D2 NCAA XC

MSU Denver and Tiffin go home devastated.

Posted!!!

ncaa.com

NCAA Division II Men's and Women's Cross Country Championships qualifiers announced

The NCAA Division II Men’s and Women’s Cross Country Committee has announced the participants for the 2025 NCAA Division II Men’s and Women’s Cross Country Championships.

Open link

Crazy, guess my calculations were off. Best of Luck to everyone at NCAAs!

Tiffin sends 2 guys to the nationals individually, that's practically half of the team...

Can anyone tell me how in the heck for the Men, why New Mexico Highlands team didn't make it???? Theyre top guy WON it all!!
And why didn't David Soto from UT Tyler not make it as an individual.
This makes no sense, the entire Atlantic region and East coast in general are complete BUMS. There is no way they should take any teams on the East Coats besides Wingate.
Someone tell me who I need to talk to to state my complaint!! I am FURIOUS!!

MSUD, Ft Lewis and Tiffin were screwed over due to a flaw in the selection system criteria (step 2) that rewarded teams for not competing against anyone outside of their region.

Quality job that will disincentivize anyone from traveling outside of their region next year so that they can game the system.

NMH should've made it in over either of those guys...teams need to be rewarded for having the best athlete in the field.

So how come Fort Lewis didn't make it in? I get why MSU D didn't, their team isn't strong enough to compete at nationals. But how come we didn't get in. Our team has the depth and support to be a top 10 team in the nation

Cause you lost to a team that isn’t strong enough to compete at nationals

Having the top guy is nice-and his race was dominant, but the NMH team has nobody after #3. Fort Lewis definitely belongs in the field and MSU made a good run at qualifying--kudos to their athletes and coaches for improving each week. They probably suffered because no teams under consideration went to the DBU meet. Oklahoma Baptist doesn't belong in the meet--sorry, just the truth--and the third place (and even some higher) teams in a few regions wouldn't be able to crack the top ten in the South Central. Teams like Franklin Pierce and Charleston benefit from geography and the NCAA insistence on the top 3 going. It might be worse when you look at the individuals-- the criteria sates that individual selections reward tougher regions, the opposite seems to be true when there are 4 taken from the East.

What some people seem to be missing is that MSUD & Fort Lewis perform that well at regionals and that has cost them. Most people seem to be happy that Augustana are worthy of their national selection. So, the logic of the regional gap ratio says that NKU were closer to Augustana than MSUD were to UCCS so NKU should be selected over MSUD if it gets to Step 2. This then gets repeated for Oklahoma Baptist. There’s potentially an argument that the regional gap should be to the 4th team in the region rather than the team above but regardless MSUD would have had a poor ratio. A quick look suggests that MSUD’s 80 point gap to UCCS is the second highest points gap between 6th & 7th place teams in South Central in the last 10 years. Maybe this year just shows that regional performance matters.

Three things that are flawed with the point gap ratio...

Good in theory, not in practice.

*The quality and depth and size of the regional field are not the same with all eight regions thus the comparison is between apples and oranges, they are not the same exact fields so the point gap ratios will be off too. At most it should be between the 4th place team in a region and whatever place being considered (example in the Central region OBU in 7th place), not 4th to 5th, 5th to 6th, 6th to 7th, etc. Look at OBU's season results, they have absolutely zero wins against anyone up for consideration.

*The point gap ratio is not used during the regular season. All people look at all season is who beats who and who loses to who. That is what everyone is factoring into their standing. It doesn't matter in an xc meet if you beat a team by 1 point or 1000 points it's the same place if no other team is between.

*There is no way that step 2 in the selection criteria was intended to be used to push in numerous teams from one region that did not compete against schools outside of their region. It was intended to be used as a tie-breaker for one round in case there was no other data to make a decision apart from the committee making a subjective decision between two teams. Then the process would move on to the next round as before and pick back up.

I agree - Regionals matter. But... the Regional Point Gap Ratio is a flawed criterion for NCAA D2 cross country championship at-large selection, particularly when comparing teams from stronger regions against weaker ones, because it is heavily influenced by the overall depth and density of talent in a regional meet, which can create a misleading perception of a team's national competitiveness.

The fundamental flaw is that it only measures how close Team A was to Team B within that specific regional meet. In the South Central, you had six of the top 15 ranked teams competing, in the Central (for example) there were three . The presence of multiple, dominant teams at the top of a regional race actually tends to inflate the point spread and can make the Regional Point Gap Ratio even more unreliable for teams fighting for at-large bids.When you have multiple powerhouse teams, their top runners effectively "cannibalize" the lower places.

I don't disagree that the regional point gap is flawed. All I'm saying is that some of this situation was caused by the regional performances of MSUD and Fort Lewis. You can't simply say a team's regular season was good so they deserve to be selected for nationals. If they don't get it right at regionals then they open the door for a crazy situation like we saw this year.

The teams on the east coast don't benefit from geography, they are hindered by it. That is why DII has a regionalization model. Cross country is set up much better than basketball or soccer, where only the top team in the region emerges from the regional bracket.

You are missing what the post above yours says. The ratios are not the same in the regions due to the different depth qualities of the region. It's a math problem. It's the same reason the at-large individual selection doesn't work for the South-Central region. They never get a single at-large individual because the top end of the field is full of GREAT teams. So they only ever get the two auto individuals, sometimes they are as far back as mid 20's in the field for that so they never get anyone with a decent ratio compared to the weaker regions where individuals thrive. Just look at this season. The system almost works backwards. It was supposed to give more individuals to the better regions.

Graham is an overrated coach. Took over a team that got 13th at nationals and proceeded to miss nationals 2 years in a row