Cruz Culpepper -- 3:59.53 Full Mile for Opener

birdbeard wrote:

I don't think Andy Powell is a very good coach, but Cruz started seriously running near the tail end of his sophomore year of HS from what I've heard from alumni of my HS where he ran, and just kind of messed around before that with other sports. He has a ton of room for improvement. I'd be surprised if he didn't someday run in the low 3:50s if he ends up running after college, and he could well be an all-timer, but I do hesitate to speculate about how much he'll improve too much in college given that I don't trust Powell's program much.

That said, he trained with Bosshard in Colorado last year, so hopefully Cruz is smart enough to know what he needs.

What data or evidence can you provide for Powell not being a good coach? He was the guiding hand for UO's dominant distance program for most of their last 15yrs - the numbers don't lie. He's improved UW from the get-go and I can only assume they'll continue to rise.

I think Cruz is great and has incredible potential, but dismissing Powell while qualifying Cruz's future potential from anecdotal, "local legend" stories of him as a 15y/o seems slightly juvenile.

Westlake Tavern Pizza wrote:

What data or evidence can you provide for Powell not being a good coach? He was the guiding hand for UO's dominant distance program for most of their last 15yrs - the numbers don't lie. He's improved UW from the get-go and I can only assume they'll continue to rise.

I think Cruz is great and has incredible potential, but dismissing Powell while qualifying Cruz's future potential from anecdotal, "local legend" stories of him as a 15y/o seems slightly juvenile.

Certainly entitled to your own opinion. I've seen Powell recruit spectacular talent. Not sure I've seen him develop it all that well. I hope he proves me wrong, because I really like Cruz, Leo, and some of the other kids he has recruited. I think Nathan Green is also committed?

I don't know what's juvenile about noting that Cruz didn't run consistently before his sophomore track season. Just a truth. I would expect anyone starting a bit later to have a bit more room to improve.

Here are dates for Oregon's sub-4 milers since 1987:

1987x2, 2000, 2006, 2008x2, 2009x3, 2010, 2013x4, 2014, 2015x2, 2016x2, 2017, 2018x2, 2019, 2020

Powell was at Oregon from 2005 to June 2018. During that time, Oregon had 19 sub-4 milers.

In the previous 18 years, Oregon had 1 sub-4 miler (maybe the shift to the mile indoors had something to do with the drought, as I'm not looking at 1500m converted.).

Powell also had 11/12 years of having an NCAA 1500m finalist and 18 total NCAA 1500m finalists over that time span.

Oregon had 4 NCAA xc championships and 15 NCAA team track titles with Powell there, 11 of those track titles being of the more distance heavy indoor type.

So, needless to say, Powell was tremendous at Oregon.

As far as fastest married couples, would Laura & Jake Wightman make this list?

And are there really no Kenyan couples on the list?

doggggg.... he aint scared of nobody wrote:

As far as fastest married couples, would Laura & Jake Wightman make this list?

And are there really no Kenyan couples on the list?

There are Kenyan couples on the list. Laura Weightman is unrelated to Jake Wightman.

doggggg.... he aint scared of nobody wrote:

As far as fastest married couples, would Laura & Jake Wightman make this list?

And are there really no Kenyan couples on the list?

It looks like it is only the mile (not the 1500) so maybe that would explain why no Kenyans? I noticed the Gouchers didn't make the list.

I think both Powell's are excellent coaches - just look at the talent that chose to go the the University of Washington. Always a sign of excellent coaches....... Tanner, Daschbach, Rainsberger, O'Sullivan, Smart, Schaedler,

etc.

*Schadler

3:37-8 outdoors

xczvzxcv wrote:

Here are dates for Oregon's sub-4 milers since 1987:

1987x2, 2000, 2006, 2008x2, 2009x3, 2010, 2013x4, 2014, 2015x2, 2016x2, 2017, 2018x2, 2019, 2020

Powell was at Oregon from 2005 to June 2018. During that time, Oregon had 19 sub-4 milers.

In the previous 18 years, Oregon had 1 sub-4 miler (maybe the shift to the mile indoors had something to do with the drought, as I'm not looking at 1500m converted.).

