Interesting that you have Olinger at #10; he was behind EIGHT Wisconsin runners at Big 10s; the only one that he was ahead of, Bobby Lockhart, finished 24th in that race. Lockhart then finished a not-far-back 6th at the Regional meet. It looks like Wisconsin could have gone as high 1,2,3,4,6,8,10 at Regionals if had been their objective, which is obviously wasn’t. As noted above, Regionals is a qualifying race for the finals; you go as hard as you need to so that you position yourself for the final.
Bairu was 1:40 ahead of Lockhart at Big 10s guy, so you can see that UW was using the Regional meet as a brisk practice run; no one “beat” Bairu in that race, they merely finished ahead of him. In fact the only collegiate runner that might have actually beaten Bairu in two years is Withrow if he finished ahead of Bairu at the World Champs XC (he has won two straight Canadian National XC Champs).
Jerry (the coach) has a dilemma in who to race in 4, 5, 6, and 7 because he can chose between Eagon, Ford, Wagner, Tim Nelson (a 28:45 10K guy), and Gregory. They are both good at the top and good through to their 9th runner. I think that Bairu will be the first UW runner because he has really been dominant and because he is an excellent cross-country runner with 28:04 track speed and good racing skills.
I think Wisconsin will win on strength down the line and that Arkansas’s 4th, 5th, and 6th runners will run better than many seem to think and will finish a possibly very close second. For Colorado, magic does not strike twice and they are probably the best team for third. There are a number of teams (Arizona, Iona, Notre Dame to name just some of the best candidates from the next group) that could step up but none of them are deep enough throughout the lineup to be reliably predictable for 3rd (much less as number 1, although stranger things have happened).