Not a fanboy wrote:
Oregon will get second.
Remember in a big race like this depth is nice, but front runners are actually more important.
Example
team A
1, 3, 47, 51, 88 (190 points)
vs.
team B
24, 27, 34, 46, 60 (191 points)
so even though team B's 5 beat team A's 5 their 4 beat team A's 3 and their 3 man beat team A's 3 man they still lose.
Up front talent is worth a lot in a race with this many runners.
Your example is silly. You are given team B no important depth and giving team A depth, with only a couple of seconds between the 4/5 runners of those two teams. Give them a difference of even 1 second per km and you get the places for team A as 70 and 90, no 51 and 88. The reason is that at that level in the NCAA meet you get up to 30 runners in a 10-second interval. If you also add it to the third runner, (where the density is a little lower) the 47 becomes about 60, so that the last three rack up 220 points. At this set of marks the average time of the two teams might still favor the A team.