Ivy Observer wrote:
McCullough ended up with the meet MVP award, but Princeton's team award has got to go to either Dinkins or Van Ackeren.
Van Ackeren pulls out 16 points from a double that people didn't think was possible, AND came back to run the 800 leg on the DMR.
Dinkins comes back in the 4x4 after winning the 500 and tweaks his hamstring with 220 to go. If he DNF's Cornell has the chance to tie, so he limps the next lap . . . and lets Princeton shut the door.
Points taken, but a good case can be made for McCullough, too. Not only did he directly add 10 points to PU's cause (with BY FAR the outstanding single mark of the championship), he also cost Cornell's throwers another four points.
This, from a guy who's *not* going to the NCAAs--who basically "took one for the team": got into a preliminary meet, to get the feel for the college weight (of course he was the all-time great HS weight thrower), then threw at Heps and called it a season. (Unless he'll be throwing at IC4A? I doubt that, though, from the way they were talking.)
[Quite a number of hammer specialists refuse to throw the weight at all, because of the different timing and the potential for injury, esp. to the back.]
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Maybe one of the keys to Cornell's defeats: their horizontal jumpers' difficulties in finding the takeoff board, both in the individual events and the multis. This is the last thing I'd have expected--they were jumping in their own pit!
Obviously a lot of them still jumped far--they took four of the six places in the men's LJ!--but the number of fouls, and of takeoffs from 'way behind the board, was really striking (though, granted, maybe more so because the pit was right in front of the spectators' area). The problem showed up on Saturday, but seemed esp. apparent on Sunday.
OTOH their throwers, as a group, did an outstanding job. Their frosh SPer, Mozia, was the list leader coming into the meet and was bitterly disappointed about placing second; but overall their men and women just had a really solid meet, from top to bottom, against some very tough competition. Well done.