The Official D3 XC Thread 2012

can you do the same for the women?

It's pretty easy to do. If you care about the women's race, I suggest you go ahead and do it yourself.

Did you do this last year? It would be interesting to know if it was a good indicator for what happened this year.

Yeah, of course Calvin could totally reload and finish on the podium, but the point of this exercise is to show what kind of position people are starting from one year from Nationals. And Calvin, well, they are starting from a weaker position--much weaker than their usual rivals North Central and Haverford.

It's rare that a team, even teams with the great coaching and depth like North Central, Haverford, and Calvin, to get to the podium after graduating 6 of 7 varsity runners. It's been done before, sure, but not for a while, so Calvin has a longer road ahead of them.

Where would I expect Calvin to finish? I don't know. 8th? 10th? As for North Central and Haverford? They'll be contenders. And maybe a few of Wash U, Central, LAX, and St. Olaf will be in position to take a shot at the crown also.

LAX should be strong next year...they only lose their #1 and replace him with David Stilin who sat out this year but was 3rd indoors in the 5k in 2011 (14:29), so with their 2-7 all returning and throwing him in, they should have a pretty strong team.

Did you do this last year? It would be interesting to know if it was a good indicator for what happened this year.

I didn't. And I think it would be a pain now because the results from last year are in a PDF with boxes and it would be hard to get the data in a spreadsheet.

Still, just glancing at the results from last year, you see:

North Central returned 6 of 7 from last year's winning team. They won again.

Haverford returned 4 of 7 including top 2 from 2nd place team.

Wash U returned 4, but lost 3 of top 4. Fell from 3rd to 5th.

Geneseo lost 5 of top 7 including top 3 and fell from 4th to 18th.

Calvin finished 11th last year but returned top 6 guys and moved up to 2nd.

Lacrosse returned everyone from last year's 14th place team and moved up to 4th.

Is it perfect? No, of course not. Cortland, for instance finished 20th last year with no seniors. They finished 24th. And who knows what happened at Oshkosh. But I think we can generally say that teams that return most of their top 7 tend to improve and those that graduate a lot, tend to decline. Which is pretty much like duh.

What teams return a lot and could sneak up on people? Central and St. Olaf.

What teams lose a lot of seniors and are likely to decline, at least a little bit? Calvin and Geneseo.

embarrassing race from the atlantic, especially geneseo. those guys talked themselves up as title contenders all year and then finished 18th, even with a top 10 individual and a senior heavy team.

with the cap being removed, the atlantic will likely only get 2, maybe 3 bids next year after that abysmal performance.

2011 results are here

http://www.gojumbos.com/results.php?id=387

in text form if anyone wants to play with them

Here's the 2011 results scored 4 deep without seniors

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjTRhFaDIHA0dEJsV29JRDlBSGlpS1FRczBGUURacVE

sfassdf wrote:

Here's the 2011 results scored 4 deep without seniors

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjTRhFaDIHA0dEJsV29JRDlBSGlpS1FRczBGUURacVE

Okay, so here's how this method would have worked out if done last year:

NCC 60 1-1

Tufts 153 2-7

Calvin 156 3-t2

Bates 156 4-6

Wheaton 188 5-9

Lax 204 6-4

Cortland 250 7-24

Wash U 254 8-5

Bowdoin 263 9-16

Middlebury 266 10-8

Haverford 286 11-t2

St. Olaf 293 12-14

Oshkosh 323 13-dnq

Allegheny 353 14-15

NYU 403 15-22

Occidental 427 16-dnq

CMS 467 17-11

Wabash 479 18-28

Centre 482 19-dnq

Lynchburg 532 20-26

Looks like it worked pretty well, with a few exceptions:

NCC didn't totally dominate.

Tufts didn't challenge the podium as the method might have expected.

Haverford performed better than this method suggested.

Cortland really took a step back this year.

Oshkosh and Occidental didn't qualify.

Still, there's a lot of hits there.

Looks like it worked pretty well, with a few exceptions:

NCC didn't totally dominate.

Still, there's a lot of hits there.[/quote]

The data is kinda skewed with perez being out and Sparks transferring- if you factor in Sparks running for NCC for example, NCC wins in a landslide (84 pts instead of 167). Perez was supposed to return as well (assuming he would've been in the top 15 or 20, that would have lowered their score by another 20 pts down into the 60s)- meaning its relatively accurate.

Tufts didn't have Cassidy this year and someone posted above Rand supposedly had bronchitis. Push Rand up to top 10 and swap out 74 points for closer to 30 or 40 and they're close to the 2-4 range. It obviously doesn't account for random stuff going wrong, but on average it's a pretty solid predictor

Last year at this time, I certainly thought that North Central would have a historically dominant team this year. Then again, I thought they'd have Sparks and Perez. So... yeah, I agree with you. It's a pretty solid predictor, in spite of the unpredictability of D3 rosters, etc.

So, who wins next year? Over? Wintheiser? Or somebody else? There seems to be a lot of youth at the top. Only 3 seniors in the top 10. 17 of the top 35. Could be wide open.

What year is Over? He is listed as a junior in both this year's and last year's results.

With all the timing issues at the meet, here is one that did not get corrected:

10. Wis -Eau Claire

10 Jeremy Kieser, Sr 24:49.4

19 Aaron Easker, Sr 25:01.9

57 Adam Moline, So 25:33.4

108 Conor Rafferty, Sr 26:01.4

129 Paul Hetke, Jr 26:12.9

146 Matt Scott, Jr 26:19.8

147 Matt Wenaas, Jr 26:20.2

225 Ryan Mugan, Fr 26:39.8 Wis -Eau Claire

Did Eau-Claire run 8 guys? Likely the alternate unintentionally ran over or too close to the finish line mat, although Mugan does have 3k and 5k splits that correlate with his finishing time.

concerned coach wrote:

With all the timing issues at the meet, here is one that did not get corrected:

10. Wis -Eau Claire

10 Jeremy Kieser, Sr 24:49.4

19 Aaron Easker, Sr 25:01.9

57 Adam Moline, So 25:33.4

108 Conor Rafferty, Sr 26:01.4

129 Paul Hetke, Jr 26:12.9

146 Matt Scott, Jr 26:19.8

147 Matt Wenaas, Jr 26:20.2

225 Ryan Mugan, Fr 26:39.8 Wis -Eau Claire

Did Eau-Claire run 8 guys? Likely the alternate unintentionally ran over or too close to the finish line mat, although Mugan does have 3k and 5k splits that correlate with his finishing time.

That's pretty troubling. According to Eau-Claire's website, Matt Scott did not run and Ryan Mugan did. So Scott somehow gets recorded as a finisher despite not being in the race, and two of the teams right behind them (Central and Williams) end up tied. Central's #5 guy scored 160, so UW-EC's phantom runner ends up pushing him back a place.

Maybe Eau-Claire's website is wrong, and I doubt Central is angry about finishing t12 instead of 12th. But it's disturbing to have a guy listed in the official results of a national championship race who didn't compete in it. I haven't seen that corrected in any of the results posted on multiple sites.

In going through the results you will see that Cortland only ran six runners. I'm guessing that somehow Cortland's runner got counted as Eau Claire. Because there were 280 runners which is what there should be. Anyone familiar with Cortland and know if they really only ran 6.

Cortland Maybe wrote:

In going through the results you will see that Cortland only ran six runners. I'm guessing that somehow Cortland's runner got counted as Eau Claire. Because there were 280 runners which is what there should be. Anyone familiar with Cortland and know if they really only ran 6.

I should have added-- Matt Scott is listed on Eau Claire's roster, as is Ryan Mugan.