Personally I have Leo due to his immense success in cross country, however Tyrone Gorze could be a sleeper pick. I suspect lex and Connor to be up there as well.
Personally I have Leo due to his immense success in cross country, however Tyrone Gorze could be a sleeper pick. I suspect lex and Connor to be up there as well.
I think guessing freshie performances at NCAAs is a total crapshoot. Still fun to predict, but impossible to have any certainty at all. Prime example is Nico Young vs Colin Sahlman's performances as freshmen. Both were (almost) equally dominant as highschool seniors in XC and track, and both ran at the top of their classes as collegiate freshmen on the track, but while Nico finished 4th in XC, Sahlman couldn't even crack the top 100.
My predictions by likelyhood of top 20:
1- Leo Young
2- no one. I'd be shocked if even his twin brother cracked top 20 this year. 4 years from now should be a much different story though
Nico was clearly an aerobic monster who won because he was so much stronger than everybody else. He never ran a fast mile (compared with his 3k/5k) and never showed that he had much of a kick in HS, two signs of someone who's more geared towards the longer distances. He is a 10k/marathon runner who obviously never got to race that in HS. Meanwhile, Colin Sahlman was clearly more speed oriented and his best distance was the mile. Although he ran really good 3mile/5k times, that was already pushing the limits of his range and 10k XC is just not his event.
I think Gorze and the Youngs will be all-Americans next year. Birnbaum and Aaron Sahlman especially will go the way of Colin finishing in the 90s-110s. Burns might be good but I don't think he'll break the top 50.
Jonathan Commentor wrote:
I think guessing freshie performances at NCAAs is a total crapshoot. Still fun to predict, but impossible to have any certainty at all. Prime example is Nico Young vs Colin Sahlman's performances as freshmen. Both were (almost) equally dominant as highschool seniors in XC and track, and both ran at the top of their classes as collegiate freshmen on the track, but while Nico finished 4th in XC, Sahlman couldn't even crack the top 100.
My predictions by likelyhood of top 20:
1- Leo Young
2- no one. I'd be shocked if even his twin brother cracked top 20 this year. 4 years from now should be a much different story though
Although your point still stands for other guys, Nico Young did get 4 extra months to prepare for his first NCAA XC championship due to Covid delay. In addition, the pace of the whole race at that 2021 early champs was insanely slow overall compared to the most recent one on the exact same course. (almost full minute slower)
Now that we're seeing Sahlman show up pretty well for Outdoor track season, I think Sahlman with that extra months of prep would have done much better in his first XC champs.
Daniel Simmons Fall of ‘24
Gorze. After that 29:00 (that probably could have been faster) I could see a top 25 finish.
I would say Noah Breker is the most likely to crack top 25 in cross country, but I could see a handful in the mix.