I thought we had seen it all, but did Portland just tank their conference meet?

Jonathon, what was your experience like running conference, regionals and nationals in consecutive weeks. Did you run well at NCAAs? How did Wejo and Rojo do running hard 8k/10k XC races 3 weeks in a row? Were any of you NCAA All Americans?

PortlandXCgirl wrote:

BYU had a 6 second spread today.

That's an indication that they were cruising it like a hard tempo run.

I'm calling BS on Connor saying he doesn't care about the conference XC meet. I ran in the WCC and the Pilots always came ready to play. They have pretty much never rested anyone before, aside from Willy Kincaid in 2014.

Also, see this interview from after WCC in 2012, when Portland beat BYU by 1 point for the win a year after BYU ended their streak. Connor sure seems excited about the win back then!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUQ0AIgCMwA

Frankly, I think he just knew UP couldn't win this year. BYU is too good, and they gave up. It is shameful, but I think it is true.

nationals > conference wrote:

Jonathon, what was your experience like running conference, regionals and nationals in consecutive weeks. Did you run well at NCAAs? How did Wejo and Rojo do running hard 8k/10k XC races 3 weeks in a row? Were any of you NCAA All Americans?

What's your point? None of us ever did. But every single kid in the NCAA does it. 34 of the last 35 NCAA team winners have come from a Power 5 conference (NAU is the only one not from a Power 5).

3 races in the span of 22 days? Geb ran the following 5 races in the span of 23 days in 1997.

Aug 3 27:55

Aug 6 27:25

Aug13 12:41

Aug 22 7:26

Aug 26 12:55

I'll bet my life that BYU wipes the floor of Portland at NCAAs. But that shouldn't happen under your theory as BYU should be too tired.

If Portland wanted to take it easy, they could chill at regionals.

Where is Ryan Grote. Someone get him on the board to chime in. I'd love to hear his thoughts. He's probably having a bad day though- Stanfurd won and now this.

rojo wrote:What's your point? None of us ever did. But every single kid in the NCAA does it. 34 of the last 35 NCAA team winners have come from a Power 5 conference (NAU is the only one not from a Power 5).

3 races in the span of 22 days? Geb ran the following 5 races in the span of 23 days in 1997.

Aug 3 27:55

Aug 6 27:25

Aug13 12:41

Aug 22 7:26

Aug 26 12:55

I'll bet my life that BYU wipes the floor of Portland at NCAAs. But that shouldn't happen under your theory as BYU should be too tired.

If Portland wanted to take it easy, they could chill at regionals.

That's funny, comparing one of the greatest distance runners of all time to college kids 18-22 yrs old (unless you're from BYU). Students also have classes to attend and exams to take.

Seriously, if you have not experienced running conference, regionals and NCAAs in 22 days then you don't have a clue.

Jonathan Gault wrote:

nationals > conference wrote:

3 hard races in 3 weeks (conference, regionals, nationals) is why Rob Conner and UP did this.

The Pilots have a chance to place high at NCAAs, why f*** it up "going to the well" at a conference meet that doesn't mean much.

The only teams that should focus on conference are teams not going to nationals.

Your point is tautological. Conference doesn't mean much because Portland has decided that it doesn't mean much by not racing their strongest team.

Why does a race matter? Because athletes and coaches decide it matters. If UP took conference seriously, it would mean a lot more. And with two great programs in the WCC in UP and BYU, there would be the chance for a terrific rivalry to blossom.

This is not a tautology. In any metric that matters, the National meet is more important than the Conference meet. The Regional meet is a qualifier for the National meet. Therefore, between the Conference, Regional, and National meets, the Conference meet 'matters' the least.

The original claim (i.e. 'the conference meet ... doesn't mean much) would only be a tautology if the statement was provably true under any (rational) analysis.

If you're basically guaranteed 2nd, then who cares? Why not rest a few guys and still take that second place slot. This would be like crapping on the Warriors for resting someone in first round of the playoffs when they know they can cruise through anyway. It's being smart.

Let's be serious, NCAA cross country has essentially been slimmed down to 4 weekends: Wisco/Pre-Nats, conference, regionals, and nationals. Even then, top teams may sit out some top guys or dog it. If teams start dogging conference meets, we basically only have two good races a year: Wisco/Pre-Nats and Nationals, as many of the best teams just tempo Regionals (which I would do, too, with the short duration between Regionals and Nationals).

The point of training and running is to race. NCAA XC barely has any races anymore. When they do race, many of the best reams decline to actually race. I understand that nobody cares about what happened at the 2013 Dellinger Invite, but it would be nice to see a little more racing, because ya know that's the point of running, and less "we're just running through everything until Nationals."

compressed wrote:

Jonathan Gault wrote:

Your point is tautological. Conference doesn't mean much because Portland has decided that it doesn't mean much by not racing their strongest team.

