It takes a real tough guy to call those guys "shitty athletes" while hiding behind a screen name.
The team has had varying levels of dedicated and not-so dedicated runners in the past but the improvements in the last few years has been the result of a team that has overall taken running much more seriously. I don't know who you are, but I doubt you know the team better than I do, or any of the other UD guys who have posted on this thread.
When you say UD gets "plenty of above average" runners, I understand what you're trying to say. But when you get a couple of as you call them "above average" runners every year (sometimes one or even none though) it's tough to take big risks with their training and force everybody to go out and kill it all the time. In other words, in a program like this you have to pick your spots, train the walk-ons intelligently, and hope for the best. On the other hand, look at a team like William and Mary where a 9:20 kid is nothing exciting at all, and you get 15-20 guys like that together, train them hard as shit and you get a great team. On both teams you end up with guys under-performing, getting hurt, quitting, whatever. But with a team full of studs it's not noticeable.
The runner from NY who ran 9:15 in high school ran in the 14:40's and 24:40's in his time at Delaware despite a variety of serious health issues that limited his running greatly the last three years of his career here.
Like I said, you get things like this that happen at a really good school and nobody notices because there's more depth, but on a team like Delaware it looks much worse. That's why I said in an earlier post, success here is largely determined by general team improvement (mostly improvement of walk-ons).
Of course this is all a moot point as the team wasn't cut due to its competition level.