Official NCAA 800 Meter Semi/Finals Thread

Mountain Men wrote:

You saw this guy's beard, right? And are questioning physical maturity?

You are referring to his 2011 beard right? Which, IMHO, is the greatest beard ever featured in an any track event at any level. 10/10 for sure on the 2011 beard. The current one he displays, on the other hand, is clearly inferior in all respects and a long ways away from his PR, CR, AR and WR a year ago.

OK. so here is the performance list based on regional results:

http://rtspt.com/ncaa/d1outdoor12/final_m.htm

Loxsom is a 5 seed, Martin is a 9 seed and Jock is an 11 seed.

The two guys that ran 1:44 this year are 9 and 11 seeds based on times run at regionals.

But West and Sowinski, the official 1 and 2 seeds, were both placed in the same heat (heat 3).

http://rtspt.com/ncaa/d1outdoor12/start_men.htm

So even if they seeded them on regional performances it looks like they over stacked heat 3.

The heats seem to be pretty random.

I suppose I should have stated physical "muscular" maturity so as to not confuse folks. I have observed both Jock and Greer's superior "muscular" maturity in the past...something that becomes painfully clealr (for Martin fans) as competitions go into rounds. Both Jock and Greer seem to get stronger, whereas Martin begins to lose his edge. Last year's NCAA finals was a perfect example of this. The only reservation that I have this year is that I am not sure Greer is yet at 100%, after his early season injury. But, all things being equal, Greer is in my opinion the superior to Marting and Jock is superior to both of them in a championship competition with rounds.

[quote]toro wrote:

The heats seem to be pretty random.

What about heat 1? How about the fact that the 2 fastest times in the country @ 800 meters (Jock 1:44.75; Martin 1:44.77) "randomly" ended up in not only the prelims @ Drake together, but also @ regionals in Texas? Total BS. If they want to forget about all the other runners as they obvioulsy did, shouldn't the NCAA at least make sure that the 2 best 1/2 milers in the country are in separate heats all the way up to the final? Ignorance and stupidity = NCAA.

West was #1 seed and Sowinski was #4 seed because even though they had the fastest two times Erik was 2nd in his heat and West won their heat. Which means #1,4,7,10, etc are the entries into the final heat for Nationals.

It was seeded correctly as to how the NCAA seeds advancement in the Championships.

You take your heat winners and serpintine them. So your fastest heat winner goes with the slowest heat winner. They second fastest heat winner goes with the 5th fastest heat winner. The third fastest heat winner goes with the fourth fastest heat winner.

You then serpintine the second placers in each heat,then the third placers, then the time qualifiers for each round

Based on this the heats were done correctly.

However, what this promotes is people advancing through the rounds together, which doesn't make sense. The Fastest heat winner gets paired with the fastest second placer and the fastest third placer. In the heats people usually finish right with one another so these usually end up being the same people. Once Jock and Martin got serpintined into the same heat after the first round - they then finished right with one another in the second round which put them together again in the third round. If a heat goes fast, then that heat usually produces the fastest heat winner, fastest second placer and fastest third placer so they get serpintined together into the next round. Same thing if a heat goes slow.

It would seem to be a better system to reseed on seasonal bests after the two first round meets. Because they are two different meets held at two different locations under two different conditions, you should not seed based on peformances that are not run under the same conditions. If one place has great weather and the other place doesnt, then that will affect the times and hence affect the seeding and how things are serpintined.

It is a shame that the heats were so unbalanced. While the Jock, Martin, Loxsom heat had the top three people in the NCAA, they could have run faster and gotten all three through. They didn't and Loxsom had to wait and see what happened. The second heat was a joke with only one person having any type of NCAA level credentials in Evans. The really stacked heat was the third heat - but they did the job and ran fast and got the maximum people through.

has been who never was wrote:

[quote]toro wrote:

The heats seem to be pretty random.

What about heat 1? How about the fact that the 2 fastest times in the country @ 800 meters (Jock 1:44.75; Martin 1:44.77) "randomly" ended up in not only the prelims @ Drake together, but also @ regionals in Texas? Total BS. If they want to forget about all the other runners as they obvioulsy did, shouldn't the NCAA at least make sure that the 2 best 1/2 milers in the country are in separate heats all the way up to the final? Ignorance and stupidity = NCAA.

Touching on ignorance and stupidity, are you aware that every year before the beginning of the season the NCAA confirms the D1 Track & Field Handbook for the upcoming season?

Seeding is proscribed in detail, and made available for everyone to understand and base their plans upon.

* In brief, 6 regional heat results (3 from West and 3 from East) get compressed into 3 heats (Championship prelims) using a ABCCBA pattern. A starting as winner of fastest heat, B starting as winner of second fastest heat, and C starting as winner of third fastest heat.

* Continuing on: H1-1 (Champion prelim Heat 1 seed 1) is Fastest heat (of regional 6) #1, H2-1 is 2nd fastest regional heat #1, H3-1 is 3rd fastest heat #1, H3-2 is 4th fastest #1, H2-2 is 5th fastest #1, H1-2 is 6th fastest #1

* In brief, this results in the winner of the fastest heat being seeded with the winner of the slowest heat, as well as being seeded with the slowest time qualifier.

