Notre Dame Men in Hibernation

Nuguse skipped the olympics to be ready for cross surprised he hasn't raced

Carmody ran well.

Carlson may be getting too cute? Some of those All-Americans are somewhat unproven. Wonder why coaches in his position are scared of less than a perfect race on October 1st. Furman better than I thought, but ND would’ve won easily with a couple of their guys.

shootpost wrote:

Nuguse skipped the olympics to be ready for cross

False.

Anyway, disappointed that they didn't have at least some of the top guys (Carmody notwithstanding) out there at their home meet today.

As a former Domer cross country captain, I would have LOVED to see their top 7 run today. Carmody was not in the top 7 last year, he was fighting injuries, but he ran well today, finishing 4th. Yes, with their 6 returning All-Americans plus Carmody, ND would have easily won today. It looks like they are training hard until Pre-Nationals in 2 weeks. Knowing Carlson, that means it's going to be a lot more strength miles. Their top runners (excluding Carmody) will run 4 races total this fall. Pre-Nats, ACC, Regionals and Nationals. They ran all their frosh and sophs today. Suppose they are really, really, really peaking only for Nationals to try to beat NAU. But yeah, dude, defend your own XCountry course!

Notre Dame didn't want to get their feelings hurt if it didn't go well. Poor little boys. NAU and OK State will smash them.

Notre Dame can do what they want. However, why did other schools pay the entry fee and travel to South Bend if ND does not think it is an important meet? Is this where we are heading as a sport? Then perhaps everyone should just run a local scrimmage meet and hold off competing until Conference & Regionals. It would save a lot of travel funds. Do you want to suggest this to your AD?

Old Big East wrote:

Notre Dame can do what they want. However, why did other schools pay the entry fee and travel to South Bend if ND does not think it is an important meet? Is this where we are heading as a sport? Then perhaps everyone should just run a local scrimmage meet and hold off competing until Conference & Regionals. It would save a lot of travel funds. Do you want to suggest this to your AD?

ND and other top 5 times do not need to get points in the regular season by racing hard because they will win conference and regional and make nationals.

Other teams need to go hard now just to get a national bid. Only like 5 teams can use this strategy because they are good, fortunate, and using their talent to their advantage

14 teams can use this strategy.

This is becoming the norm nationwide. NAU didn’t even run their top guys at their conference championship. Carlson knows what he’s doing and ND and Stanford are unlike any other top XC schools. These aren’t general studies students who are on campus for one purpose (running). These are premed and aerospace engineering students first, and NCAA All Americans second! They don’t have time to over race.

ND has 6 returning All Americans from last year, the number one recruiting class in 2020 (all redshirt freshman this year), and already has one of the top incoming classes for 2022 with recruits Sam Rich, Ethan Coleman, and CJ Singleton all verbal commits so far. ND going to be on top for many years to come.

You are incorrect. They have no more STEM students than other teams.

As someone who has visited numerous top 20 programs on recruiting visits with athletes, I can assure you that many (but not all) top schools make it very difficult to major in engineering or other rigorous academic programs and still participate in athletics. They will tell you it’s possible, but the practice schedule speaks otherwise. ND and Stanford most likely have far more STEM students than other top 10 programs. I’m not sure anyone goes to NAU for the academics.

You are incorrect. ND has fewer in STEM than BYU and other top 10 programs. My son did it at Michigan and maintained a 4.0 GPA. Smart students have no problem.

Of course it doesn’t really matter how well a team races until late October and November.

I got the impression that ND training includes hard barn burner workouts so I can only assume they’re doing those instead of racing

Runtothelight wrote:

As a former Domer cross country captain, I would have LOVED to see their top 7 run today. Carmody was not in the top 7 last year, he was fighting injuries, but he ran well today, finishing 4th. Yes, with their 6 returning All-Americans plus Carmody, ND would have easily won today. It looks like they are training hard until Pre-Nationals in 2 weeks. Knowing Carlson, that means it's going to be a lot more strength miles. Their top runners (excluding Carmody) will run 4 races total this fall. Pre-Nats, ACC, Regionals and Nationals. They ran all their frosh and sophs today. Suppose they are really, really, really peaking only for Nationals to try to beat NAU. But yeah, dude, defend your own XCountry course!

As an ND grad (probably long before your time) I hope the strategy works. I know the current Wisconsin coach has held his likely 'points' team out until pre-nats in previous years, but I think sometimes it has left them less sharp. UW raced at Louisville this weekend, but given their ranking they may well need the points to make nationals.

Look, I get waiting to race until it really matters. But they were hosting the biggest meet in the country with a slew of ranked teams attending. It’s embarrassing for our sport. This wouldn’t happen in ANY OTHER SPORT PERIOD. They should get slaughtered in the rankings because of it.

So what. Rankings don't matter.

Their top 5 will only run ACC to win conference then run just hard enough to win regionals then go for it at Nats.