NAIA XC/TF 2024-25

And it was humid in Knoxville…times ran slower especially in the men’s race (~20-30 seconds slower for most after taking out the outliers)

This just confirm what I’ve been saying all season that Luca is bad! He is the most overrated runner in NAIA history! I spoke with his head Coach JAMES OVERHOLSER and he agree he is bad!

Isn't James just the random guy that walks around with a Camera talking trash at track meets? I doubt he's coach Madeo

You’re totally missing the mark here and cherry picking a bad 4/5. Corban went to Nationals last year with an even worse 4/5.

So how where would you rank LC-State? Even after that spread, there’s no way you can rank Corban more than 4-5 spots below them given that their total time was only 60 seconds slower than LC-State.

Corban’s 1/2 will probably be one of top 5 or 6 1/2’s in the field, which will give them a better chance at top 20 than many of the other schools who are considerably better than them at 4/5.

This is not a very hard concept. That’s how big meets of well over 300 people work.

Uh no, big meets punish teams with weak back ends. Tight spread means the scorers will be ahead of the mass carnage in the back.

LC ran well at Gans Creek and has gotten worse and worse as the year progressed (that should count for something). Corban and LC are so far away from COI. LC should be in the 20-25 range and Corban shouldn’t receive votes.

I’m not sure how long you’ve been studying big meets, but the idea that a teams with slower 4s and 5s would be punished more than those with slower 1s and 2s at a National meet is definitely not accurate.

A lot of the other posters have explored this over the last day, with hypothetical scores for a team like Corban with a stronger top 2. For instance, if Corban had 30-40 points for their top 2 and averaged 130 per athlete for the next three that puts them almost 75-100 points ahead of a team with 5 guys who run between 25:20-25:50 on a normal course. So, you’re talking about 5x100 vs 40+390. You’re much better off being Corban than Rocky Mountain, or a school like that, by a pretty substantial margin.

The problem with that is that

1. you’re overestimating how good Corban is at every spot here

2. Rocky Mountain has athletes who will break the top 100

The WHAC does not get a 2nd bid due to Defiance being ineligible for the post season this year after joining the NAIA from D3.

The Cornerstone men entered the weekend right on the bubble but absolutely imploded at WHAC. Aquinas put 8 guys ahead of their 3 and Cornerstone only had 2 guys sub 26 on a course that was blazing fast 2 weeks ago. I don’t see any way they get an at large and it looks like Thompson will not get an individual qualifier either.

You're forgetting that a runner placing 200+ isn't necessarily scoring 200+ due to individually qualifying, non-scoring runners. Unfortunately when your 5th runner is running 27+ minutes, he's starting to compete once again with the scoring runners of the non-ranked teams. So it's a bit of a wash, and a valid conversation because it looks like there are 3 spots up for grabs between Rocky Mountain, Cornerstone, Olivet Nazarene, Cumberland, SCAD Atlanta, Concordia, St. X, and Corban. 2 of those spots should probably go to Rocky Mountain and ONU. Corban and Cumberland had fairly comparable performances - for my money I thought Concordia had the best conference meet for that last spot, and their lack of votes after beating St. X at Blazing Tiger is a bit of a robbery.

Considering how bad St. Xavier lost to Olivet Nazarene and St. Francis I wouldn’t say it’s robbery that Concordia barely got any votes

The bottom line is that the CCC should have four teams at Nationals. Far and away the best conference. Corban put two guys in the top 8 at that meet, which means probably 2 in the top 30 of the team score at Nattys.

Also, it’s not like Corban’s 4 and 5 haven’t been better this year. Their #5 was in the 25s at a meet earlier this year and their #4 was in the low 26s at a meet on a not fast course as well.

I’ve never heard of the CCC not having four teams at Nationals.

This is getting to be laughable now.

This has to be someone from Corban or at least the Cascade conference. First of all Crossroads is the best conference and I don’t think it’s up for debate.

Their 4th runner being in the 25s and their 5th being in the low 26s on their best day is terrible in the naia right now.

Olivet Nazarene is probably the last team in and they have 7 guys who have run under 26 and they’ve been getting criticized for not having a strong 4th and 5th.

Corban’s top 2 aren’t as strong as you’re trying to reason they are, and their 4th and 5th are far weaker than you think

It is most definitely a Corban homer for sure! They have a decent low stick who could possibly be top 40 on a good day. Their number two however, would be lucky to crack the top 90 at Nationals with his performances this year.

When are at-large bids announced?

Monday evening

If you could post memes on LetsRun about the bias toward non-CCC schools in NAIA vs the CCC, there would be some pretty good ones on here.

First the narrative was how College of Idaho was overrated.

Then, the narrative was that the course at Bush Park (which is the same one they’ve run on for 40 years) was short.

Then it was that Corban was overrated and that CCC shouldn’t have four teams, despite all four of the top CCC teams being better than they were last year.

Then it was, oh the course they ran on for their conference meet can’t actually be that slow.

It gets really old, the extreme bias in NAIA against the CCC.

If you score the top 10 in Crossroads vs the top 10 in the CCC at Nationals this year, the CCC will win. If you score the top 30, the Crossroads conference may win. It would be stupid to not give the CCC four teams at Nationals, especially considering that Corban’s top guy was almost a full minute ahead of LC-State’s #1 and Corban's #2 guy was also 12 seconds in front of LC’s #1.

To the poster that said those Corban guys would finish #40 and #90 at Nationals, give me a break! That’s like saying that LC’s top guy finishes 120th at Nationals. I would venture a guess that all 8 of the top guys from CCC finish in the top 50 at Nationals. For Corban, that means one guy finishing in the teens and another in the 40s. Corban was quite bad at 4 and 5 last year at Nationals, with the exact same guys, and still finished 22nd.

I think you have to use some common sense when you pick for a National meet, you can’t just the same old biases and tropes against the CCC.

I’m going to tell you right now, Corban is not getting in. It’s splitting hairs between a lot of teams at the end of the at-large pool. But they have not done enough in comparison to other teams. Carroll winning their conference meet does not help them here…In every sport the teams that don’t make it in by the skin of their teeth always complain. But the reality is they are not even in the conversation with EOU and COI, so they can’t be upset when they are left out.

The CoI overrated thing was when they had like a minute gap from their 3rd to 4th runner. Once that closed then nobody doubted CoI anymore