Who is going to make it to the Big Dance on Friday?
Here is how things stand if the regional rankings hold up.
Right now the last team in for the men is Portland and the first team out is UNC. For the women, UCONN gets in at #31 with Tennessee, Kentucky, and Illinois just missing out.
Here is a preview of the regionals.
We'll be running Bo Waggoner's program all day Friday to keep you updated.
May the team who runs the best in mud win in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions! Per Accuweather.com:
Northeast Regional weather (Boston, MA):
11/12 morning: "breezy with rain"
wind SE 20mph
wind gusts up to 28 mph
rain ~0.15 in
real feel ~51 degrees
rain is supposed to start around 9am and continue thru the afternoon
Mid-Atlantic Regional weather (Bethlehem, PA):
11/12 morning "periods of rain"
wind S 12mph
wind gusts 16mph
rain ~0.62 in
real feel ~61 degrees
rain predicted to last from 3am to 11am
As with most years, the mountain region is loaded. The question from there will be which deserving team will go home devastated. Weber could throw a monkey wrench into things. There are always surprises in that region.
Portland men go home devastated, not making NCAAs.
I just got an email from a guy who invented a super cool website where he has created a speed rating for all of the NCAA xc runners so you can run simulated meets.
Check this baby out.
You can run a simulated race for tomorrow and see what it projects.
You can even go back and see who blew it at past meets as it shows you what should have happened at conference for example.
https://www.lacctic.com/races/
I'm amazed by that website.
I truly know nothing about what is happening on the boys side.
I am going to predict Chmiel is going to win it for the girls.
NCState will come out on top. BYU a close second.
oaivnre wrote:
I truly know nothing about what is happening on the boys side.
I am going to predict Chmiel is going to win it for the girls.
NCState will come out on top. BYU a close second.
sorry, should save for my national thread. Regionals? who cares.
rojo wrote:
I just got an email from a guy who invented a super cool website where he has created a speed rating for all of the NCAA xc runners so you can run simulated meets.
Check this baby out.
https://www.lacctic.com/You can run a simulated race for tomorrow and see what it projects.
You can even go back and see who blew it at past meets as it shows you what should have happened at conference for example.
https://www.lacctic.com/races/I'm amazed by that website.
This has been on the boards for a few months now. It is a great tool, but it is not perfect. To make a perfect tool might be a fruitless endeavor though. The question I have is why some runners have ratings at least partly based on results from several years ago, while others are all from the current year.
rojo wrote:
I just got an email from a guy who invented a super cool website where he has created a speed rating for all of the NCAA xc runners so you can run simulated meets.
Check this baby out.
https://www.lacctic.com/You can run a simulated race for tomorrow and see what it projects.
You can even go back and see who blew it at past meets as it shows you what should have happened at conference for example.
https://www.lacctic.com/races/I'm amazed by that website.
It's very interesting. I see it ranks the athletes by 5km fitness. I don't know if that would be the best way to rank the men since they will be racing a 10km for the regional and national races. I could see using 5km fitness applying for the women though as they race a 6km.
The only stream that I have been able to find is possibly the meet in Iowa (there appears to be a link) No real coverage - did not see a mention on the front page here. There's a lot riding on these races and a lot of close battles that will be telling.
FastTuohy wrote:
rojo wrote:
I just got an email from a guy who invented a super cool website where he has created a speed rating for all of the NCAA xc runners so you can run simulated meets.
Check this baby out.
https://www.lacctic.com/You can run a simulated race for tomorrow and see what it projects.
You can even go back and see who blew it at past meets as it shows you what should have happened at conference for example.
https://www.lacctic.com/races/I'm amazed by that website.
This has been on the boards for a few months now. It is a great tool, but it is not perfect. To make a perfect tool might be a fruitless endeavor though. The question I have is why some runners have ratings at least partly based on results from several years ago, while others are all from the current year.
Here is an attempt at an explanation.
Imagine we are in track and there is someone who ran under 13 minutes last year. This year the guy has only been in smaller races, maybe he had a race or two that was bad. He has been running 13:30s, but hes been winning them. Then he runs a 12:50. Together with the sub 13 last year and this year, its safe to say hes been in sub 13 shape this whole time, so we use the information from last years PR instead of his tempo races from this year.
Now imagine we have another guy who ran 13:00 last year and has been running 14:00s all of this year without a single good race. We should count both the 13 and the 14s to represent the fact that he is slower now, but could potentially get faster.
Third case: imagine someone who ran 14:00 last year, but now has run 3 races at 13:30, 13:20, 14:10. What fitness would you say that guy has? Id say around 13:25 because the 14:10 was probably a workout. In this case it makes sense to ignore last seasons 5k.
The weighting is dependent on what races are most likely to predict someones fitness. That turns out to be the group of fastest times, but only if at least one run from that group is recent.