Powell also had 11/12 years of having an NCAA 1500m finalist and 18 total NCAA 1500m finalists over that time span.

Oregon had 4 NCAA xc championships and 15 NCAA team track titles with Powell there, 11 of those track titles being of the more distance heavy indoor type.

So, needless to say, Powell was tremendous at Oregon.

Powell was indeed a tremendous recruiter.

The old saw, but it's true, is that coaches like Wetmore can find diamonds in the rough, develop them into top guys in the NCAA, and still leave them with room to grow post-collegiately. The last decade and Oregon and to be fair most of the Lannana era Stanford guys tended to top out junior or senior year and didn't get too much better.

Wheating's best year was his senior year of college then sort of rode his incredible talent onto a couple more teams running well below his best.

Centrowitz was always doing his own thing. Rupp, obviously, falls into this camp as well and should not be attributed to Powell.

Acosta had a great junior year then imploded.

Puskedra's best year was maybe soph / jr year then was incredibly erratic.

Fleet was hurt most of college, had about 1.5 great track seasons then fell apart.

Prakel made NCAA final as a freshman then sort of hung around that level. Is still hanging around.

Daniel Winn would be the one example of someone who sucked in HS, got a lot better, and continued getting better for a few years after college.

Alexander floundered most of college until his senior year then did better post-collegiately away from that system.

Dunbar - never really that special.

Blew it with Chad Hall but to be fair he's a Hall so a total flake.

Greer - enormous talent but fell off the face of the earth.

Remember when Verzbicas went to Oregon, briefly?

Noelle - managed to get nothing out of a guy who later was NCAA record holder and NCAA champ.

Cheserek - didn't screw him up, but he didn't get much better either

Jenkins got better and is still getting better

Tanner Anderson was workmanlike

Maton did nothing

Stanovsek got better

Tamagno has regressed

Who did I miss?

Really, when you think about it, there has been such an enormous amount of talent that has passed through Eugene. Much of it has done nothing. And so many ringer grad transfers. Any success Powell had there was just putting the numbers through the meat grinder.

Every single time I come to this message board I get stupiderer reading these hot takes. To say Andy's results are anything but spectacular is wrong. Just because you recruit a talented high school runner who ran 4:01 or whatever doesn't mean they are going to run 3:52 in the mile and everything else is failure. These recruits are really good coming in therefore they are closer to their potential. Diamond in the roughs are easy to develop because they had crap coaching yet talent and drive to still post results. Then a little structure really lets them shine. It is much harder when athletes show up seasoned, have had good coaching, advice, and olympian parents for mentors.

free shipping with purchases wrote:

Powell was indeed a tremendous recruiter.

[...]

Really, when you think about it, there has been such an enormous amount of talent that has passed through Eugene. Much of it has done nothing. And so many ringer grad transfers. Any success Powell had there was just putting the numbers through the meat grinder.

I don't doubt that Powell's upside as a recruiter outweigh his upsides for coaching acumen, but the results and team successes don't lie - even if you try to dice them up and attribute the successes elsewhere.

You're breakdown of the 2010-2020 Duck stars was good and holds truth. But let's expand your hot take further - how many other top-10 programs that fill their stables with 4:05/8:50/ FLXC type talent, year after year, are having consistent, upward four year growth for their individuals? My following of the sport for 20yrs informs me that most programs have similar outcomes with the blue chip recruits and inconsistency is to be expected with balance of talent and expectations. Further, I would argue that the performance effects from distractions, injuries, inconsistencies and the coming-of-age realities for an NCAA athlete make it hard to blame a coach for all of his studs not ending up Rupp/Centro/Wheating world beaters.

And, ultimately: do the ups and downs of an individual's career (judged in hindsight) disqualify a coach/program from having been successful? UO had tremendous team success during Powell's time - I think that, combined with many individual high points, is what it really boils down to. If you compare Powell's time at UO to Metcalf's career at UW: Metcalf had incredible talent coming in and very little show for it, both individually and at a team level. Brown, Yorks and Gilbert would be the high water marks, but if you threw them into the Duck's pool over the last 15 years, they would be mid-lower end of the list.