Westlake Tavern Pizza wrote:
Ok7272 wrote:
[quote]Westlake Tavern Pizza wrote:
He's up against challenging expectations but again those expectations are coming from cynics on this board.
Washington scored points in every distance event in the Pac-12 championships. They had 3 pretty strong contenders in the steeple, the 10K, the 5K, 800, and 1500. I'd say it's a pretty stacked bench.
For sure, but the expectations also come from Powell's prior success at Oregon and the larger context of other successful NCAA programs. For the talent UW takes in, the Pac-12 showings and 3x sub-1:50, 7x sub-3:45, 6x sub-14 and 3x sub-29 would be what's hoped for an arguably expected. But in their own conference they're flanked by UO with 7x sub-1:50 and 9x sub-3:45 and Stanford with 10x sub-14 and 3x sub-29.
Other programs producing that level and breadth of results are seeing that translate into real results at a national level. As I've said before: the real question is can those efforts be repeated when it counts and year-after-year. Other programs have made that happen, UW has yet to but I think and hope that they will. I think Powell is a great coach and things will come together. They have the makings of a crushing team next season and the season after.
Let's look at the 5 distance events:
1. Looking at it now, in the 10K, Wash had 3 scorers, Andrew Jordan (who was also consistently good in indoor and I believe qualified for the 15-field final in 5K), Tibebu Proctor and Talon Hull (who was 3rd or 4th in XC, I believe).
2. In the 3KSt, Joe Waskom finished 2nd in 8:35, that's one of the top times in the country, and I'm not sure if Wes Kiptoo will be running or in his prime or where that 5th year from Alabama will stand, so he could get score pretty high at nationals. Of the two other Wash athletes in the race, I seem to remember one of them having a good seed time, but it won't let me see the start list, and I'm not going to do deep a dive
3. In the 800, Mick Stevanesk scored (although in 8th) but I seem to recall him and Cruz Culpepper having good seed times
4. In the 1500, as you probably know Sam Tanner qualified for the Olympics and has the 2nd fastest time in collegiate history behind Yared Nuguse. Dustin Naiding scored (8th) and of the final 12, 4 were Washington, 4 were Oregon, 1 was Stanford, 0 was Colorado.
5. In the 5K Isaac Green scored in 8th.
They scored 31 points in 5 events. I'm not going to go back and count Colorado, Stanford or Oregon's total, but Oregon was blessed with some really really good guys.
Now, Oregon vs Washington on distance, yeah, you give it to Oregon, Colorado doesn't have a deep bench but has two bigger stars (and one's a cheat bc isn't Joe Dressler like a 6th year senior by now?), but Washington has tons of guys and that counts in cross-country and conference races. Washington vs Stanford, I'd give a huge edge to Washington. Stanford always gets great recruits but they couldn't make it on the podium in XC and their crew seems to be focusing most of their efforts on the 5K in the 13:35-13:45 range which isn't going to make a dent in big meets when there will likely be 20-25 ppl capable of running around 13:30 or under.
In the interim, at nationals, Sam Tanner is a 1500 contender, they have a steeplechase contender at nationals, they have potential scorers in steeplechase or whatever Andrew Jordan runs.
In cross-country, I could easily see Washington easily being top 5-8 at the moment. I don't think they ran it this past year?