Official 2017 D3 Cross Country Thread

It's not choking if the region is obviously way deeper... Occidental men "choked" and got fourth and they still got a bid. 5th in new england is not a choke. Also for a comparison there are way more teams in new england than the west and most other regions, so 5th is a lot better than 4th in the west.

5y45y425y wrote:

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY??????

space ghost wrote:

Bates women: 30 seconds per person (avg.) ahead of Brandeis at the regional meet.

Carnegie Mellon women: 4 seconds per person (avg.) ahead of Brandeis at UAA's.

Carnegie AND the team after them at regionals got at-large bids.

Everyone is talking about how badly the Haverford men won at regionals, and they were only 17 seconds per person ahead of second place. The Bates women not going is absurd--could have challenged for a top 10 spot. Seems like it's not the first time New England women (and Bates in particular) have gotten hosed, but my memory is shoddy. Does the committee ever explain their reasoning?

For the record, looking at the same point of comparison (Brandeis), the Bates men being left at home seems reasonable.

Also notable, at UAA, Carnegie Mellon and Brandeis were 4th and 6th with 116 points and 129 respectively. At New England Regionals, Bates and Brandeis were 5th and 8th with 150 and 287 points respectively. It seems pretty clear which team is stronger.

To answer your question, no, the committee does not explain their thought process (at least not to the general public).

1st hand observer. wrote:

I would say that from my experiences with my Garmn 235 forerunner, its the opposite- it tends to frequently under measure most of my runs, to the degree of roughly .1 every 3 miles or so. I had the opportunity to run the course both Friday and Saturday before the men's race and recorded 4.96 and 4.95 for both runs with the only difference being that I didn't finish through the finish line each time but next to it based on the fences the last 100 meters and not wanting to mess with the finish pads. Even with a minuscule margin of error, that still means it wasn't significantly off of an 8k if it was short at all..

You have to be joking. If the course was legit, then that means we should expect like at least 35 AA out of the midwest region. Ill believe it was 8000m meters when all of the LD national qualifiers for track are from the midwest. Too bad half the guys who broke 25 yesterday wont even touch 9:00 for 3k indoors.

Not to mention the fact that if you go through most of the guys or even girls, almost every one is well over a minute faster than they had been all year. I say they measure the actual course and modify the results based on a conversion. Get this Busch League PR crap out of here.

When you beat Rhodes who auto qualified from the South, and Rowan who was 4th in the Atlantic, is it really a surprise? At regionals they came in 4th behind two teams (Carnegie Mellon and Hopkins) who could both break into the top 10 at nats, and then you have Haverford who is going to be challenging for the overall win. The Mideast is deep.

A lot of butt hurt preppy private college losers mad tonight. Don’t worry...you’d get crushed by D2 schools and would look like high schoolers compared to D1. Have fun at baby nats.

NCC (ranked #1) beat UW-LaC (#2) 34-81 vs Haverford scoring 25 over CMU#12

NCC will have to have a really bad day to lose. It might happen, but it would be an extreme outlier.

Umadbro wrote:

A lot of butt hurt preppy private college losers mad tonight. Don’t worry...you’d get crushed by D2 schools and would look like high schoolers compared to D1. Have fun at baby nats.

D3 is about as competitive as a 2nd Tier D1 conference e.g. The Patriot League or The Atlantic 10.

Nobody would ever suggest D3 is some sort of equivalent to D2 or D1.

Umadbro wrote:

A lot of butt hurt preppy private college losers mad tonight. Don’t worry...you’d get crushed by D2 schools and would look like high schoolers compared to D1. Have fun at baby nats.

C'mon man, have you seen the Midwest Region Results? We have NINE teams averaging 24:59 or less. Don't worry, my GPS watch confirmed that it was DEFINITELY 4.97M....

Yawn. Even mediocre teams in D2 average sub 25.

D3 can't hold a candle to the US national cross country team. Didn't they get 2nd to Kenya a few years back?

Anyone have predictions for Saturday?

Top 10 teams:

1. NCC

2. Haverford

3. Lacrosse

4. P-P

5. Geneseo

6. Loras

7. Wash U

8. MIT

9. RPI

10. Amherst

Individuals:

D. Lau

G. O'Connor

I. Garcia-Cassani

D. Patel

J. Borowski

The committee is actually very transparent with the criteria. They've made it known to all coaches listening at the winter convention. The key criteria is big out of region wins. If those don't exist, then avoid big out of region losses. I'm not saying Bates women shouldn't be there...but they definitely shouldn't be there over Carnegie (who actually had some OOR success). If a team is lacking big wins or bad losses, they'll look at regional performance (for instance: Nebraska Wesleyan). I personally would have picked Bates women over St. Thomas in the central (who got in because they beat Calvin at prenats...despite the fact that Calvin didn't run their full squad that day!). Still...my advice for disappointed coaches: go to Paul short, Rowan, or pre-nats and do well. I actually saw a Midwest coach tweet about how they got hosed by the NCAA , despite the fact that his team didn't beat a SINGLE team that qualified.

This is a great post. Thanks for providing some clear insight into how the decisions are made. Coaches should read this when deciding their racing schedule.

on the other hand, they will tell you -and this was emphasized to death when this system was installed in '06- the number 1 criteria is, and should remain, performance at the regional championship.

given that, teams that put up huge scores in a thin region (york!) should not be rewarded over teams that finished close to certain qualifiers.

the committee should examine their priorities on this- the process has definitely morphed from one point of emphasis to the other over time, without any change in the actual policies.

two years ago, JHU men got left home with a score in the 180s and a much better season than york just had. 196 points at the mideast region is a joke.

Also, bates women would beat CMU 10 times out of 10

*10 times out of 10 at NCAAs

RPI women beat Amherst on September 23rd at Williams College. Amherst went on to place 6th in New England Region.

Bates women beat RPI on September 30th. On RPI's home course. By a lot. RPI went on to place 3rd in Atlantic Region.

Amherst women beat Carnegie Mellon and Allegheny On September 29th at Lehigh. Carnegie Mellon placed 4th in Mid East, Allegheny placed 3rd in Great Lakes.

So, for those following along........

Bates beats RPI

RPI beats Amherst

Amherst beats Carnegie Mellon

Amherst beats Allegheny

Bates - out

RPI - in

Amherst - out

Carnegie Mellon - in

Allegheny - in

Bates women should be in. Amherst women should be in.