A college coach just sent me a screenshot of these heats. Can't believe how stacked heat 2 is.
It's got NCAA champs Houser/Waskom/Green, the guy who beat them at Pac-12s in Elliott Cook, second-fastest collegian ever (Colin Sahlman, 3:33) and Adam Spencer, who just won the Aussie title in April.
NCAAs does seeds based on regionals rather than the regular season but it's wild how unbalanced these heats are.
A college coach just sent me a screenshot of these heats. Can't believe how stacked heat 2 is.
It's got NCAA champs Houser/Waskom/Green, the guy who beat them at Pac-12s in Elliott Cook, second-fastest collegian ever (Colin Sahlman, 3:33) and Adam Spencer, who just won the Aussie title in April.
NCAAs does seeds based on regionals rather than the regular season but it's wild how unbalanced these heats are.
maybe if the faster guys ran faster in the qualifying heats things would get split up better? The regional qualifiers were basically all 3:38-3:41 times with the east heats a little faster than the west
A college coach just sent me a screenshot of these heats. Can't believe how stacked heat 2 is.
It's got NCAA champs Houser/Waskom/Green, the guy who beat them at Pac-12s in Elliott Cook, second-fastest collegian ever (Colin Sahlman, 3:33) and Adam Spencer, who just won the Aussie title in April.
NCAAs does seeds based on regionals rather than the regular season but it's wild how unbalanced these heats are.
The one advantage these guys have is they will have seen the times in heat 1. If they're smart and courageous they'll run fast enough to get seven out of heat 2.
A college coach just sent me a screenshot of these heats. Can't believe how stacked heat 2 is.
It's got NCAA champs Houser/Waskom/Green, the guy who beat them at Pac-12s in Elliott Cook, second-fastest collegian ever (Colin Sahlman, 3:33) and Adam Spencer, who just won the Aussie title in April.
NCAAs does seeds based on regionals rather than the regular season but it's wild how unbalanced these heats are.
The one advantage these guys have is they will have seen the times in heat 1. If they're smart and courageous they'll run fast enough to get seven out of heat 2.
That’s a good point, and yet so often athletes fail to exploit that advantage.
The heats are uneven, but I would say it’s possible to get basically the 12 best guys currently through to the final.
Pretty crazy that of last years top 7, 5 are in H2 with only one in H1. And H2 has a 2x indoor champ in Waskom, Cook and Sahlman too not accounted for in that.
In addition to being imbalanced, they managed to put 11/12 guys from the East in Heat 1 and West in Heat 2. Somebody in the calculated just over a 1 in 10,000 chance of this happening randomly, and you would think the seeding procedure would make the heats balanced by region.
Any and all predictions post here. How dominant will Valby, Rose and Young be? Will Habtom Samuel be able to overcome his lack of a kick to win an NCAA title? Start lists located here.
Look at you guys thinking that a running CV should factor into the creation of Heats. Perhaps they should have coded a program that took everyone's stats and then used that to build the heat sheets!
Idiots.
They used the only fair criteria they were given, that which the athletes themselves provided from the Regional meets.
Look at you guys thinking that a running CV should factor into the creation of Heats. Perhaps they should have coded a program that took everyone's stats and then used that to build the heat sheets!
Idiots.
They used the only fair criteria they were given, that which the athletes themselves provided from the Regional meets.
The problem is nearly all the heavy hitters this season happen to come from the West, and by random chance the heats were almost perfectly separated by region, only swapping the last little q's. So for everybody except those last qualifiers, regional placement had no bearing on their heat assignment.
There is no perfect solution, and I'm sure the NCAA does not have the time nor resources to manually ensure heats are balanced. But it would be nice if their system could somehow "flag" whether a heat is unbalanced and re-shuffle, or at least ensure each heat has equal representation by region.
The semi-final heats are fine. Totally based on place and time from the quarter-finals.
The end
Right it just worked out that the fastest and slowest by place in the 4 regional heats came from east. Just a fluke that the 1 east heat was faster across the board than both west heats while the second east heat was very slow.
The semi-final heats are fine. Totally based on place and time from the quarter-finals.
The end
There is no controversy here. Parvej Kahn, Liam Murphy, Ethan Strand, and Anass Essayi are all VERY capable of winning the NCAA championship. Gary Martin has podium potential as well. Steven Jackson is a wild card, he looked EXTREMELY RELAXED running 3:38 at regionals.
Based on the NCAA times so far this outdoor season, heat 1 is far more stacked than heat 2.
The problem is nearly all the heavy hitters this season happen to come from the West, and by random chance the heats were almost perfectly separated by region, only swapping the last little q's. So for everybody except those last qualifiers, regional placement had no bearing on their heat assignment.
