At the FSU Winter XC Last Chance, Michigan's top 5 had an average time of 24:01.
Compare that to the FSU Winter Classic held a few weeks earlier. Q denotes a team that was selected to qualify for XC nationals.
Q - Stanford 23:49
Q - ISU 23:49
Q - CU 23:53
(Michigan 24:01)
- FSU 24:13
Q - USU 24:14
Q - Wake Forest 24:14
Q - Duke 24:19
Q - Syracuse 24:22
Q - Southern Utah 24:23
- CBU 24:29
FSU averaged 24:04 at the Last Chance meet which was 9 second improvment. Syracuse averaged 23:55 at the Last Chance meet which was a 27 second improvement. Taking that into consideration, maybe Michigan would have averaged 24:15 or so at the FSU Winter Classic.
Either way you look at it, Michigan is definitely better than multiple teams that qualified.