's appearances under his watch. He's gone 16, 19, 2, 3, 2, 4 for an average finish of 7.67. He came in 2012, executed a purge to get a large number of the guys off the team, making sure that his new system was properly adopted. What a joke.

Before Miltenberg started his "machine rebuilding campaign" Jason Dunn was the coach, and had 4x NCAA Men's finishes of 3, 10, 4, 5 for an average of 5.5.

Before Dunn, Tegan's average was 9.67 for 3 appearances, Gerard's average was 3.5 for 2 appearances, and Lananna's average was 2.89 for 9 appearances.

If "rebuilding the machine" is intended to make the program worse, then mission accomplished for Miltenberg. Time for another coach.

I’ll take the bait.

Havkng spoken to some inside the program, I think it was more about the culture when he arrived. His last four years have been pretty decent haven’t they? An average of under 3rd with some huge track performances.

Not saying they weren’t awesome before he got there, but it’s not like they aren’t doing a phenomenal job right now.

You can find fault with pretty any team if you want to:

“New Mexico and NAU are foreigners!”

“Oregon underperforms!”

“CU choked again!”

The fact of the matter is, the Stanford men and women made podium this year so it’s kind of hard to say he “made them worse”.

4 podiums in the last 4 years.

Go look at oklahoma state and then come back to us....

4-6 years ago they were in contention and they won a few times...

Now they are 29th....

Back in the day, even Vin's teams caught a lot of crap on Letsrun from people who had no idea what they were talking about. It's reassuring to see nothing has changed.

Probably not a terrible coach, but results don't tell the whole story when he gets the best recruiting class in the country year after year. Hard to be a fan without understanding "no walk-ons" policy, makes him and his program seem even more elitist.

expunged wrote:

Probably not a terrible coach, but results don't tell the whole story when he gets the best recruiting class in the country year after year. Hard to be a fan without understanding "no walk-ons" policy, makes him and his program seem even more elitist.

Steven Grolle is a walk on

People act like there's some sort of ignorant bias and foolish understanding of how to measure success and improvement. Track and Cross Country are about as simple as it gets to evaluate. Either you improved or you didn't.

Miltenberg has gone 16, 19, 2, 3, 2, 4 since he got there. Before that Dunn went 3, 10, 4, 5. I wouldn't say there has been a huge improvement under Miltenberg's Machine Rebuilding efforts. Miltenberg claims he has "Rebuilt the Machine". Maybe the Machine was there when he arrived, he broke it, and now it's back. Not sure they're currently any better than before he got there.

For comparison purposes, the 8-yrs between 1996 and 2003, Stanford's men won 4 NCAA XC Titles. I may be wrong, but I have to believe those were "The Machine Years" ......4x NCAA Titles in 8 showings.

If you want to see what improvement and world class coaching looks like, look no further than Art Siemers at Colorado State University. In the exact same 5-yr time frame that Miltenberg has been "rebuilding Stanford", Art has absolutely been rebuilding CSU's program

Absolutely no comparison to CSU's improvement under Art Siemers. Doesn't take a super sophisticated AI algorithm to measure the minuscule improvement when there really is improvement,

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=8543723

not a machine but great recruiting talent and strong results over the past four years. Coaches take time usually to settle in. Now NAU is becoming a machine right now even with a coaching change. Stanford has done well with the men and got Fisher a 5000m title this year. With the women, the results have been very bad relative to the incoming talent. But with the men, you have an NCAA 5000m champ, a 3:53 miler, and promise of a close run at an NCAA xc title next year when you add these guys, Ratcliffe, who healthy should be incredible in his junior year xc, and then the possibility of the stud recruits this year, though they are more 800/mile/3k guys in Principe, McGorty, and another guy, contributing next year.

And now for the Stanford's women machine.

Between 1996 and 2007, the Stanford women captured 5x NCAA XC titles. That is also a machine !!

Under Miltenberg, the Stanford women have gone 3, 11, 14 , 5, 4. They brought Miltenberg to Stanford because he had just coached Georgetown's women to the 2011 XC title. Maybe there was another coach responsible for the success of the Georgetown women in 2011.

Gee whiz. As you say, they've gone 2, 3, 2, 4 over the last 4 years. How can anyone call that disappointing? No other team has been so consistent during the last few years. Not even NAU or Colorado.

Milt doesn’t coach the women’s team.

Literal lies wrote:

Milt doesn’t coach the women’s team.

My mistake, Milt has his hands completely full with the men's team, and just nods as the womens team and coach cross paths with him in the hallway. I'll bet you also believe Bill Belichick hands over all coaching responsibility to his subordinates. Bill is just there to keep the other coaches well fed, happy, and motivated, right?

They have been great the last few years but the comparison to the "machine" squads is unfair. I remember being at the west region (might have been in Portland) and watching the Hall, Robison team running side by side maybe 6-7 of them at the lead at the 8k mark. They ended up crushing the NCAA meet as well. They had maybe 10-12 guys who could have been top 60-70 at the ncaa's. That was a machine. This current squad is very very good but it's hard to compare them to the actual machine.

Bettingfool wrote:

They have been great the last few years but the comparison to the "machine" squads is unfair. I remember being at the west region (might have been in Portland) and watching the Hall, Robison team running side by side maybe 6-7 of them at the lead at the 8k mark. They ended up crushing the NCAA meet as well. They had maybe 10-12 guys who could have been top 60-70 at the ncaa's. That was a machine. This current squad is very very good but it's hard to compare them to the actual machine.

I totally agree...It's not a fair comparison, but someone decided to do exactly that, and I guarantee it wasn't Flotrack alone.

2,3,2,4 is terrible? Wow

The major difference is Dunn was an assistant and while they put money in to distance its not the amount they are putting in now. They are putting in close to double and getting the same result.

Bettingfool wrote:

They have been great the last few years but the comparison to the "machine" squads is unfair. I remember being at the west region (might have been in Portland) and watching the Hall, Robison team running side by side maybe 6-7 of them at the lead at the 8k mark. They ended up crushing the NCAA meet as well. They had maybe 10-12 guys who could have been top 60-70 at the ncaa's. That was a machine. This current squad is very very good but it's hard to compare them to the actual machine.

That was also Vin’s recruits/influence.