Heps Cross Country 2011

rojo wrote:

Here you go everyone. Instead of enjoying the weekend, I thought I'd create this:

http://www.letsrun.com/2011/hepsxc-1001.php

Thanks for doing this - and I hope you enjoyed the rest of your weekend.

But I hardly think this is predictive. Eddie Owens, for example, clearly didn't have his best day at Notre Dame and unless he's injured, I'd expect he'd place much higher than this. Leakos, on the other hand, clearly had a great day - hopefully he can continue the trend. But the predictive power of this one snapshot of performance can't be too high.

Another factor is that Princeton will be running their home course for Heps, and that will undoubtedly work in their favor - not as if they needed any help, though.

ivy fan wrote:

rojo wrote:

Here you go everyone. Instead of enjoying the weekend, I thought I'd create this:

http://www.letsrun.com/2011/hepsxc-1001.php

Thanks for doing this - and I hope you enjoyed the rest of your weekend.

But I hardly think this is predictive. Eddie Owens, for example, clearly didn't have his best day at Notre Dame and unless he's injured, I'd expect he'd place much higher than this. Leakos, on the other hand, clearly had a great day - hopefully he can continue the trend. But the predictive power of this one snapshot of performance can't be too high.

Another factor is that Princeton will be running their home course for Heps, and that will undoubtedly work in their favor - not as if they needed any help, though.

Thanks for pointing this out. Any and all discussion of performance before the eight teams line up in Princeton is pointless without multiple qualifiers that rule our what someone else has posted in favor of the factors that one includes in his/her post.

I don't know what it is about track and XC people that they insist on having these kind of discussions. Do pro baseball people talk about who will make the playoffs and which players show the most promise in March? Of course not, they wait until September to have that discussion. The NFL just had it's fourth week, and it would be silly for them to breakdown every team and every game for hours on end when everyone knows that some players are underperforming now, that some are hurt, and the teams that make the playoffs will be in a very different situation come December than they are now. I can't understand why we don't show that kind of restraint. Why do we go on message boards dedicated to discussing our sport to discuss our sport? It's just silly.

Oh wait...

And speaking of meaningless, the Yale women are up to #3 in the Northeast and the Princeton women fell to #5 Mid-Atlantic in this week's USTFCCA rankings.

The Tiger's stayed #1 on the guys side and Columbia moved up to #2 in the Northeast.

Here's the whole thing:

Ancient Ivy wrote:

And speaking of meaningless, the Yale women are up to #3 in the Northeast and the Princeton women fell to #5 Mid-Atlantic in this week's USTFCCA rankings.

The Tiger's stayed #1 on the guys side and Columbia moved up to #2 in the Northeast.

Here's the whole thing:

http://www.ustfccca.org/2011/10/featured/di-regional-cross-country-rankings-week-4

Wow, quite a bit of jumping around on there. Previously, Yale women were #13, so jumping to #3 is HUGE. Is that really just from Paul Short? And could they show that they are that good in 26 days?

Well, I must admit that I enjoy the predictions and tend to engage in them somewhat myself - I guess it's just part of the fun of being a fan. But I don't put much store in them, especially as regards individual runners - on any given day, of course, a runner can be on or off, have a cold, trip at the start, lose a shoe, you name it. I still don't mind the predictions, though - just part of the fun.

Yes, predicting and quasi-trash talking can be a bit of fun. I wish the Ivies did do more duel meets though.

What the hell is wrong with the Penn men???

not good wrote:

What the hell is wrong with the Penn men???

When I was a coach, the standard answer to "WTH is wrong..." was: the coaching.

Good coaching can overcome poor facilities/funding; good coaching includes solid recruiting; good coaching means, not just writing up solid workouts, but motivating students to perform them properly (and to organize the rest of their lives to insure proper recovery, maintain academic eligibility, and so on).

So for RoJo, considering his team's projected sixth place at Heps, I hope that he "enjoyed the rest of his weekend" by spending it recruiting! ;)

[Actually, the Cornell men are already overachieving a bit this season, considering what people were projecting for them just a few weeks back...]

BTW, note that this is the first xc season for Penn's current coach. He has to work (primarily) with the students that other folks recruited.

C/M Runner wrote:

Yes, predicting and quasi-trash talking can be a bit of fun. I wish the Ivies did do more [dual] meets though.

Yeah, me too. You can learn so much from a dual or triangular, things that can help you in a championship meet.

Well, at least (most of) the Ivies do dual/tri meets indoors--actual scored meets that aren't championships!--which I think have been a big motivation for trying to develop total programs, rather than the purely distance-oriented xc/track programs that we've seen at so many other schools during the last ~25 years...

rojo wrote:

Here you go everyone. Instead of enjoying the weekend, I thought I'd create this:

http://www.letsrun.com/2011/hepsxc-1001.php

Interesting analysis. Interestingly, your prophecy is spot on based on today's NCAA Div. I coaches poll, where Columbia for the first time this season entered the Top 30 teams in the country with a huge splash, at 18th place, and Princeton slipped a bit, two spots to 14th place, suggesting that these two teams are very close and on a collision course for this year's HEPS XC title.

Looking at Rojo's merge, he's got Princeton scoring 41 points FTW, Penn Scoring 335 points for last. Both of these scores would be relatively historic, especially if they do a little better/worse than predicted, respectively.

