Is Nat Champs Ok State vs. Wisconsin, or am I missing something?

Wins the 'unnecessarily idiotic complaint of the day' award. Your criticism does nothing to diminish the usefulness of his post, which is greater than yours, which useful impact is diminished by the complaint.

It is possible that Wisconsin would give OK State a harder challenge at 8K versus 10k. I for one would like to see the NCAA championship held over the shorter distance 8K. A little more emphasis on speed over strength.

No way is anyone beating this Badger team. They all finished together at the invite and looked relaxed in the process. The case is closed, no way is anyone beating Wis, they are the embodiment of TEAM.

I would also like to see all the men wear pink shorts.

I still think OSU is going to win, but the other one you can't be sure about (besides which Stanford will show up) is Indiana. They ran well against OSU at OSU, and now they split their squad, so nobody really knows how strong they really are.

I believe Martin Smith is being cagey and not putting on his best performance, and Indiana appears to be doing the same.

Anonther Comparator wrote:

Cameron Levins of Southern Utah ran against the Wisconsin guys at Delinger and the OSU guys at Chile Pepper.

1 #143 Cameron Levins Southern Utah 4:39.8 23:10.51 1

2 #191 Reed Connor Wisconsin 4:41.4 23:18.88 2

3 #161 Chad Hall UC Riverside 4:41.5 23:18.91 3

Heyyyy look at Chad Hall coming along nicely. Is that Ryan Hall's lil brother? What's his talent like?

runnereight wrote:

It is possible that Wisconsin would give OK State a harder challenge at 8K versus 10k. I for one would like to see the NCAA championship held over the shorter distance 8K. A little more emphasis on speed over strength.

Wisconsin will be harder to beat over 10k. Four out of their top five are 10k guys with more strength than speed. I think Reed Connor is the one out of their top five who is better at the shorter track races with a nice kick, since he won the 5k Big Ten championship out kicking his teammates, Hassan Mead, and the Indiana guys.

Whoever steals those two Oklahoma Christian Kenyans will be in a seriously good position.

Wisconsin is running a lot like Stanford has the last two years...It's hard to say what will happen during the stress and pace at NCAA's...Stanford went from looking unbeatable to atrocious when the real stress hit...We'll see.

Comparator,

thank you! this is exactly what I was looking for!

Yeah, it doesn't mean much... but it reenforces my hunch that Wisco will win it. (but who knows?) UW have the mental factor going for them right now as well. Their performance is much more impressive at first glance than anything OSU has done - even though they're running great.

HOWEVER, I could something sorta like this happening:

OSU places 3, 5, 9, 20, 21 = 58

UW places 11, 12, 13, 16, 17 = 69

Anyway, I could see them scoring a pattern like that. Way off? What does everyone think? (I think those scores are probably to low, mostly I mean the pattern.)

It will be interesting to see where Wisconsin's pack sits in relation to OSU's top guys once the race settles and then when/if they'll go into every man for himself mode.

I would say Mo Ahmed will finish ahead of anyone from Ok State and Darling will be within a couple spots of him (top 7 for both). Krause,Conor and Collins seems about right.

OSU places: 6, 9, 11, 13, 36 = 75

UW places: 4, 7, 13, 16, 17 = 57

this is assuming Wisconsin does not pack run the entire race. Shadrack Kipchirchir could really surprise for Ok State. I feel as though they lack a 5th man in the same range as Wisco's, Farrel is a strong track runner but lacks XC strength to finish top 20.

Last year I thought that OSU was vulnerable at #5 but they clearly had by far the best #5 performance of the meet, men or women. This year, I do not know enough to make much of a guess. It looks that, while OSU has been pack running some, their 4/5 guys cannot stay with their top 3. Neither team needs to worry about qualifying at Regionals, although both will probably run enough guys fast enough to take the Regional crown.

It seems like OSU's 6/7 guys are a bit better than Wisconsin's, but that might be from a bit of under-performance (I expected Brice to be 6 but Shields outran him early and then Brice must have fallen off in the later part. Wisconsin has a lot of guys that might fill that 6/7 spot but if either has to rely on 6/7 to make up for a problem with 1-5 then they likely will be relying on them for keeping them from falling below second place.