Why does a race matter? Because athletes and coaches decide it matters. If UP took conference seriously, it would mean a lot more. And with two great programs in the WCC in UP and BYU, there would be the chance for a terrific rivalry to blossom.

This is not a tautology. In any metric that matters, the National meet is more important than the Conference meet. The Regional meet is a qualifier for the National meet. Therefore, between the Conference, Regional, and National meets, the Conference meet 'matters' the least.

The original claim (i.e. 'the conference meet ... doesn't mean much) would only be a tautology if the statement was provably true under any (rational) analysis.

I'm not arguing conference is more important than NCAAs. He said "conference doesn't matter much." My point is that it doesn't have to be that way. WCCs will never be more important than NCAAs. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have to matter at all.

Perhaps the phrase I should have used is "self-fulfilling prophecy." Did UP choose not to send its best team because conference is unimportant? Or is conference unimportant because UP chose not to send its best team. I'd argue the latter.

rojo wrote:

nationals > conference wrote:

Jonathon, what was your experience like running conference, regionals and nationals in consecutive weeks. Did you run well at NCAAs? How did Wejo and Rojo do running hard 8k/10k XC races 3 weeks in a row? Were any of you NCAA All Americans?

I'll bet my life that BYU wipes the floor of Portland at NCAAs. But that shouldn't happen under your theory as BYU should be too tired.

If Portland wanted to take it easy, they could chill at regionals.

Do you have life insurance? If so, please add me as a beneficiary.

Jonathan Gault wrote:

Perhaps the phrase I should have used is "self-fulfilling prophecy." Did UP choose not to send its best team because conference is unimportant? Or is conference unimportant because UP chose not to send its best team. I'd argue the latter.

I hear you - absolutely. By tanking it, UP took away some of the legitimacy of the meet.

The only way to truly fix this would be to make conference important. It's rare to see sandbagging in e.g. college football because 'every game a playoff,' where otherwise great one-loss teams miss the major bowl games.

Jonathan Gault wrote: Did UP choose not to send its best team because conference is unimportant? Or is conference unimportant because UP chose not to send its best team. I'd argue the latter.

None of the above. UP wants to maximize their performance at NCAAs.

The Pilots have won how many conference titles over the years, 30? I'm sure they'd rather collect a team trophy from NCAAs.

I think that for any team in a p5 conference a conference championship is a really big deal. As someone said earlier, importance is placed on conference championships by the athlecic department. Jobs and money can be on the line. Portland’s situation is very different for all the reasons stated by others.

spokane xc wrote:

This is the important element. Connor has almost always used the conference meet as a chance to let the JV guys get some shine, and maybe figure out the back end of his lineup for Regionals/NCAAs. So, not only has it never been a priority or that important of a race for him, he has trained his top guys through the meet and developed a plan over the decades that doesnt involve WCCs and emphasizes Regionals. He is also a pretty particular guy, who has developed a successful program under unique circumstances. To expect him to start caring about a conference meet now, and altering his well-proven approach, just because BYU joined for purposes of boosting the conference's basketball profile, is unrealistic.

Thanks for posting this.

While it is semantically correct to define the period between Conference weekend and the National Championships as a three week period, this deemphasizes the equally important truth that there is a gap week between Conference Championships and Regional Championships.

I find it much more accurate to evaluate the Championship period of the season as three races in four weeks. Since the Regional Championship is not a meet requiring the entire top 7 roster for a team with a significant number of Kolas points, this functionally results in two races in four weeks.

Any team that has picked up enough Kolas points to sleepwalk through the Regional Championship race can run a hard 5 mile tempo (or even 95% effort race) and still adequately recover for their next race, which happens to be at least two weeks later. This is if they even make up the squad at Regionals.

A Conference Champion trumps a Regional Champion any day.

By the way, Jeff Thies and Nick Hauger still went to the well.

Portland takes second in conference with its B team. Maybe coach thought it was going to be second on a good day so why not rest a couple guys and run the rest. Give some opportunity to the rest of the squad. They still took second.

We've seen plenty of conference battles that turn into Natty busts. Now we wait.

So I was at the meet, And spoke with RC repeatedly. Portland is fine. There re reasons for everything - even if you don't understand them or aren't in the loop on them. The bashing about this is ridiculous - yes , you too Wejo!

#1 ranked in DII Adams State did this at conference last week getting absolutely smoked by Colorado School of Mines at the RMAC Championships.