* The fastest heat winner was Ricky West from West Regional. The slowest heat winner was Elijah Greer from West regional. That's why all those West regional guys got put together into the same prelim heat for Championships.

What might be stupid is having Regionals at all! But to eliminate Regionals is to agree with Lananna and Henry and , so the argument goes, give an "unfair" advantage to the big boys who can send their athletes to fast venues for time trials earlier in the season. So we have Regionals, seeding is based on Regionals, not earlier time trials. Only ignorance and stupidity would argue you can have it both ways.

As has been said better earlier, Loxom is lucky he wasn't seeded in heat 3, where on paper he would have been 7th. The brojo's have it wrong--it's unfair to Greer, Kemboi and Sowinksi to have to fight so hard to ward off so many 1:46 runners, and then have to run the so hard again on Friday. Like I said, what fantasy world believes you can have it both ways at the same time?

All in all in winds up being pretty random as people are just trying to make it through regionals to get to NCAAs.

I do get the process, but it doesn't work out well.

Running for seeding is not the objective, making it through is.

Greer and Loxsom could easily have swapped heats with the slightest of changes in how they ran their regional race.

If that happened, I am sure that Loxsom would have made it through and Greer would not. They both placed third in their heats and I am sure they would have placed third in each other's heats if they swapped. Even if Loxsom placed 4th in the last heat he would have made it through.

In the road to the finals, luck has almost as much to do with it as how you perform.

I just think they should seed on seasonal best times where they have all year to lay out one fast time rather than regional placings where tactics and conditions do not present a reasonable order of seeding.

Put the top three in three different heats.

I don't know of a single event or sport which seeds on a season's best time when there have already been rounds run in that event. Is there any precedent for that at all? I can see how seeding on entry time (or season best) makes sense for the First Round.

Anyway, Loxsom didn't run fast enough. That's really the end of it. He had his chance and he (once again) ran fast early in the season and failed to even make the finals at nationals. It's a bit of a trend for him.

Uhhhh Loxsom ran 1:46.12 at the Big Ten Meet in the middle of May. Is that really running fast early in the season?

Mr. Not so Obvious wrote:

Uhhhh Loxsom ran 1:46.12 at the Big Ten Meet in the middle of May. Is that really running fast early in the season?

It's earlier than Championship season, which is what is really important. He is the Daniel K Komen of the NCAA.

Mr. Obvious wrote:

He had his chance and he (once again) ran fast early in the season and failed to even make the finals at nationals. It's a bit of a trend for him.

Please do share your collegiate credentials with all of the rest of the Let's pretend we were Runners idiots.

How many All-American honors, Penn Relays watches, National Junior Championships and World Juniors silver medal do you have to your credit?

Oh that's right, ZERO.....

Trolls like you and your ignorant buds on here make me want to vomit.

Mr. Obvious wrote:

I don't know of a single event or sport which seeds on a season's best time when there have already been rounds run in that event.

But the rounds were at different events in different parts of the country if you are going to compare it to any other track event.

And the NHL and NFL reseed based on regular season records after each round.

While, the NBA and NCAA bastetball set the seeds at the beginning and stick with them throughout.

Mr. Oblivious wrote:

Mr. Obvious wrote:

He had his chance and he (once again) ran fast early in the season and failed to even make the finals at nationals. It's a bit of a trend for him.

Please do share your collegiate credentials with all of the rest of the Let's pretend we were Runners idiots.

How many All-American honors, Penn Relays watches, National Junior Championships and World Juniors silver medal do you have to your credit?

Oh that's right, ZERO.....

Trolls like you and your ignorant buds on here make me want to vomit.

Did I say something that was incorrect about Mr. Loxsom's record?

Very good call about ellison. Looks like he has a very good shot at getting 4th. I'm curious to see how well he moves on the back stretch after going out in probably 50.mid due to Jock taking it out hard. If you ride the Charles Jock train tomorrow through 650m and hold form the last 150 all these guys in the final are bound to PR.

There is indeed a precedent, that's how they seed the rounds at USA's and Olympic trials....mostly to avoid potentially matching up the studs in the semi finals and having a weak heat like there was in heat two at NCAA's.

If you want to look at Loxsom's championship history in June and then into the summer, the only two major finals he has missed are NCAA 09 as a freshman and this years final.

He won jr nats, has reached the final in each international meet he has run for usa in the summer and made last years ncaa and usa finals, and he always runs his best in june/july/august and even though he missed this one I don't see any reason he won't continue that trend at Olympic Trials.

It's almost as if Mr. Obvious is a Penn State Hater? Gosh, I have no idea who that might be... Even his ex-Coach has abandoned him and only pretends to go along with his rants to get rid of him while celebrating with all of his ex-friends. The entire story will eventually be told. Cas Loxsom has a big up-side even without his track exploits. Something Mr. Obvious can never claim.

Go for a PR at USATF Olympic Trials, Cas.

I'm sorry to all of the idiots who don't think Cas got screwed by the heat assigments; clearly you have all always sucked and never actually ran in championship races. Place is all that matters, all that will ever matter, and all that has ever mattered. A good championship format shouldn't have any little q's; if you need to have anything other than Q's, you have too many people in the event and need to limit the field size.