Official 2017 D3 Cross Country Thread

In 2015 the Mideast was weaker than it is in 2017. Going into Regionals in 2015, the Mideast had one team ranked lower than 20 (Haverford at #7) and only three teams ranked total. In 2017 going into Regionals, Haverford was ranked 3rd, and Hopkins and CMU were both ranked lower than #16. York had been ranked nationally in the 20's since October. York also beat the 5th place team by a large margin, over 60 points. I don't think your argument about the Mideast being weak this year holds any water. Go back and check out the archives.

$10 parking, thats it.

Meets prior to the 29 aren't looked at at all. By any division. Wins or losses matter starting the last weekend of September. Bates could have beaten Hopkins in early to mid September and it wouldn't mean snuff.

Not quite sure what you're getting at here. The pre-championship manual defines late-season as starting on Sept. 23rd, and the Bates women beat RPI on the 30th (when as you say, wins matter).

Bad example. Bates probably got hosed.

Pretty impressive how St. Olaf has gone from three podium finishes in a row (including a national championship) to not even finishing top 5 in their region. One would think they'd have to try to be that bad.

I'm pulling for top 10 wrote:

That is a good point....

Over under on the South Region next year having a team place higher than 20th?

Side note, Carleton gets top 15 at nationals. You heard it here first.

*Disclaimer: I said top 10 in the MIAC thread just to cover my bases

Two weeks ago I said, "...might suggest they are much better than their #15 ranking. Similarly with Carleton. They seem quite capable of challenging #16 Wartburg at Central Region."

I didn't say it explicitly, but I've had Carleton for top 15. Top 10 will be a reach, but certainly possible if all 5 guys run peak performances.

Amherst women also lost to TCNJ women and SLU women #4 and #5 in the Atlantic. They lost to SLU at Williams and lost to TCNJ by 30+ at Lehigh. amherst women were a long shot at getting in. Bates women ran poorly at regionals and got screwed. The way they ran early on they looked like a top 10-12 team. I agree on the mideast teams though, CMU lost to WPI at inter regional rumble at rowan, 10th in New england! RPI women also beat St. Thomas #5 in their region, they got in, Bates didn't. It is pretty unbelievable to screw up the committee had here. This may be enough to get the coaches to agree that the system doesn't work.

Real deal Q wrote:

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.

Macdaddy050 wrote:

This may be enough to get the coaches to agree that the system doesn't work.

The coaches already agree the system doesn't work. The coaches don't decide the system, however.

I agree that the Dickinson women probably shouldn't have been sent to nationals given their huge bomb at the Mideast meet. I really wish regional performance was weighted more in the at-large selections. Dickinson soundly beat Haverford in their conference meet, and then lost quite spectacularly at the regional meet. CMU, in all likelyhood, was pushed into nationals by Dickinson. CMU wouldn't have been sent if they were 5th in the mideast.

When did RPI beat St. Thomas? Not seeing a meet where they went head to head.

Macdaddy050 wrote:

amherst women were a long shot at getting in. Bates women ran poorly at regionals and got screwed. The way they ran early on they looked like a top 10-12 team.

Agreed with you an almost all counts, but the Bates women didn't even run badly at regionals... they lost to four teams who will be ranked in the top 10 or 12 heading into nationals. Trying to compare based on their times at NESCACs and at regionals, I guess they were about 5 seconds per person slower this weekend, but it's not even clear if the committee looks at times that closely.

Long story short, Bates beat everyone except for podium contenders (Tufts, Williams, and Midd all could reasonably finish fourth this weekend). They went out of region and got a good win. I can't think of a single reasonable argument that keeps them out of nationals.

Why are we talking about the girls?

Boiz wrote:

Why are we talking about the girls?

Uhhhh I think you mean “why are we talking about strong independent women who don’t need no manz?”

New this year was that to have a performance considered in your "Resume" 5 of the 7 run at Regionals had to have run in the meet for your institution.

So meet result that did not featured 5 of a school's final 7 on the regional roster is disregarded.

This affects the final decision-making process of the committee.

This process is such a huge mess. The NCAA should do something to standardize the courses at Regionals to make them at least somewhat comparable. It would make all of this a lot easier to deal with. I would say that they should put some faith in the rankings, but then coaches would just vote for their own team and it would turn into a mess. I think the standardized courses is the only way to go if they want to avoid teams like bates getting screwed over. Obviously it won't be perfect, especially if weather is different, and that can't be the only criterion, but it should be at least considered

THIS. CMU women didn't run well all season until Regionals, where they ran okay and got pushed through to Nationals because Dickinson should have run better. It's okay though, they'll be lucky to be top 30 at Nationals. Their 5th woman is absolutely terrible compared to the rest of the Nationals field. Alavilli could be a low stick (50s), but other than that there's going to big numbers to add up to determine their score.

Just wait until the results come out... You've heard it here for probably the nth time, Bates should've gone instead of a CMU team with no depth. Hopefully, the committee will learn from this.

In the simplest concept, this is an ok idea, but reality is it could never happen. New England has 400 women on the starting line (393 finishers this year). Over the last ~12 years we've had exactly two host courses that could legitimately handle this many athletes, the williams and conn college courses. Every other one has issues of not enough space at the start to properly funnel, corners too sharp too soon where a pack 5 wide and 100 deep can't navigate properly, or trail crossovers/multidirectional trail segments that have too many people crossing or traveling in opposite directions.

I don't know about other regions, but there is a huge problem just to find a host, even if it's a bad host site for new England, so there is zero percent chance the region will be able to find a host site with a similar layout to everyone else year in and year out, and every other region (rightfully) isnt going to want to pick their site based on what new england cobbles together each year, if they are even capable of it.

The current system for deciding at-large bids is a complete joke. Our previous regional has two (the person who represents a region on the conference call to de code nationals bids) was an administrator at a non-competitive school, who had never run, coached, or been involved at any level with the sport prior to taki my the position. When people like that are making decisions, without any ability to question or explain specific decision making, you get awful results.

I don't have any specific answers, but what is being done clearly doesn't work. It doesn't seem that far fetched to create a tracking system that keeps track of inter-region wins and losses, having them posted online, and having an official rankings list going into regionals (the unofficial ustfccca coaches poll doesn't count), so team's know exactly where they stand goi my into that meet. In places where judgement calls need to be made, it's preposterous that no explanation is provided by the selection committee after the fact. In this case, Bates beat every team it ought to have at regionals, went out of region to absolutely dominate a team that was nationally ranked (and finished third in a region that recieved 4 selections). Without an explanation for not being selected, how is that coach supposed to know what they need to do in the future?