Watch Out For Oklahoma at NCAAs

They looked good early at Wisconsin with a tight pack fairly far up but they broke up and several drifted back, overtaken by guys who sped up the last 3+km.

And Martin Smith was dispatched from Eugene because he couldn't win with distance runners. hahahaha

26mi235 wrote:

They looked good early at Wisconsin with a tight pack fairly far up but they broke up and several drifted back, overtaken by guys who sped up the last 3+km.

Still finished 3rd and in the hunt only 30 pts back. Smith will have them ready on Nov 19th.

Hopefully for Oklahoma they are ready November 17th. On November 19th the season is over.

NCAA X-C Roving Reporter wrote:

26mi235 wrote:

They looked good early at Wisconsin with a tight pack fairly far up but they broke up and several drifted back, overtaken by guys who sped up the last 3+km.

Still finished 3rd and in the hunt only 30 pts back. Smith will have them ready on Nov 19th.

Yes, and it is hard to know why they could not keep the pace going. Many are still in the middle of hard training and it is unlikely that Oklahoma felt much of a need to peak for this race as they are not likely to have a problem getting in to the NCAA Champs and thus are more likely than others to be in hard training with room for gains from speeding things up and cutting the distance a bit. However, they leave questions of the sort that Colorado did not.

Kogel had a bad day or just decided to pack up with a teammate and cruise. Either way if runs to his level they get a lot better.

hmmmm wrote:

Kogel had a bad day or just decided to pack up with a teammate and cruise. Either way if runs to his level they get a lot better.

How much better?

Kogel did have an off day for him. On a normal day, he's probably around 10-12. Though kid, he will be back. Casey had a great day. OU's pack, all 7, at the 5k, ranged from 15:01 to 15:08. This was a true championship level race, I think OU felt the pressure some and left the model a little early, around 3k to go, which might have hurt. All in all, still a great day. OU had the lowest 6th & 7th team runners at 58 and 114. Soph Poland stepped up big for the 4th spot. They needed 32 points from the front 5 to win. Pretty much in reach.

On the other hand Stanford had a great, almost perfect, day. Can they replicate that day again. Iona, Gillespie ran 30sec's faster then he did 2 wks ago at Louisville, Huge. Very solid 1-4 but 5-7 added up to 461 points, coach better be handing out vitamin C at practice and keep his top 5 out of those Sorority functions.

Of these 3 teams, OU still looks plenty strong. OU and OSU have 2 meets (Big12's and Regionals) against each before Nationals; it should be fun watching those races play out.

Watching at Wisco wrote:

Very solid 1-4 but 5-7 added up to 461 points, coach better be handing out vitamin C at practice and keep his top 5 out of those Sorority functions.

Mono spreads like wildfire among the co-eds.

Boomer

Oklahoma was at 154 through 5K and ended up at 166.

Casey and Poland moved up 20-25 each. Kogel went down about 25, Masters down about 10 and Williams stayed about the same.

Not even scoring a 58 from Weaver is a nice luxury to have. King dropped from about 50 to 114.

Iona dropped from 179 to 145 to get past Oklahoma, almost all of it from Clorley.

I think there will be a lot of shakeups this year