2021 Ivy League XC predictions...?

Bekele superfan wrote:

It seems that all four of the teams were racing their B squads this weekend or at the very least holding out their top 5-7. Sub-par showing from Columbia, Yale, and Brown who look to be struggling for depth this year. Dartmouth seemed to win New England's handily and look they are on the rise at the moment.

Agree that it was the B squads for all of them last weekend.

Looking ahead at the weekend schedule, it seems that the A squads will be sent to either Nuttycombe (Columbia, Dartmouth men, Harvard), Virginia Panorama XC23 Invite (Penn men, Yale) or Pre-Nationals (Princeton) for Kolas points. I'm not sure how the field will be at the Penn State National Invite this year (Cornell, Penn women), but the live results website suggest the men will race a 5.2-mile while the women will race a 6km. I'll see for these meets if more team info is available as the week progresses.

Teams not doing the big Kolas point meets:

- Dartmouth women: splitting between Suffolk Invite (Franklin Park, Boston) and Princeton XC Invite (HepsXC preview) on 10/16

- Brown is off this weekend

- Harvard's B squads will remain local as they race Suffolk Invite.

- Cornell will have their B squad stay local with the RC Munsey XC Invite on 10/15

Brown does not have any races outside of the Northeast region until HepsXC (Princeton - 10/30). Either Brown is trying to keep on a budget or the school recognizes they have a minimal shot of even getting a chance of making it out of Regionals this year (team-wide or individual-wise).

Live results link for PreNats (Ed Trippas is listed among the entries; Princeton men) - Friday at 8am

https://live.pttiming.com/xc-ptt.html?mid=2367

Live results link for Nuttycombe Invite (Columbia women, Dartmouth men, Harvard men/women) - Friday, varsity races start at 1:20pm

https://live.pttiming.com/XC-PTT.html?mid=2368

Live results for PSU National Open (Cornell men/women, Penn women) - Friday at 10:45am

https://live.pttiming.com/XC-PTT.html?mid=2369

Live results for Virginia Panorama Farms XC23 Invite (Penn men, Yale men/women) - Friday at 10am

https://www.flashresults.com/2022_Meets/xc/XC23/index.htm

PreNationals varsity races are done.

The Princeton men finished 7th overall in the team standings, which was higher than I thought they would get (I figured they would be somewhere between 10 and 15th). In the process, the team bested nationally ranked #20 Florida State (8th), #22 Alabama (9th), #28 Ole Miss (11th), and #30 Charlotte (17th). Ed Trippas as the Tiger #1, and the 5-person scoring spread was only 20 seconds. I think Princeton will be the team to beat come HepsXC.

Name, place, time (8km)

Ed Trippas [SR] - 39 23:41.7

Kevin Berry [SR] - 41 23:43.7

Anthony Monte [FR] - 58 23:55.3

Jakob Kintzele [JR] - 63 23:57.2

Joshua Zelek [SO] - 70 24:01.6

Matt Grossman [SR] - 113 24:19.3

Connor Nisbet [SO] - 117 24:20.9

Matthew Farrell [FR] - 136 24:30.9

Nuttycombe races will take place after lunch (1:20pm ET for women, 2:00pm ET for men), but the PSU National races start in about an hour (10:45am ET for women, 11:30am ET for men)

The UVA Panorama XC23 Invite is wrapping up.

In the men's 8km race, Penn got the team title with 52 points and a 42 second spread, led by senior Noah Carey in 4th place overall (24:12.5). Penn went 4-7-8-13-20-(27)-(28). The top Ivy Leaguer was Yale junior Robert Miranda (2nd, 23:59.8, about 7 seconds behind the winner), who I think will be a First Team selection come HepsXC and could contend for the individual title. The Yale team finished 4th with 65 points (2-11-12-18-22-(23)-(36)) with a 1:02 spread.

The Yale women dominated the 5km race, as they got both the team and individual titles. Defending HepsXC champion Kayley Delay got the win with a time of 16:39.0, while the team finished 1-3-5-11-12-(19)-(29) with a scoring spread of 1:16. They were the only Ivy team in the race.

No nationally ranked or receiving vote teams were in either race.

At the PSU National Open:

Cornell won the men's 5.2-mile team title, as their scoring five all finished in the top 10 (3-6-7-8-10-(19)-(21)). Junior Perry Mackinnon finished third overall (25:30.6), while the scoring spread was 29 seconds.

In the women's 6km race, Penn had the edge over Cornell through the 4800m time split (scores of 134 to 159 at 4800m), but Cornell had a stronger final 1km as a team, edging out Penn by 3 points. Cornell finished 5th (148) while Penn finished 6th (151) in the team standings. Cornell was led by sophomore Izzy MacFarlane (8th overall, 21:12.6), going 8-28-31-36-45-(55)-(63) with a 1:15.9 scoring spread. Penn was led by junior Ariana Gardizy (14th place, 21:24.8), going 14-22-29-34-52-(67)-(80) with a 1:09.5 scoring spread.

And now for Wisconsin/Nuttycombe Invite:

For the women's 6km, Harvard and Columbia finished in the back half of the field. The Harvard women finished 25th as a team (led by rookie Maia Ramsden in 59th place, 21:00.8), with a scoring spread of 1:06.9 and 59-65-141-175-197-(202)-(220). Columbia's top runner was also a freshman - Phoebe Anderson, who finished 58th overall with a time of 21:00.7. The Columbia team finished 30th in the field, with a scoring spread of 1:31.2 and 58-135-167-178-221-(228)-(233). A total of 36 teams were in the field.

