Will NAU be historically great and three peat? Or might they not even win the 2018 NCAA xc title?

Brojo appreciation wrote:

I see a lot of hate on these boards for the brojos so I just want to say that I loved reading these write ups, especially the men’s 1 & 2 predictions. Really fun to see the history of Henry Rono’s run and the 2003 stanford run brought up to enrich the conversation of these two incredible teams. Looking forward to the season, and hopefully we can see some exciting stuff in November

Mike Smith=Mr. Miyagi?

(Front page LR quote)

rojo wrote:

I only wish there weren't coaches that blew off Gault's interview requests. I get that he doesn't have every coaches cell phones and some don't answer their office lines (one coach was fantastic this year but had never talked to him in year's past for that reaason) but if I was a recruit, I"d honestly be wary of going to a coach who is such a control freak they can't talk to the press about their team.

It has nothing to do with coaches being "control freaks", rojo.

Tax payer with no say wrote:

Tax payer with no say wrote:

The generosity of the United States tax payer is amazing.

I'm just a whiner. Sorry.

And a moron.

There are no flukes in xc. There are injuries and there are those who quit or stop working or transfer. Some guys aren't as good track runners as xc runners and sometimes there are the aforementioned problems in track season. Peter Lomong doesn't have to be that good again but what you do need to see is that NCAA xc is very close for #10-80, roughly, so that you can have a slightly worse day or just get behind the wrong people at the start and your place shift by ten, twenty, thirty, or more from year to year. Last year, Knight won in 29 flat, 30:01 was 40th, and 30:30 was 80th. 31:00 was 136th place, so there were 40 guys in the first minute Knight finished, 40 guys in the thirty seconds between 30 and 30:30, and 56 guys in the thirty seconds between 30:30 and 31:00. That's 96 guys in the second minute behind the winner. So now you should understand why teams move up and down a lot from year to year without accounting for different talent levels.

Northern Arizona averaged 29:32. That is very fast. Their gap was 60 seconds from 1-5, with three runners in the top 8. Portland was second with a 29:55 average and just a 35 second gap, which is outstanding. Stanford was 4th with a 1:48 gap but a 30:02 average, reflecting three runners in the top 15 but then 69/118.

Stanford can do very well with Fisher, Ratcliffe, Fahy, and Ostberg, but they really need another guy to really step up.

Ratcliffe needs to be a low stick and give this team four guys in the top fifteen and two in the ten. He was a 23 low guy his first time out in college xc after no hs xc, so if he can come back at full strength, this team will be dangerous, but no one is touching Northern Arizona.

Colorado was not quite as good as this NAU team, but I feel like we were saying similar things about them before nationals in 2015 when they were on the verge of a 3-peat, and then we were all shocked when Syracuse did what they did (still has to be the most epic Cross-Country race I have ever watched).

On that day, Colorado ran very well (I mean, 5 All-Americans? (only 2 spots away from 6) AND they put 5 guys ahead of Syracuse's #4 runner? AND 6 guys ahead of their #5? That's excellent.)

But, Syracuse ran out of their freaking minds.

I actually remember it being tied with maybe 1K to go (whatever the last split is right behind the finish) at I think ~100 points, and we thought Colorado probably had it with how well they close. And they did close! They moved up 9 points. But, Syracuse moved up more.

That was an insane day.

~

All that to say: Anything can happen. Everybody thought for sure that Colorado had it in the bag that day, especially if they ran well. And Colorado did run well, but they still got beat.

There is a reason nobody has won 3 titles in a row in a very long time. That Colorado team was great. There was an OKST team not long before that, and they were great. A few more before that.

It ain't easy.

The title to this post is absolutely retarded.

"Will NAU be historically great and three peat? Or might they not even win the 2018 NCAA xc title?"

Will they win??? Or might they not even win???

So what are your thoughts after Wisconsin? I think NAU is still the heavy favorite after scoring lower points than what they scored last year without their number 1 guy.

Nyambui was seventh? Perhaps an off day. But what a quality race this was. I remember watching Nyambui, Rono and Rose race to the utmost in a 2 mile in the 1978 Sunkist games, finishing in a 4:03 mile on a mediocre board track. Yikes the talent level was high back then.

whateven wrote:

The title to this post is absolutely retarded.

"Will NAU be historically great and three peat? Or might they not even win the 2018 NCAA xc title?"

Will they win??? Or might they not even win???

To be fair, compared to most of rojo’s message board writing, this is Pulitzer Prize material.