Hard to really tell, as neither team have been really pushed, and the runners from both teams seem to enjoy racing.

Question, what is the lowest second-place score at NCAAs?

adrenalinesub4 wrote:

I would say Mo Ahmed will finish ahead of anyone from Ok State and Darling will be within a couple spots of him (top 7 for both). Krause,Conor and Collins seems about right.

OSU places: 6, 9, 11, 13, 36 = 75

UW places: 4, 7, 13, 16, 17 = 57

this is assuming Wisconsin does not pack run the entire race. Shadrack Kipchirchir could really surprise for Ok State. I feel as though they lack a 5th man in the same range as Wisco's, Farrel is a strong track runner but lacks XC strength to finish top 20.

UW is running well but here are some facts that we know.

With the addition of Shadrack, OSU returns 6 of the top 30 from last year. That means that the above prediction is assuming that OSU runs substantially worse than last year. Also, Farrell ran 27th (?) before becoming a 13:26 guy and will only be stronger this year.

In a perfect scenario for OSU, I could see them putting 3 in before UW's #1 as they did last year. At last year's NCAA's, OSU's 4,5,6 all finished within 11 seconds of Wisconsin's #3.

Safe money on OSU, momentum money on Wisco.

Splits wrote:

UW is running well but here are some facts that we know.

With the addition of Shadrack, OSU returns 6 of the top 30 from last year. That means that the above prediction is assuming that OSU runs substantially worse than last year. Also, Farrell ran 27th (?) before becoming a 13:26 guy and will only be stronger this year.

In a perfect scenario for OSU, I could see them putting 3 in before UW's #1 as they did last year. At last year's NCAA's, OSU's 4,5,6 all finished within 11 seconds of Wisconsin's #3.

Safe money on OSU, momentum money on Wisco.

Why do you factor in the Shadrack transfer, but not the Collins transfer? I've got a guess. And ignoring Krause completely? Should we just assume that he'll collapse again while running in the top 20 with 400 to go? And just ignore that Connor appears to have upped his game just a tad from last year? It's awesome that we're going to have five more weeks of selective facts.

2nd person police wrote:

Wisconsin is running a lot like Stanford has the last two years...It's hard to say what will happen during the stress and pace at NCAA's...Stanford went from looking unbeatable to atrocious when the real stress hit...We'll see.

Same thing occurred to me--not only the running, but also the talking. "We're in base mode now, heavy legs," etc. If I were a Wisconsin fan I'd be slightly nervous that the boys will back off too much at the end of the season, plus expect a miraculous taper effect that could freak them out when it doesn't come.

OSU, on the other hand, seems to be still getting their act together. Kind of like the Italian soccer team in the first few rounds of World Cup play. Something scary about them.

It'll be fun to watch!

Splits wrote:

UW is running well but here are some facts that we know.

With the addition of Shadrack, OSU returns 6 of the top 30 from last year.

That fact alone suggests that OSU should be considered the favorite unless anyone knows of a significant illness/injury/lack of fitness with one or more of those 6.

Ok, I'll add them -- it was nothing intentional to hurt Wisco's argument.

Collins finished 32nd last year, 2 seconds ahead of Stublaski of OSU.

Krause does not impact what I said because he is running well now and known to be in the top 5. As was stated, it is quite possible that things could shake out like last year. OSU with 3 in before Wisco's number 1, Wisco's top 4, then OSU's 4,5,6.

5 more weeks of ignoring the fact that OSU has dominated the last 2 championships despite sandbagging and intentionally maintaining a low profile during the season. Each of the last 2 years they've put 3 in the top ~12 and this year should be no different.

As I said, OSU is the safe bet because you know what they can do in November. Wisconsin is still potentially a contender.

Nairobi blows wrote:

Big difference between Oklahoma and Oklahoma state, Moroccan.

Not really anymore... Oklahoma will be right there with OSU and UW at Nationals! Didn't race their big boys this weekend but killed it at Paul Short a couple weeks ago.