Best team scores at heps ever:

(taken from Hepstrack)

19, Penn (1971)

http://hepstrack.com/championships/heps-cross-country/mens-results/the-1970s/1971-2/

21, Harvard (1969)

23, Dartmouth (1994)

25, Princeton (1982)

25, Dartmouth (1988)

25, Dartmouth (1991)

25, Princeton (1997)

27, Navy (1966)

27, Harvard (1968)

27, Princeton (1981)

27, Dartmouth (1987)

29, Penn (1973)

30, Army (1965)

30, Dartmouth (2005)

Penn was 3rd at the NCAA meet that year, behind Oregon and Washington State:

I don't think it's impossible for this Princeton team to score 30 points.

Worst team scores ever:

(for each school, taken from hepstrack.com)

Brown 1979 328

Columbia1969 316

Yale 1992 299

Penn 1942 294

Cornell 1989 279

Princeton 1953 265

Army 1941 264

Harvard 1996 256

Dartmouth 1966& 1967 246

Navy 1948 208

Of course, many of these scores are from when the league was 10 teams.

The worst score, post-Army/Navy is: Harvard's 240 from 2005. You know it's bad when your third runner is "Unidentified Runner" --

http://hepstrack.com/championships/heps-cross-country/mens-results/the-2000s/2005-2/

The Penn men overachieved by coming in 4th last year (after being predicted much lower by most on this site). Unfortunately their top 3 runners were seniors, and the 4th runner (Paez) appears to be out this fall with a season-ending injury. Thus, the entire team is a restart and with a new coach.

National polls were up today.

http://www.ustfccca.org/2011/10/featured/villanova-makes-move-to-womens-no-1-in-national-di-coaches-poll

Men: Princeton (14) and Columbia (18) both are ranked now. Brown got some votes, but Dartmouth didn't, so you have to assume they're also right on the outside looking in (probably with Harvard right after that). The depth in the league seems to be better than at any point in recent history.

With that being said, I was firmly in the "Princeton is going to dominate" camp this summer. I still think they're the overwhelming favorite, but Columbia/Brown/Dartmouth have proved this isn't going to be as easy for Princeton. So three and a half weeks out from Heps, I'll make this prediction:

1. Princeton 2. Columbia 3. Dartmouth.

Women: Princeton fell to #28. Yale is the 2nd unranked team in terms of points, followed by Dartmouth and Cornell.

The emergence of the Yale women is utterly astounding. They haven't beaten anyone, at any Heps, in the past 3 years. If they keep improving they could challenge for the title. I still think Princeton is too good though.

1. Princeton 2. Yale 3. Dartmouth

rojo wrote:

Here you go everyone. Instead of enjoying the weekend, I thought I'd create this:

http://www.letsrun.com/2011/hepsxc-1001.php

Just a heads-up:

Brown has 1 less point than they should have in every column. You gave Lowry a tie for 2nd instead of 3rd.

HK 47 wrote:

... The emergence of the Yale women is utterly astounding. They haven't beaten anyone, at any Heps, in the past 3 years. If they keep improving they could challenge for the title. ...

Chalk the surge in the Yale women to the addition of Amy Goiuzeyta (sp.?), their new Head Coach, successor to Dan Ireland's wife, who, like Dan, left for a new coaching job over the summer. Amy is the real deal and took the Harvard women to a new level while she was there prior to Yale. She also had a hand in recruiting the current freshman / sophomore MEN's recruiting classes at Harvard, which is also raising eyebrows.

I'm with you on the men's analysis and would agree that the new men's national rankings that bump up Columbia demonstrate a closer than expected men's heps. But Princeton is still the clear favorite. Great to see the men's heps have two teams capable of doing great things at the NCAA level.

Not so sure that the women's national rankings completely reflect the state of the heps, however. For sure, others have closed the gap to Princeton and Yale is having a great season in returning to prominence and the rankings reflect that. Yale could certainly win the heps: in their most recent meet against Princeton they didn't have the benefit of the runner who was #4 for them at Paul Short.

But how can you leave out Columbia? They haven't had a chance to show much yet given their schedule but they have one of the best recruits to enter the league in years (US Junior champ at 3000) and a good returning group. And Dartmouth has a great coach and very good runners (maybe not everyone ran at Paul Short?), but didn't they just finish 100 points behind Yale and, for that matter, Cornell, who was only 5 points behind Yale at Paul Short? You are right to list Dartmouth as a contender, but I think there are more than 3 teams worth mentioning. If the Columbia men can be up there, why not the women?

Seems to me like the women's league has even more parity than the men's. Princeton deserves to be the favorite but several teams could win.

It's Gosztyla.

The Columbia women took a beating in the polls this week. They dropped from 4th to 10th in one week and did not even race. Maybe the voters have some inside information as some of their better women have not even raced yet. I am not sure how good they actually are but I am sure they will be better than that.

zaplet wrote:

The Columbia women took a beating in the polls this week. They dropped from 4th to 10th in one week and did not even race. Maybe the voters have some inside information as some of their better women have not even raced yet. I am not sure how good they actually are but I am sure they will be better than that.

I think that the decision to not compete at Paul Short hurt them. They did some race in Toledo the weekend before where they competed against some other "Receiving Vote" teams, so not quite the same tier of competition. And even then, they only got 4th. No Waverly Neer though, so who knows how that will change when they decide to let her race.