Wagner is the same class as withrow and eagon, and bethke, gasper, lacy, and miller all ran last year. They are definitely not an unexperienced team
Wagner is the same class as withrow and eagon, and bethke, gasper, lacy, and miller all ran last year. They are definitely not an unexperienced team
Wagner (senior) is the same class as withrow(senior) and eagon(senior), and bethke(junior), gasper(junior), lacy(sophomore), and miller(sophomore).
In terms of real age, as opposed to redshirt-to-have-23-year-olds-racing-18-year-olds-cheaters age, this team looks about average to me. Plus they all have at least a cross season of experience, unless you consider how little they race.
He has raced the younger guys more often to get them used to racing in big XC meets. When you looked at who graduated in the last couple of years (Bairu 2xNCAA champ, Teg: almost Bronze at Worlds; Solinsky: 5 NCAA titles, great first Euro races; Nelson: multiple All-American, NCAA 10,000 scorer, good Euro races), they have lost the team leaders. Eagon and Withrow are good but they have not been in the position of team leader at all, and neither have the younger guys. Big Tens will require a good race, as will Regionals and especially NCAAs where there are not 1 or 2 challengers but 8 (a pretty good team could end up 8th this year with --in no particular order--Oregon, CU, Wis, UTEP, NAU, Ark, Iona, Stanford with others in the wings).
Looks to me like Jerry is making excuses before hand in case things don't go according to plan at Conference. He must mention that his team are young about 10 times in that article.
joe90 wrote:
Looks to me like Jerry is making excuses before hand in case things don't go according to plan at Conference. He must mention that his team are young about 10 times in that article.
That's because he was asked about it ten times. Wisconsin is going to dominate conference, dominate regionals, and finish top six at nationals. The Big Ten Conference and Great Lakes Regional are weak this year.
Muck Fichigan
No way they lose conference unless THEY LOSE it -- as in, unless they screw up big time. No one can run close to both their depth AND their two high sticks. Some teams have two runners who, if they run smart, could be top 5-7 in conference (like MN with Rombough and Mead). But I can't see a team out there with the 3-4-5 scores low enough to challenge. I'd be very surprised if Wisconsin doesn't win by at least 25 points.
worst prediction of the year!
Fifth Place?...please explain this one?....I am good listener!
From what I could tell, they didn't run their #1. They certainly could not and will not beat Wisconsin any time soon.
They could have had several #1 runners added to the team and would not have beaten Wisconsin. Wisconsin's 8th man was ahead of Michigan's 3rd guy. The statement that they match up pretty well after first is probably the most off-the-mark of the OP's starting thesis.
The question now is: How good is the rest of the Big Ten and, thus, how good is Wisconsin.
Woods ran. He DNF'd; dropped out somewhere between the 5k and 6k.
like i originally said, keep dreaming. You were looking at how wisco was running early in the season instead of thinking about the fact that schumacher always has them ready to dominate big 10's. Today merely reiterated that fact.
I just did the computations on the spread between 1 and 5. Wisconsin was less than 19 seconds, and less than 40 to #8. Given that they had the #1 guy is very dominating (because first is usually a gap to 2 or at least 3 and 4, and from #2 to 5 it was only 8 seconds).
Wisconsin 19
Minnesota 58 (half of it #5, although #6 was just behind),
Ohio State 53
Indiana U 27
U Michigan 56
U Illinois 1:42
Michigan St 10! (and 11 to #6)
Univ Iowa 1:32
Penn State 32
Purdue U 2:12
Here is another measure of spread, the Standard deviation. I have done this calculation for a) top 5; b) top 6; and c) top 7
# School Score StD 5 StD 6 StD 7
1 U Wisconsin 33 5.7 6.5 6.2
2 Minnesota 65 12.5 13.7 12.9
3 Ohio State 91 15.1 17.2 16.4
4 Indiana Univ 102 7.4 14.0 14.7
5 U Michigan 104 11.7 12.5 12.7
6 U Illinois 152 21.3 21.6 20.9
7 Michigan St 210 4.2 5.1 14.9
8 Univ Iowa 218 17.5 17.4 19.8
9 Penn State 249 7.5 7.8 17.5
10 Purdue Univ 286 16.5 15.6 21.3
Without Woods dropping out UM is top 2 or 3. Bad way to finish a pretty good XC career for the 3:5X.xx miler.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
26mi235 wrote:
I just did the computations on the spread between 1 and 5. Wisconsin was less than 19 seconds, and less than 40 to #8. Given that they had the #1 guy is very dominating (because first is usually a gap to 2 or at least 3 and 4, and from #2 to 5 it was only 8 seconds).
Wisconsin 19
Minnesota 58 (half of it #5, although #6 was just behind),
Ohio State 53
Indiana U 27
U Michigan 56
U Illinois 1:42
Michigan St 10! (and 11 to #6)
Univ Iowa 1:32
Penn State 32
Purdue U 2:12
It looks like Michigan State is the best team in the Big Ten. They only had a 10 second spread between top 5 runners.