NXN At-Large bids? Who get?

I was just wondering what everyone thinks about at large teams going through . . .

Always a difficult call for those making the decisions regarding at-large bids for NXN. Below is my preliminary take from the 5 regions that are completed. I will stress that it is a nearly impossible task to fairly evaluate the teams in the at-large pool in an accurate manner. Only 4 teams will get an invite, but there are more than 4 that can make a strong case to be included in the NXN field.

MW #3 - St. Xavier, OH

SW #3 - Los Alamos, NM

SW #4 - Herriman, UT

NW #3 - Summit, OR

MW #4 - Columbus North, OH

HL #3 - Edina, MN

NW #4 - Seattle Prep, WA

HL #4 - Stillwater, MN

SO #3 - Lewisville Marcus, TX

SO #4 - El Paso Eastwood, TX

NY, NE, SE, and CA will conclude this coming weekend.

Both boys and girls depend very heavily on what happens this weekend.

But for the regions already complete...

Boys: Summit and/or St. Xavier have a shot. Los Alamos maybe as well, but I think they're more of a longer shot.

Girls: Pine Creek looks real good to me, New Trier and especially Xavier Prep both have solid or very solid cases as well, but the real question is how many invites will be left after this weekend's races. It would be a good bet that Holy Names/Saratoga will get a spot, and so it will all probably come down to how close the races are in CA/SE... luckily, both of those courses run very similar to the Southwest course, which will make comparisons to Xavier Prep very easy, though New Trier is a bit of a bigger question mark seeing as the Midwest race wasn't under good condition which makes comparison a bit more complicated.

Xavier Prep is a stupid suggestion, because they did not make top 3 in their region. Even you should be able to figure that out, despite your increasingly weird predictions.

watchout wrote:

Girls: ... so it will all probably come down to how close the races are in CA/SE... luckily, both of those courses run very similar to the Southwest course, which will make comparisons to Xavier Prep very easy, though New Trier is a bit of a bigger question mark seeing as the Midwest race wasn't under good condition which makes comparison a bit more complicated.

Indeed. I was at Midwest race, and the wind was howling. The long (over 0.5mile) starting straightaway and the long-ish (1/4 m) finish straight were both directly into a steady 25-30mph wind, higher gusts. Was a very tight race in MW, just like in SW. In both cases, the at-large candidate (Pine Creek or New Trier) beat one or both of the higher-placing teams on times.

Why has Calif gotten 2 at-large teams the last 2 years? No team higher than 10th last year (I realize their 4th team was 13th)... I'd bet both SW and MW at-large teams have chance to do better than that, if given the chance.

who will wacth the watchers? wrote:

Xavier Prep is a stupid suggestion, because they did not make top 3 in their region. Even you should be able to figure that out, despite your increasingly weird predictions.

As if finishing fourth means they can't get a spot?

NY#3 should go barring disaster.

SW#3 should go.

That leaves two spots between SW#4, CA#3, CA#4, MW#3 and possibly SE#3. SW#4 beat CA#1 during the year (not my favorite comparison to make, but others will certainly include it) and ran 91:17 on a course very similar to Woodward, making that comparison very easy for where those teams are at for their regional races.

I don't see how Xavier Prep could possibly be a "stupid suggestion"... they've run well this year, and have been very highly ranked by just about everyone because of it, and just happened to finish pretty close to the top two teams in one of the - if not the - strongest and deepest regions for girls, both this year and in almost every year.

I would not say Summit has a shot. 37 points behind 2nd place?? Naw I'd take Herriman over them, look at the Bob Firman invite! 14 points behind Arcadia and edged Davis by 1 and killed Seattle Prep (NW #4) by 59 points! Seattle Prep was 11 points behind Summit at NXNNW.

I don't know, it depends on how close Saugus is I think... I'm sure people will look at a team like Saugus, their history at NXN (a US Top-5 program since 2007 for sure), and the fact that I don't think they've lost a race this year? They would have a good case.

St. Francis would as well, as long as they keep it close and end up running a good team time, because they did beat a team already in the field (NW#2 Camas @ Stanford)... Davis beat Camas at Stanford, but also lost to Xavier Prep at Mt. SAC, so they wouldn't be quite as strong a case.

If Tatnall and Assumption look like they have a gap on the rest of the Southeast, there might not be much of a chance for a Southeast team, but if Lake Braddock is close they might have a decent arguement, as they ran well against the very good SO#1 Southlake Carroll team at Nike South.

watchout wrote:

I don't see how Xavier Prep could possibly be a "stupid suggestion"... they've run well this year, and have been very highly ranked by just about everyone because of it, and just happened to finish pretty close to the top two teams in one of the - if not the - strongest and deepest regions for girls, both this year and in almost every year.

