xczvzxcv wrote:
Here are dates for Oregon's sub-4 milers since 1987:
1987x2, 2000, 2006, 2008x2, 2009x3, 2010, 2013x4, 2014, 2015x2, 2016x2, 2017, 2018x2, 2019, 2020
Powell was at Oregon from 2005 to June 2018. During that time, Oregon had 19 sub-4 milers.
In the previous 18 years, Oregon had 1 sub-4 miler (maybe the shift to the mile indoors had something to do with the drought, as I'm not looking at 1500m converted.).
Powell also had 11/12 years of having an NCAA 1500m finalist and 18 total NCAA 1500m finalists over that time span.
Oregon had 4 NCAA xc championships and 15 NCAA team track titles with Powell there, 11 of those track titles being of the more distance heavy indoor type.
So, needless to say, Powell was tremendous at Oregon.
Powell was indeed a tremendous recruiter.
The old saw, but it's true, is that coaches like Wetmore can find diamonds in the rough, develop them into top guys in the NCAA, and still leave them with room to grow post-collegiately. The last decade and Oregon and to be fair most of the Lannana era Stanford guys tended to top out junior or senior year and didn't get too much better.
Wheating's best year was his senior year of college then sort of rode his incredible talent onto a couple more teams running well below his best.
Centrowitz was always doing his own thing. Rupp, obviously, falls into this camp as well and should not be attributed to Powell.
Acosta had a great junior year then imploded.
Puskedra's best year was maybe soph / jr year then was incredibly erratic.
Fleet was hurt most of college, had about 1.5 great track seasons then fell apart.
Prakel made NCAA final as a freshman then sort of hung around that level. Is still hanging around.
Daniel Winn would be the one example of someone who sucked in HS, got a lot better, and continued getting better for a few years after college.
Alexander floundered most of college until his senior year then did better post-collegiately away from that system.
Dunbar - never really that special.
Blew it with Chad Hall but to be fair he's a Hall so a total flake.
Greer - enormous talent but fell off the face of the earth.
Remember when Verzbicas went to Oregon, briefly?
Noelle - managed to get nothing out of a guy who later was NCAA record holder and NCAA champ.
Cheserek - didn't screw him up, but he didn't get much better either
Jenkins got better and is still getting better
Tanner Anderson was workmanlike
Maton did nothing
Stanovsek got better
Tamagno has regressed
Who did I miss?
Really, when you think about it, there has been such an enormous amount of talent that has passed through Eugene. Much of it has done nothing. And so many ringer grad transfers. Any success Powell had there was just putting the numbers through the meat grinder.