For the men's 8km, it was just Harvard and Dartmouth (I thought the Columbia men were also supposed to show). Harvard finished 13th overall, beating regional foe Syracuse by a wide margin (they finished 20th). Harvard was led by senior Matthew Pereira (27th, 23:50.8), followed right behind by rookie Graham Blanks (28th, 23:51.9). Harvard's spread was 1:14.9 (note, top three had a spread of under 3 seconds), going 27-28-33-118-165-(184)-(205), getting 366 points. Dartmouth finished 29th in the team standing with 836 points, led by rookie Will Daley (107, 24:34.3). Their spread of 1:11.5, with their runners going 107-156-190-191-196-(207) (they did not have a seventh finisher as they had two guys drop during the race).

Princeton men now a heavy favorite. Harvard has no depth.

Huge day for Harvard. Beat Syracuse Iona and many other ranked teams. They will be favorites for Northeast Regional. Looks like they are putting things together.

nuttysgoo wrote:

Huge day for Harvard. Beat Syracuse Iona and many other ranked teams. They will be favorites for Northeast Regional. Looks like they are putting things together.

Harvard is peaking early. This was their 3rd HARD race this season, and Heps will be 100%. They have a young group who have never had a full season of 8k racing. High probably they are exhausted by regionals. The 8k to 10k jump might be hard for them. Iona has the luxury of being able to win their conference with their B team.

Wtf happened to Dartmouth. Are they just THAT BAD now?

Maybe. They are young but talented

A few of the Ivy teams got a course preview at the Princeton XC Invitational this morning.

In the men's 8km race, the Columbia men finished 3rd while host Princeton finished 7th. Columbia's lineup featured 8 freshmen, one junior, and one senior. Senior David Vorbach led the team with a 5th place finish (24:19.1), followed by junior Tyler Berg (11th, 24:39.4). The team went 5-11-14-33-37-(70)-(83) and 1:03.8 scoring spread. Princeton's B-team lineup also featured a very young group: three freshmen, four sophomores, and one senior. Sophomore Duncan Miller was the first Princeton finisher (22nd, 24:58.6), followed by rookie Harrison Witt (27th, 25:10.6). Princeton's scoring was 21-26-32-42-67-(124)-(129) and a 52.8 scoring spread.

The women's race was marked as 6.1km. Host Princeton won both the individual and team titles, led by rookie Fiona Max (21:16.4). Princeton had six freshmen, two sophomores, and two juniors complete the race. Their scoring was 1-7-8-11-12-(14)-(15) and a spread of 40 seconds. Dartmouth was second in the team scoring (9-17-21-23-29-(35)-(41)), led by rookie Ellie Tymorek (21:52.6). The young team had a 44 second scoring spread. The lineup included 6 freshmen, two sophomores, two juniors, and two seniors. Columbia women sent a B-team to Princeton, where they finished 17th in team scoring (61-74-76-91-105-(118)), led by rookie Lillian Bradley (67th, 23:36.7).

USTFCCCA released their national rankings. None of the women teams are ranked or receiving votes; however, both Princeton men (#18) and Harvard men (#25) are now formally ranked after receiving votes in previous polls. Next round of national rankings will be released after conference championship weekend.

Heps Countdown has officially begun... going to say Harvard gives Princeton a scare, but you can't overcome that kind of depth--especially on their home course. Cornell grabs third, Yale fourth, Penn fifth, Columbia sixth, Dartmouth seventh and Brown eighth... with a caveat that those last three could move around depending on day-of performances.

I agree that Princeton is the strong favorite and Harvard is a likely second . . . but I think there's a lot of parity between 3 and 7, Brown clearly being the weakest of the lot this year. I can't see Penn getting lower than 5th, but other than that I think we could see any order of teams between 3 and 7. Any team who wants to finish in the top half will have to show up on the day.

This is between Harvard and Princeton. Harvard definitely has the talent up front but can they hold off the depth of Princeton? They can place two or three guys in the top 5 and hope they have a good finish by the 5th man. Princeton has a ton of depth and is at home.

bruber wrote:

This is between Harvard and Princeton. Harvard definitely has the talent up front but can they hold off the depth of Princeton? They can place two or three guys in the top 5 and hope they have a good finish by the 5th man. Princeton has a ton of depth and is at home.

It should be noted that Harvard beat Princeton by 1 point at the HYP tri-meet in early September, even though Harvard rookie Graham Blanks was somehow "misdirected" on the course (he probably would have won if he had stayed on the proper race path, but he finished 3rd) and Princeton did not run Ed Trippas due to his long outdoor season from the Olympics. Harvard has had a pretty consistent top 5, but their scoring spread has ranged from 42 (Battle in Beantown) to 75 (Nuttycombe) to 88 seconds (HYP). Princeton has only 2 results with what I'll call A-team performances due to competition (HYP and Pre-Nats) but they've had 9 guys be in the scoring 5 among those two races. Their scoring spreads were 32 seconds (HYP) and 20 seconds (Pre-Nats).

I think Princeton men will get the team title due to their depth.

We can follow the meet through leonetiming.com

https://results.leonetiming.com/xc.html?mid=4683

Is Colin Baker update? His 48th place finish at NCAAs in 2019 was extremely impressive, but I can't find any record of him racing since Indoor of 2020. From what I can tell, he's on Harvard's cross roster this season but hasn't raced yet. Does anyone know if he will be running at Heps?