Washed-up Grad Student wrote:
Here is an attempt at an explanation.
Imagine we are in track and there is someone who ran under 13 minutes last year. This year the guy has only been in smaller races, maybe he had a race or two that was bad. He has been running 13:30s, but hes been winning them. Then he runs a 12:50. Together with the sub 13 last year and this year, its safe to say hes been in sub 13 shape this whole time, so we use the information from last years PR instead of his tempo races from this year.
Now imagine we have another guy who ran 13:00 last year and has been running 14:00s all of this year without a single good race. We should count both the 13 and the 14s to represent the fact that he is slower now, but could potentially get faster.
Third case: imagine someone who ran 14:00 last year, but now has run 3 races at 13:30, 13:20, 14:10. What fitness would you say that guy has? Id say around 13:25 because the 14:10 was probably a workout. In this case it makes sense to ignore last seasons 5k.
The weighting is dependent on what races are most likely to predict someones fitness. That turns out to be the group of fastest times, but only if at least one run from that group is recent.
Thanks - and I don't want to turn this thread into a LACCTIC thread. And I don't want to come off as being critical, but rather as offering constructive criticism. And I appreciate your algorithm to choose what to count must be somewhat complex and perhaps it is not possible to have one perfect one for all 60,000 runners. But just looking at 2 runners - Covert of CO and Chmiel of NC St, bot of whom have improved a lot this XC season. Covert has slower results from the 2021 Spring that are not used. Chmiel has slower results from 2019 that are. In the grand scheme does it have a huge impact on their rating or the team rating? - probably not. But it seems inconsistent. And there might be runners for whom it would have more of an impact. I just don't understand why the one runner's 2019 results contribute and the other ones early 2021 ones don't.
HOT TAKE!!!! Navy men will qualify and upset Georgetown and Villanova
Ohio State to run a slower team time than Otterbein. Goes home happy about a decent performance.
It's not ranking athletes by 5k fitness, but using 5k as a metric to standardize 8k/10k times by. The second critique in a post further down, of some ppl being seemingly overrated due to fast track times in the past, definitely holds some water tho
The men are interesting because, in my opinion, the mountain region ALWAYS has a team or two who are legitimately deserving of a spot at nationals ahead of the south or south central’s 2nd auto team but get left out. This year will be no different and will likely affect the rest of the country. My predictions for the bubble mountain teams:
-Air Force q
-Colorado St q
-Utah St q
-SUU q
-Montana St goes home
-Weber St goes home
There's really no coverage. Wanted to watch the Mountain region.
Um, where do you watch this stuff?
FastTuohy wrote:
Washed-up Grad Student wrote:
Here is an attempt at an explanation.
Imagine we are in track and there is someone who ran under 13 minutes last year. This year the guy has only been in smaller races, maybe he had a race or two that was bad. He has been running 13:30s, but hes been winning them. Then he runs a 12:50. Together with the sub 13 last year and this year, its safe to say hes been in sub 13 shape this whole time, so we use the information from last years PR instead of his tempo races from this year.
Now imagine we have another guy who ran 13:00 last year and has been running 14:00s all of this year without a single good race. We should count both the 13 and the 14s to represent the fact that he is slower now, but could potentially get faster.
Third case: imagine someone who ran 14:00 last year, but now has run 3 races at 13:30, 13:20, 14:10. What fitness would you say that guy has? Id say around 13:25 because the 14:10 was probably a workout. In this case it makes sense to ignore last seasons 5k.
The weighting is dependent on what races are most likely to predict someones fitness. That turns out to be the group of fastest times, but only if at least one run from that group is recent.
Thanks - and I don't want to turn this thread into a LACCTIC thread. And I don't want to come off as being critical, but rather as offering constructive criticism. And I appreciate your algorithm to choose what to count must be somewhat complex and perhaps it is not possible to have one perfect one for all 60,000 runners. But just looking at 2 runners - Covert of CO and Chmiel of NC St, bot of whom have improved a lot this XC season. Covert has slower results from the 2021 Spring that are not used. Chmiel has slower results from 2019 that are. In the grand scheme does it have a huge impact on their rating or the team rating? - probably not. But it seems inconsistent. And there might be runners for whom it would have more of an impact. I just don't understand why the one runner's 2019 results contribute and the other ones early 2021 ones don't.
Because the times for Covert are much slower whereas Chmiel's times are only a little bit slower. The computer needs to have some cutoff for what it considers the top cluster of times.
The current weighting scheme works well on historical data. If I (or someone else) come up with something simpler that does not sacrifice the accuracy of prediction , I'll change it.
Stupid question-
I’m looking at the rosters of teams in the Great Lakes region and seeing 9 & 10 runners listed. Same in the Mountain region. How many are allowed to run on a team? Perhaps I wasn’t paying attention in past years but I thought only 7 ran on a team once it got to the regional & national meets?