UW Crapped the Bed in the Penn 4 x Mile - Villanova wins as top 6 teams all run 16:14

You're talking about UW in Seattle and running in the rain. Unless they ran indoors all winter/spring. This has been a pretty wet and cold spring. Cowardly, is probably the right word. Live and learn I guess. I saw the same thing yesterday in the men's DMR. Oklahoma State should have killed it but the miler let everyone back in the race. BTW, I haven't seen the race yet but looking at the splits that looks like what happened.

This is also that point in the season where people who started speed work too soon, racing too hard, too frequently will start falling off. Those who were more aerobic, started speed work later, and raced less will start rounding into form.

Now we can stop talking about UW and their mile depth. They've choked every time they try to put together a relay.

OK State broke the DMR record and won NCAAs indoors. UW shows up fresh for the 4xmile and lost to Villanova who ran the DMR the previous day. UW 4x8 choked too.

J gault got some nice screenshots.

This guy gets it.

When the anchor leg gets the stick with other teams, he's going to get destroyed if he tries to push the pace for 4 laps. The UW anchor is not so dominant that he can drop the other guys, and if he leads he's going to get blown out on the kick. If he doesn't lead, the kick is no sure thing, but at least he's got a better chance. It's basically the same reason why the 1500m is the most unpredictable race in track: the best guy in the field rarely has >50% chance of winning.

TBH I get pretty tired of the Flotrack announcers going on and on with the dumb idea that teams are stupid not to push the pace. Yeah, most of these runners aren't favored in a kick off a slow pace... but they have LESS chance if they rabbit for everyone else..

Are you sure the 1500m is the most unpredictable race in track? I've long thought that the 800m is less predictable. What method would we use to find the most unpredictable event? I've not the time now to defend a methodology, so I'll leave it to others.

Loved the race; hated the announcing. Who cares that there was no record: what an amazing race! And I highly recommend finding the video (Citius?) of Marcus O’Sullivan taking about the importance of Penn Relays to him and to Villanova.

Having watched the record live, Willis broke it open on the 3rd leg and then Brannen soloed the anchor in 3:59. They won by 100m, maybe more. we haven’t had an anchor with both a significant lead and a shot at the record ….. except for Cheserek if he had pushed the first lap.

Nobody cares about a 4x1600. There's nothing on the line here. Unless there's a pacer nobody cares.

It was like 60 degrees, not very windy, and lightly drizzling at the time of the race. The weather was perfect. If they received that instruction, that’s coaching malpractice

Sure, I get your point. But if we are talking chances, running this as an elimination race would leave a team with UW's depth against 2 or 3 other teams at the end. If you let 8 or 9 teams get into the game, the chance that one of those teams will have a runner who out kicks your anchor is higher and, therefore, your chances of winning are lower.

Thanks for the video! Marcus O'Sullivan is great, it must be wonderful to have him a coach.

The record is definitely underrated, but UW has four guys who averaged 3:52 in the same race this indoor. They should be able to average 3:57 completely alone, if not better. Usually 5 seconds is a very fair conversion to running a race alone. Some people are capable of even better than that. The fact that not a single one of their legs showed anything like that is quite frankly a disgrace.

Video is up. Absolutely terrible call by flotrack. The obsession with time was over the top. I get it, you wanted sub-16, but you don’t need to spend the entire last leg talking smack about it.

Regardless of all of the flopping commentary here the race was lost on a very common flaw. Martin ran a brilliant Second leg for UVA, it doesn’t take a genius to say go to the back even if you hold the position after the final exchange. UVA dictated the outcome of the race. Had the closing runner abandoned position and not had to fight or even had tried to extend would have likely led to better outcomes with that bunch packing. Vin should stick to securing contracts, not tactics.

Great race/kick/finish!

Also nice interview with O'Sullivan, some great coaching insights there.

I honestly don't think Luke Houser is as reliable as Fay, Lumb, Waksom, Ellis or even Green, but he won that one race.
Waksom has been consistently hitting great times and great race results for the last year. Ellis went 3:56 or 3:57 yesterday and ran a 2:18 over the winter in the 1000 when he was unattached.

As for whether UW is a choker, certainly not. They came within half a second of the world record, went 1-4-5-8 in indoor track, and had Ellis, Waksom, Fay, Lumb, Green, and Ellis run 3:56 or under twice in the winter with Ahl and Aidan Ryan joining them the second time.
Yes, they're DMR drop from 2nd to 4th was pretty disappointing, but give it up for Anthony Camiemeri, he's the real deal.

This weekend was a letdown for everyone not just Wisconsin

Yes, the weather this weekend was harsh and most were just willingly going along as easy as possible.

I don't know. I'm not the expert, but the difference between Villanova and Washington is that Washington had all 4 of their guys in the 3:53 range (provided they were still in the same shape as a couple months ago) Villanova only had one 3:55 and one 3:56. So in the legs where Washington didn't come close to the PR, it's pretty disappointing.

I don't believe any of these teams had that depth on all 4 legs. I think they picked one result (NCAA Indoor champs) and bet it on Luke Houser. Joe Waksom and Sam Ellis can at least lay claim to being the best kickers and the best milers if not the top 5. I'd rank Bastien or Drake, Essayi of South Carolina, the Wake Forest guy up there, and maybe Adam Spencer, but Waksom and Ellis should have had the certainty that no one could get to them no matter how they ran. That was Mario Garcia Rono last year who won NCAA Indoors, Penn Relays DMR, 2nd in the NCAA Indoor DMR behind only Cooper Tear and Penn Relays 4 X Mile, with a 2nd in NCAAs only because he was boxed in.