There is no perfect solution, and I'm sure the NCAA does not have the time nor resources to manually ensure heats are balanced. But it would be nice if their system could somehow "flag" whether a heat is unbalanced and re-shuffle, or at least ensure each heat has equal representation by region.
...but unbalanced based on what, your opinion?
They have a system in place to assign the heats, basically like every meet with rounds, based on performance in the previous heats.
If runners have preferred heat placements, they need to run differently to ensure desired result.
Most runners want to get through the heats running as slowly as possible (correct strategy), but then you risk strange placement in the next round
The problem is nearly all the heavy hitters this season happen to come from the West, and by random chance the heats were almost perfectly separated by region, only swapping the last little q's. So for everybody except those last qualifiers, regional placement had no bearing on their heat assignment.
There is no perfect solution, and I'm sure the NCAA does not have the time nor resources to manually ensure heats are balanced. But it would be nice if their system could somehow "flag" whether a heat is unbalanced and re-shuffle, or at least ensure each heat has equal representation by region.
...but unbalanced based on what, your opinion?
They have a system in place to assign the heats, basically like every meet with rounds, based on performance in the previous heats.
If runners have preferred heat placements, they need to run differently to ensure desired result.
Most runners want to get through the heats running as slowly as possible (correct strategy), but then you risk strange placement in the next round
Good point. I was tossing around the idea of using season's bests or last year's places to flag heat assignments that are extremely unbalanced, but even those might not be good indicators, and adding anything like that to the current system would overcomplicate things. Thinking about it more, I agree that the current system of seeding by regional placement is best (like you said, it appropriately incentivizes people to run well at regionals).
However, to those saying something along the lines of "It's their own fault for not running harder at regionals", that would not have mattered.
It looks like seeding is strictly done on regional placement (not time), but someone please correct me if I am wrong. So I imagine the seeding procedure (effectively) takes the four heat winners from regionals, randomly assigns two to Heat 1 and two to Heat 2, then so on for the 2nd placers down to the time qualifiers. In this specific case, since everybody from the same region (except the final time qualifiers) ended up in the same heat by chance, the order they finished at regionals would not have changed their heat assignment.
You could argue that there should be a safeguard against the (rare) chance of the heats being so region-heavy, but nothing would truly prevent heats from being unbalanced.
They have a system in place to assign the heats, basically like every meet with rounds, based on performance in the previous heats.
If runners have preferred heat placements, they need to run differently to ensure desired result.
Most runners want to get through the heats running as slowly as possible (correct strategy), but then you risk strange placement in the next round
Good point. I was tossing around the idea of using season's bests or last year's places to flag heat assignments that are extremely unbalanced, but even those might not be good indicators, and adding anything like that to the current system would overcomplicate things. Thinking about it more, I agree that the current system of seeding by regional placement is best (like you said, it appropriately incentivizes people to run well at regionals).
However, to those saying something along the lines of "It's their own fault for not running harder at regionals", that would not have mattered.
It looks like seeding is strictly done on regional placement (not time), but someone please correct me if I am wrong. So I imagine the seeding procedure (effectively) takes the four heat winners from regionals, randomly assigns two to Heat 1 and two to Heat 2, then so on for the 2nd placers down to the time qualifiers. In this specific case, since everybody from the same region (except the final time qualifiers) ended up in the same heat by chance, the order they finished at regionals would not have changed their heat assignment.
You could argue that there should be a safeguard against the (rare) chance of the heats being so region-heavy, but nothing would truly prevent heats from being unbalanced.
I don't think it is random. I think the fastest and slowest winners of the 4 regional heats go to one semi final heat, and the other 2 go to the other semi final heat. Repeat for 2nd place finishers, etc. Since the east had the fastest and slowest regional finishers place by place they all go to the same semi heat and the west go to the other.
A college coach just sent me a screenshot of these heats. Can't believe how stacked heat 2 is.
It's got NCAA champs Houser/Waskom/Green, the guy who beat them at Pac-12s in Elliott Cook, second-fastest collegian ever (Colin Sahlman, 3:33) and Adam Spencer, who just won the Aussie title in April.
NCAAs does seeds based on regionals rather than the regular season but it's wild how unbalanced these heats are.
This just shows the ignorance of Gault. The sections are balanced correctly based on regionals times, and the 1st section is actually much stronger if you look at current seasons bests.
You could argue that there should be a safeguard against the (rare) chance of the heats being so region-heavy, but nothing would truly prevent heats from being unbalanced.
The NCAA does not really even consider the first meets as regionals, they are just preliminary heats of one national meet.
In 1500 the preliminary heats and quarter finals happen on 1st weekend and the semis and final are on the second weekend.
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