I agree Xavier is not a stupid suggestion. Very good team. It does seem they were better earlier in the year, when they beat the CA team.

I see how "similar courses" could make it seem easier to compare across regions, but I don't think it should really matter - should they penalize teams for running on a tough course? (By course, I assume you also include weather conditions, over which no one has control!) I think the Midwest course was the slowest (compared to performances at Nationals) last year, and it seems that could be taken into consideration, rather than hurt them.

Also, very few teams compete out of state prior to NXR races. I'm not sure we want to encourage HS kids to travel out of state at least 3 times a season (during season, NXR, and NXN). Besides, if you do it really early in the season, seems it should be less relevant for rankings at end of November.

watchout wrote:

I don't know, it depends on how close Saugus is I think... .

How would you rate top 5 Calif teams going into their region/state meet?

Teams improve throughout the year; we see that with Seattle Prep each and every year.

Herriman has a good argument, but does Los Alamos? They didn't face any out of region teams this year aside from Great Oak, which while a good team is "only" mid-pack in the California D1 field. And look at those scores at the regionals again... AF 38, Davis 163, LA 215 vs. NC 58, Kamiakin 113, Summit 152? Granted, if NC had Wilmot then they would have scored more like 43-118-156, but that's still closer scoring than at the Southwest meet. You'd have to argue that American Fork is better than North Central and say that Los Alamos had a worse race compared to state and their big invites than Summit, whose #1 was clearly off (but ran well at State and fairly well last weekend at Borderclash).

If Herriman was third with about 180 points, I'd agree they would probably look like the stronger candidate... but Herriman was fourth, and they can't get invited over Los Alamos, and neither team was as close to a US Top-5 team (score-wise or time-wise) as Summit was even with a very noticeable off day for one of their scorers.

I agree their best race was at the Desert Twilight Festival.

I agree that you shouldn't compare times from Course A and Course B without taking how fast/slow the course is into account.

I agree that not all teams go out of state during the season, nor should they necessarily have to.

I agree that early or mid season races shouldn't play a significant role in how teams are viewed at the end of the year.

HOWEVER,

Xavier Prep's races at Desert Twilight AND at Mt. SAC will be taken into account by some, if not all, of the committee. I know Marc Bloom has always been big on how teams look against eachother, even early in the season, and I also know he isn't anywhere near the only one with that view point out there.

I never said you should compare all courses as if they run the same, I pointed to three courses (CA @ Woodward Park, SW @ Toka Sticks, and SE @ WakeMed) which will very likely run very similarly to eachother this year - in past years, CA and SE have been very similar while the Southwest has been notably slower... but the Southwest ran fast this year, and I'm estimating it's very near the same speed that CA and SE are usually. The Midwest did run slow this year - not as slow as last year, but clearly slower than usual... I think it's debatable, but IMO it ran very slightly faster than the NW. Others have it notably faster than the NW, other shave it essentially the same as the NW. The NE should be slower, but that's it.

I agree that people shouldn't read too much into what happened during early/mid season meets, whether they are out of state or not. However, I do think that it should be taken into account IF two teams look similar at the end of the year and there isn't anything else to base your comparisons on.

NXN interest wrote:

watchout wrote:

I don't know, it depends on how close Saugus is I think... .

How would you rate top 5 Calif teams going into their region/state meet?

I haven't even assessed all the section meets yet.

Saturday was devoted to thoroughly reviewing the South and Southwest. Yesterday was trying to catch up on individuals, assessing BorderClash, and making sure the picture for the regions already complete looked reasonable.

The rest of this week is when I'll be looking at state/section meets for California, the Southeast and the Northeast/New York.

Based off of my last look, though (directly following Mt. SAC)...

Great Oak is the top team in California, and a US top 5 team. Probably top 3.

Simi Valley is the next best California team, and are Top 15 if not top 10.

Saugus and St. Francis would be my #3/4 teams.

Buchanan, Davis, and Redondo Union in some order would be my #5-7 teams, all with very real chances to break into the top four.

It sounds like La Costa Canyon might finally be healthy; if so, they might join that #5-7 group, but I haven't looked at their results yet to know for sure. They were more than one runner away from contending with teams like Redondo Union and even Serrano, Colony and Davis at Mt. SAC though, take that for whatever it's worth.

watchout wrote:

I never said you should compare all courses as if they run the same...

