If anyone saw the Great Lakes finish, it looks like the Purdue kid celebrating too early and getting pipped by Zegarski is going to keep MSU out. Unbelievable.
Hunter Jones needs to clutch up. If they slip to 4th, Wake Forest will be near the bottom of the qualifiers list. Especially if Furman is the one to pass them for 3rd
what are they doing at Wake???? Hunter Jones is an insane talent and here is a second season of running terrible. Transfer U!!!!!!!
Do you not understand how this system works? Navy has no points under the qualification system and therefore does not go. There isn't a selection committee. These rules are not new. Navy should have been at the big mid-season invites earning points if they wanted a chance at an at large bid.
Honestly considering Navy got literally 0 votes the entire season on the rankings (genuinely surprised there) and had 0 points for nationals tie breaking, them being literally 1 place away from making it to nationals is crazy.
Best meets to pick up points were Griak (not a lot of teams went this year) and Paul Short. Navy's best wins were Colorado State (who underperformed in the Mountain Region) and Cornell who's on the outside looking in with no points too.
Navy was close to Wyoming at Griak and got beat easily by Harvard without Blanks and Utah State #4 Mountain. Looks like things broke just about right.
Michigan State lost an auto spot by tiebreaker, which is heartbreaking. But their best win was Tulsa at Pre-Nats, but the points from Tulsa don't help when they are the last team in. They had lots of opportunities to pick up points and didn't but today might have been their best race of the season.
If you believe Gtown deserved to get in, then Navy got boned. They probably have a much smaller budget than the P4s and thus ran Paul Short instead of Wisco/their home invite instead of Pre-Nats. Paul Short and Griak were their only real chances to get Kolas points. Maybe they could have done Wisco instead of Griak, but also maybe their coach didn't realize how close they might come to qualifying. Either way, the system shouldn't penalize a team that surprises themselves. Or, relatedly, the system shouldn't penalize a team that peaks perfectly (i.e. Mich St) because some other teams (i.e. Iona) traveled a ton and placed okay at big invites
Just missing doesn't mean deserving. Cornell wasn't close to beating a qualify all year. Today's race was Cornell's best of the year and Iona was the best team Cornell beat all year. They finished behind Navy at Paul Short, well back of anyone close to qualifying at Princeton.
The selection process usually gets it pretty close to right, a top 10 team rarely has an off day bad enough to miss qualifying and the push in rule works well for teams that didn't rack up many points but beat potential top 10-15 teams at regionals. Could Cornell not finish last at Nationals, maybe, but it is highly unlikely they would crack the top 25, so the system worked. It stinks for all the guys that just missed their only shot at a National meet, but that really shouldn't diminish the great race everyone had today.
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