NAIA XC/TF 2024-25

Hey, this is Donatello McKrinkleton from College of the Bear Man, we have our UWEC conference on Wednesday 7:20am. It will be on ESPN so make sure to stay tuned!

Not sure what you’re talking about. I just ran there today. The course was soft and is as hilly as an XC course comes. Corban ran their best race of the year today, even with 4&5 not doing well. They made up time on College of Idaho and Eastern Oregon from the last time they raced them at Bush.

They were close to LC-State on total time 1-5 (maybe 60 seconds or so). That would be a mistake for them to not be top 20, even based solely off their top 3. They should actually go up in the rankings by a lot.

I don’t think they move up at all. Definitely not to top 20

I'm going to hop on this train as well and say Corban is a top 15-20 team. Look at Aquinas for instance when they raced LC-State earlier this year...Corban's 1-5 total was way closer to LC at the CCC Conference meet today than Aquinas was to LC at Gans six weeks ago. Pretty sure Aquinas is a top 20 team currently. Based on that metric Corban would move ahead of Aquinas.

Any chance that the Eastern Oregon women did enough to get a ranking and nationals invite?

I cannot take it seriously when you guys cherry pick like this.

Aquinas ran terrible at Gans Creek. Everyone agrees on this. It was their worst race of the season.

LC State had their best day at Gans Creek. I think it’s easy to agree on that. It looks like they ran pretty poorly today.

Stop basing everything off of one meet that was almost 2 months ago now, and in an entirely different field.

Cumberlands can't compete at the front at Nationals if the best frontrunner only just goes sub24 and the rest run mid to high 25s times from the top 5.

It’s not cherry picking. It’s an important statistic to consider. Just saw the final results. LC-State averaged 25:53 as a team today and they averaged 25:20 at Gans Creek. That should tell you something about the course they ran on today at CCC. The real question is where you would rate Lewis-Clark? If you rate Lewis-Clark 15th or higher and Corban finishes 62 seconds behind them at 26:05 average, you really can’t rate Corban more than 4-5 spots lower than LC-State.

I’m sorry but I can’t take this seriously. Okay maybe the course was mucky but people still ran fast times. Running 2:10+ isn’t making you a national caliber team with two guys. Sure you have one possible all American and a second that’s a top 100 guy at nationals. But you’ve got 2 scoring 200+ points at nationals. That’s not putting you in the top 20 let alone the top 25.

And they definitely aren’t better than a Rocky Mountain men’s team that won’t make nationals with 5 guys under 26 at altitude (albeit only 32-3300 ft.)

You think the 8th place finisher at the CCC meet is going to finish only 100th at Nationals? You must be joking. I'd love to revisit this after Nationals in two weeks.

Also, I'm not sure if you're aware but it's actually more important at Nationals to have 2 runners that finish higher up than it is to have guys packed between 125-200. I'm not quite sure how the raters always miss that.

If Corban goes and places about 30th, 70th, 135th, 200, 215 that’s 650 points. I think that’s a fair rough estimate at this point based on what we’ve seen from them.

650 would’ve only earned them 27th last season and that’s where they’re currently ranked. They don’t deserve to be too much higher or lower than they currently are.

I think they’re right outside the bubble.

Maybe having two guys finish as all Americans or near all Americans with bad depth is fine when your goal is to just beat the teams that auto qualified out of bad conferences, but to compete for top 20 you can’t do that.

20th place usually scores ~500 so 2 guys scoring over 200 will completely take you out of the running for that unless you have an unbelievable 1-3.

Sorry, I missed a guy and made a mistake. There 2 was good and also could be in all American contention so I’ll give them that. But if your back end can’t perform you aren’t going to look good.

let’s say you have a guy top 10 and another all American. And with that I’ll give them 35 points (realistically i don’t know if an pr of 24:53 on the Willamette Course puts you in all American contention this year). And for the benefit of the doubt I’ll put your 3, 80th (which again is a stretch. Their 3 has a pr of 25:25 at Willamette and ran 26:02 at Linfield. Old teammate swoboda who was 3rd last year ran 24:09 in the same race at Linfield). There 4 has a pr of 26:23 and their 5 today has ran 25:59 @Willamette (but has been regressing). You’re scoring at least 400 points between those two alone.

400 + 80 + 35 = 515 points at nationals which would’ve been good enough for 22nd, which hey they finished that last year! So I guess that would prove us both wrong

The difference is they no longer have Swoboda who was 3rd nationally (although Gladfeller is an essential low stick, still 4th in the conference) and they are much worse on the back end. How realistic is it that they run the perfect race in 2 weeks? The naia is a bit better this year and it’s going to take well under sub 25 to be all American. They just don’t have the bodies for that. I really don’t think they are making nationals.

I'm no Cumberlands fan, but they were tempoing that race pretty easily. Besides the top 3 at Conference, the rest just camped and went hard the last two miles or so. It was really just about holding their respective spots in the Conference and had nothing to do with how fast these teams are. I do think that Cumberlands is not going to compete with the title as the Ukrainian guy seems to be not fit.

I think Gladfelter and Moha will definitely score a ways lower than 100 points combined in the team score at Nationals. Those guys are good. I'd put Corban closer to 450, which is competitive at Nationals.

Their #4/5 are actually better runners than they've shown this season. They're a national qualifying team this year, just like last.

I have those two scoring a combined 35 points. That’s well under 100. Braydon Lee scoring 80 seemed generous.

Looking through other conference results it seems like they *may* have the last in thus far.

SCAD Atlanta ran better on paper but the Knoxville AAC course is knowingly fast. Cumberland (TN) also didn’t help their case.

Does anyone know if the WHAC is a 2-bid conference? Cornerstone didn’t do anything amazing especially for Riverfront but there were 12 teams that finished in the conference. I don’t know what the rules are about declaring for the season/running at conference and what will give the 2nd bid.

I heard the CCC course was very slow today too…like slower than the Nationals course at Ft Vancouver last year slow.

Seems like Corban actually did quite well considering a weak 4/5.

What’s the condition of trails on rio grande passing?

Shucks wrong thread!