Patriot League XC 2024

Smith from Navy must've had an off day. He ran 28:30 for 10k last spring

He ran the Navy course record at this year's Army v Navy. Maybe he shouldn't have. He still wouldn't won by a significatn margin

I was at the meet. In my opinion Navy ran an idiotic race. I don't know if it was the strategy from the coach to be so aggressive, or if the team just got too amped up.

They should have known 3rd place gets them in but they were foolish to waste energy racing Villanova for the championship. Villanova is too good.

Navy was leading the team race through 5k. At that point their entire top 5 was ahead of Georgetown's top runner. Murphy tried to match the move by Murphy and Langon and it cost him a spot at nationals because he crumbled and lost 4 spots in the last 1200m - ending his individual and team chances at Nationals.

Compare Navy's last 1200m split to Princeton's:

Navy -

Murphy Smith - 3:27

Mumford - 3:32

Nguyen - 3:31

Kirkland - 3:29

Nester - 3:29

Princeton -

Hogan - 3:21

Bendtsen - 3:23

Shorten - 3:15

Witt - 3:29

McCormick - 3:22

Navy's season planning wasn't great either. They didn't need to race so hard at Spiked Shoe, Griak, Lehigh, Star Meet, Patriot Leagues all before regionals. They need to conserve energy early in the season so they can finish the year stronger. Even if they made nationals, they probably would have struggled because they were racing so hard early on.

Wait, you’re saying that a program once one by Al Cantello and a service academy aren’t doing things the most intelligent way?

I’m shocked.

Arguably everything about the service academies is asinine.

You might have a point about season planning but that's a terrible take on race strategy and performance. Worst I've seen on here in awhile.

"Leading the race" at halfway was an artifact of the contending teams' still running tight at 5K, which is not at all surprising.

Compare Navy's closing 1200m splits to Georgetown and you will see no substantive difference. Suggests to me that they were trying to go toe-to-toe with the Hoyas (the smarter target than Princeton or Nova) and just came up short by one point.

One tiny difference in finish order and what you call "an idiotic race" suddenly becomes one of the most striking upsets of the day.

Dude you weren't at the race and you couldn't see what happened in between the 5000m and 8800m splits. Navy should have had an easy 2nd place finish on the day.

Navy made their move way too early. PERIOD. Navy was DECELERATING at the end of the race while Georgetown and Princeton were accelerating. 4 of Navy's top 5 lost places in the last 1200m.

At one point Mumford (as Navy's #2) was close to 10 seconds ahead of Georgetown's #2 between 5k and 8800. He ended up losing to him. Murphy was nearly 10 seconds ahead of Dicola of Penn State. He ended up losing to him.

Note that this guy's pretty much saying "the unranked team on virtually no one's radar who missed out on qualifying by one point ran an idiotic race."

He's not just saying that some of their runners made tactical errors that ended up costing them some places. That could of course be true.

Nope. Instead he's saying they ran an idiotic race.

At the end of the day, as a spectator you really have no idea why some guys faded more than others at the end of a race. You can make an educated guess based on what you saw. Could it have been for the reasons you claim? Sure. But numerous unknown factors could have been at play and making that kind of inflammatory statement criticizing some college kids who vastly exceeded expectations is itself.... asinine.

Them being unranked has nothing to do with it. They were capable of qualifying, and actually SHOULD have qualified, but they messed up.

If an unranked football team is up by 20 points with 2 minutes left against the #1 team in the country, and they lose, everyone would say they choked. Nobody would say "oh well they weren't supposed to win anyway" because they had it won, only to blow it.

When every runner makes the same tactical error that costs them both team and individual qualification to NCAAs that qualifies as a dumb race.

this, and their summer military training requirements, is really what keeps army and navy performing their best. and it's not just for cross country - they'll peak early in indoor for the star meet, and then weeks later for the outdoor star meet. the tradition is great, but it keeps both teams down.

Terrible analogy. At no point in that race did any team (with the possible exception of Nova late in the race) enjoy the football-equivalent of a 20-point lead.

Your theory seems to be that if Navy had simply run more conservatively between 5-8K then they would have easily been able to close better that both Princeton and Georgetown. How can you be so sure of that? How can you rule out that their aggressive running put Princeton/G-town on the defensive, forced them to move sooner than they wanted/planned to, which made the eventual outcome much closer? You seem convinced that Navy was the superior team, could have outrun the key targets down the stretch without any issue, and thus they got beat only because of bad tactics.

To me it seems entirely possible that their tactics were fine given their underdog status and their talent gap relative to the opposition. They were (absurdly narrowly) defeated by two superior teams and it seems just as likely that their strategy made the race closer than it otherwise would have been, compared to what may have happened if they ran via your playbook.

The coach isn’t to blame. If three of their scoring men from last year, still listed on the roster, hadn’t entered the transfer portal for cross country, the new coach would have inherited a men’s team. Instead, they’re all heading to San Francisco to follow the old coach. So much for team culture. Do not fault the women’s team for represent the school.

No one from BU is in the portal. Although the probably should be. Freddy Collins 13:45 and doesn’t run this fall. Parker Schneider 3:56 mile and finishes worse this fall than last. BU men are sinking and it might be time to abandon ship if those two want any future in this sport. Will be interesting to see where they land. I don’t think it will be SF, maybe power 4? Any guesses?

Disagree. The ship is sinking in the wake of Carpenter and Gabe cutting corners. Will take a little while for them to get right but new staff at BU is top class and will have the boys back rolling before the end of the year

Maybe things weren’t as perfect as you make them seem to be when the old coach left? If the new coach arrived in late august and 2 of those guys didn’t race all season, maybe they were hurt? I doubt the coach inherited a roster on both sides where every runner was 100% and ready to PR. Personally I wouldn’t credit the coach with the success or failure of a team in two/three months of work. Credit to the kids for dealing with a coaching transition in August / September which can’t be easy. We will see what happens the rest of the year

So what I’m hearing is Nathan Davis is the best runner in Patriot League history, and will solely represent the service academies this year at nattys😎😎

This doesn't surprise me.

Navy always burns themselves out by the end of the season. It's part of the militant, blunt force culture. They can't build up to the last meet of the season because it makes them look "weak"

Looks like Navy must have just missed with their "talent." Dumb and idiotic, maybe. Checking out their backgrounds...top 5 high school marks, Smith (4:19, 9:15 ok), Mumford (4:19, 9:18 ok), Nguyen (4:26, 9:26 what?) Kirkland (4:37, 9:50 wt_?) Nester (4:23, 9:46??). They finish dead even with the #18 and #25 teams in the country at the meet that matters most at the end of the season, with top 5 high school averages of 4:25, 9:30?? That is a whole different crazy.

It's also a huge advantage to have 50 men on your XC roster. By definition, only extremely motivated, hard working, and well behaved people get into the academy. Many were likely undertrained in high school and are destined to improve a lot.

They develop athletes but they had a chance at qualifying on the day and they did not. Their 5th runner even beat the 5th runner of Villanova, Princeton, and Georgetown. When you lost 10 places in the last 1000m of the race and miss qualifying by 1 point, it's very fair to question the aggressive tactic at the beginning and whether that hurt them at the end.

Then look at the Army star meet. Navy put 9 in the top 10. When you can win by that much, why make it a 23:30 race? Make it more strategic to put less wear on your legs for the end of the season.