Yes, those Stanford teams were loaded, and as shown above, their top 5 in 2002 were all ahead of Hall in school and older.
Compared to Ritz and Webb, Hall seemed to have a more gradual adaptation to the NCAA. Their freshman year, Ritz finished 4th at the national XC championship, Webb was 11th, and Hall was 76th. Then Ritz and Webb shined in track (although not as much as Webb would have liked) while Hall redshirted.
I think having such a deep distance squad gave Stanford the luxury of being patient with Hall's development. They didn't need to rush him to be able to score points. He had a very nice progression, going from 76th in XC to 37th to 2nd.