Official 2018 Pre Nats Discussion Thread

Wisconsin NO Morgan?

5 / 5 scorers 317

31Zack Snider 6:02.7

64Shuaib Aljabaly 6:02.9

64Finn Gessner 6:02.9

64Seth Hirsch 6:02.9

64Derick Peters 6:02.9

146Tannor Wagner 6:03.3

216Andrew Schilling

NAU 5 guys in the top 15 and al 7 guys in the top 21... this team can't be stopped.

Men's Cardinal race was terrific.

Grant Fisher outkicked NAU's Tyler Day to win by .04 in 23:48.73.

Northern Arizona won with 36 points and even more impressively put all seven of their finishers in the top 21. We'll see what BYU can do in the White race, but it's hard to imagine anyone stopping NAU at NCAAs after that performance.

Surprise of the day was Furman's Aaron Templeton. He has PRs of 14:03 and 31:10 yet he was right there with Day, Baxter, and Fisher at the end of the race kicking for the win.

He was only 141st at NCAAs last year but wound up 4th overall today.

Stanford looks like a team that could grab the #2 spot and with Ratcliffe and/or Fahy racing, it is the type of team that could be in the conversation for the win if NAU weren't on pace to be one of the All Time lowest scores at NCAAs. Too mad Morgan McDonald didn't race, would have been a great preview of the individual race.

Are the Arkansas men not there today?

Wisco ran a B squad.

Arkansas men raced at Penn St meet yesterday. Was second after Virginia.

Stanford looked really promising. With Ratcliffe and Fahy strong and healthy it looked like they could beat NAU on the right day. Of course that would take a best case scenario from Stanford and a below average day for NAU.

If you put New Mexico's results into the other race, Arkansas beats them 66 to 77 with Oregon close behind in 3rd.

Well that was damn impressive from BYU. Four guys in the top seven, six in the top 20. 29 points compared to NAU's 41 points.

The finish was crazy. Coming off the final turn, BYU's Conner Mantz and Washington's Tibebu Proctor had a gap, but there was a huge chase pack closing them down and eventually BYU's Rory Linkletter came out on top to win a close kick over Syracuse's Aidan Tooker, 23:54.34 to 23:54.84.

Big run for the Washington men as well. They were beaten badly by Syracuse at the Battle in Beantown three weeks ago but came out here and beat Syracuse by 89 points to finish second behind BYU. The Huskies could be a top-10 team in Andy Powell's first year.

I scored BYU vs. NAU as if it were a dual meet between the two. BYU scores 26 points over NAU with 31. Purely based off of orders finish between only these two teams.

Merged results now and came up with the following:

BYU: 60

NAU: 89

Jayordon wrote:

Merged results now and came up with the following:

BYU: 60

NAU: 89

Can't directly compare races like that, but anybody who thinks BYU has no chance after today is kidding themselves.

Jayordon wrote:

Merged results now and came up with the following:

BYU: 60

NAU: 89

These merged results are not that useful. If you watched the races, the NAU race went out much more conservatively thru 2K and 4K. The races simply evolved differently - so really tough to compare. That said, both of the schools will certainly be after each other at Nationals.

Someone should post merged results, do it for the letsrun locals

Slow Region wrote:

Jayordon wrote:

Merged results now and came up with the following:

BYU: 60

NAU: 89

Can't directly compare races like that, but anybody who thinks BYU has no chance after today is kidding themselves.

I think this is the big takeaway from today.

Jonathan Gault wrote:

Slow Region wrote:

Can't directly compare races like that, but anybody who thinks BYU has no chance after today is kidding themselves.

I think this is the big takeaway from today.

The big takeaway isn't that BYU wins some meaningless merged results. The races were very different. NAU was a slow moving huge pack thru 2K, and still a pretty big pack at 4K.

However, I agree that the big takeaway is that NAU will definitely have to earn that title, as BYU should give them a very tough race.