I agree that people shouldn't read too much into what happened during early/mid season meets, whether they are out of state or not. However, I do think that it should be taken into account IF two teams look similar at the end of the year and there isn't anything else to base your comparisons on.

I didn't mean to imply the first point was your argument. Just lamenting the difficulty of contrasting courses. Then again, the only way around that might be to just say take top 2 (or better yet top 3) from each region, and that would inevitably lead to howls of protest that weak regions get as many bids as strong. So, just swapping one problem for another.

Re the 2nd point: I see what you mean, it's not the first criterion, but it can be counted all else being equal.

How about "momentum," teams going in different directions? That's part of what I was asking about Xavier (the write up of NXN-SW that I read said they've not put it together in November as they had earlier in the year). It seems these two criteria (how team A fared against other teams earlier vs whether they're improving now) are almost in direct competition.

FYI - was working on a post today, though I had planned to wait until later this week to post it. But since this discussion is already taking place re: comparing teams across different regions, I figured I might as well finish it up and post it today.

http://watchoutxcrankings.blogspot.com/2012/11/comparing-nxn-regions.html

Included is a history of how teams from each region have done at NXN (2007+), and also a statistical comparison of how the various region courses have compared (in past years)

I like the idea of looking at the "momentum" of teams. First and foremost, in my opinion, we should look at how a team does under specific conditions: most notably, how a team does at their NXN Regional (racing in such a strong field, with so much on the line, and being the last chance to make it in - lots of pressure, have to get out fast to compete just like you will at nationals, and being more recent should mean more than previous races), their State Championships (racing in a pretty strong field most of the time, with a lot on the line, and being one of if not THE most important race of the year for all potentially relevant teams, and nearly the most recent race) and to a lesser extent any MAJOR invitationals where they faced other potential NXN caliber teams (again, the whole running in strong fields against strong teams deal, though as this isn't as recent and doesn't come with as much pressure, it shows less about what a team might do at nationals).

If two teams looked like they ran very similarly at both NXN Regionals and their state championships, it seems like three things should come into play: are they running their best right now), have they beaten these NXN caliber teams before, and possibly have they been one of the best teams at NXN in past years?

The last part being a nod to FM, Saratoga, Saugus, Fort Collins girls or North Central, York, The Woodlands, and FM boys in that they are consistently among the best in the nation, so if they are close to the top of their region and are among the last few choices left, I'd probably give them the edge knowing that they've been there and done well before.

Thanks for the info. I assume that past history is also somewhat weighted toward recent history, correct? E.g.,, A team or region that did great 2007-2009 might not get as much support as a team/region that did great in 2010-2011. Teams that have done well all years of course get more nod than either.

I'll check out your comparisons on your blog, thx!

No, that's using unweighted scoring. Would be good to look at a weighted version as well, though, I just haven't calculated that recently. It would also be good to look at not just how many points were scored, but how the performances from year to year stack up against eachother, but I also haven't looked at that (closely enough) recently either.

Using actual points scored at NXN (and attributed 505 points if they didn't make it, because that's slightly more than the average boys+girls 22nd place finish over that time), these are the top 12 teams during the regional era and their average scores and how many times they've qualified:

Boys -

1 North Central WA 207.60 (5/5)

2 York IL 271.40 (5/5)

3 The Woodlands TX 287.60 (5/5)

4 Fayetteville-Manlius NY 305.60 (4/5)

5 Dana Hills CA 325.40 (4/5)

6 Arcadia CA 331.60 (3/5)

7 Albuquerque Academy NM 332.20 (3/5)

8 American Fork UT 341.80 (3/5)

9 Neuqua Valley IL 349.40 (3/5)

10 Christian Brothers NJ 357.00 (2/5)

11 Southlake Carroll TX 363.20 (3/5)

12 Wayzata MN 365.40 (4/5)

Girls -

1 Fayetteville-Manlius NY 62.00 (5/5)

2 Saratoga Springs NY 144.40 (5/5)

3 Saugus CA 187.80 (5/5)

4 Fort Collins CO 214.40 (5/5)

5 Tatnall DE 266.20 (5/5)

6 Jesuit OR 334.00 (4/5)

7 Carmel IN 394.00 (2/5)

8 Burnt Hills NY 395.00 (2/5)

9 Queensbury NY 400.60 (2/5)

10 North Shore NY 401.40 (2/5)

11 Southlake Carroll TX 402.40 (4/5)

12 Dowling Catholic IA 407.80 (3/5)

What about Chantilly? They have been on a roll all season. Add McGory for Nationals and that is an appealing team to have at NXN.