Minnesota Men's Cross Country 6th at Big Tens

As a follower of the big 10, I'm also confused by how mediocre they've been. I look at the guys coming in from high school and they all seem to be solid runners. Flash forward to their junior and senior years... only a 25 minute guy. If you're breaking 16 in high school, you should certainly be able to go faster than that.

As a fan of Minnesota cross country, it's definitely disappointing to see this result. While their recruiting isn't extraordinary, it seems as though guys aren't really developing as well as a lot of other places. I'm especially not happy with how the upperclassmen underperformed (Lawrence, wiebke) but the team is relatively young still at least.

Also a former alumni, always amazed at the local talent that chooses the U and then fails to develop. Look at recent transfer Wayde Hall (Stillwater) who now attends CSU and is leagues ahead of how he was running at Minnesota. For reference, Wayde was a 4:09 guy and cross country state champion in high school, and I always thought one of the most talented athletes to come out of MN in a while; not even sure if he was regularly running in the 24's while he was there (all I remember was extreme inconsistency and rumors of him being unhappy in the program). Six months after transferring and he's running mid to low 24's at altitude on a nationally ranked team.

I'm always happy to see these kinds of stories, but also dismayed that the athlete had to go through several years of abuse to get back to running well. Unfortunately he is far from the only Minnesota athlete to have this story recently (and to be honest his at least has a bit of a happy ending). The sooner Coach Plasencia is gone the better.

MN native got 7th in that race. If he did that for the U of M they would have gotten 4th. But then again, if he ran at the U of M he probably wouldn't be that fast.

Bring back Phil Lundeen. The guys has coached 400m D1 champs to to CC D3 champs, he’s an excellent coach.

With the insane quality out of the MN high school scene right now, U of M distance should be very competitive.

College coaching is more about recruiting than coaching, in my opinion. One needs to be an elite salesman to be a head coach. Look at Joe Franklin, UNM. Obviously Coach Joe Franklin is an elite salesman. HEPS fifth year seniors/grad transfers, Europeans, where ever on the globe, Coach Joe Franklin gets the talent.

Salesman of over age British kids

Donald wrote:

Salesman of over age British kids

Taking away opportunities from good Americans just so you can win.

It's remarkable how the Minnesota program manages to consistently convert national caliber high school runners into average D1 pack runners.

MN consistently recruits champions as others have mentioned above. How many 8:50/9:0x 3200m kids has he signed over the past few years? I'd bet it's more than many top nationally ranked programs. Yet somehow these runners never improve their high school times and often become marginally slower.

Meanwhile guys who couldn't sign to MN - who were consistently decimated by the UMN runners in high school - go places like SDSU and improve massively.

It should be noted that the University of Minnesota doesn't even have a real track facility for practice as far as I have heard.

http://www.startribune.com/university-of-minnesota-track-and-field-stadium-issue-finally-reaches-finish-line/397130821/

I used to run faster wrote:

College coaching is more about recruiting than coaching, in my opinion. One needs to be an elite salesman to be a head coach. Look at Joe Franklin, UNM. Obviously Coach Joe Franklin is an elite salesman. HEPS fifth year seniors/grad transfers, Europeans, where ever on the globe, Coach Joe Franklin gets the talent.

Ask someone who knows about MN high school talent and the athletes currently on the team...they're not lacking in talent.

It's true they didn't have a track last year and this year but they always did up until then. Results weren't much better when they did, and I doubt they'll get much better when the new track goes in.

I think you're a little unfair here. For one thing, Purdue has received votes at at least one point his year, so losing to them isn't terrible. The other teams ahead of them were all top-20 or 25 caliber teams. Also, the gophers have had some good results over the past 20 years. They make nationals pretty often, which is more than can be said about a lot of similarly placed programs. U of Minnesota just isn't THAT big of a draw, frankly, so I think they're doing alright, all things considered.

All that said, today's result was clearly a disappointment.

Here's a blast from the past - I remember doing a track and field camp there and hometown fave Sara Renk (now Thorsett) was planning on running with the gophers her freshman year. I think she transferred to Wisconsin pretty soon after starting. Was never sure why she didn't just go there in the first place. Eventually won some relay titles on the Suzy teams.

Donald wrote:

Salesman of over age British kids

Not just Brits. Coach Franklin had a Lithuanian Nordic skier as one of the varsity top seven women on the 2015 NCAA D1 XC champs. Face it, Coach Franklin is the Ricky Roma of college distant recruiting.

On a positive note congratulations to the Gopher Women with a runner up finish at the Big Ten meet today. Coach Hopkins, also a former Gopher runner, has been doing a great job with the women's team.

DJdjdjdj wrote:

Bring back Phil Lundeen. The guys has coached 400m D1 champs to to CC D3 champs, he’s an excellent coach.

With the insane quality out of the MN high school scene right now, U of M distance should be very competitive.

I agree Lundin is a solid coach. He will never go back to UMN though. He left b/c he was sick of dealing with scholarships and all the administrative crap that comes with DI athletics which is why he switched to DIII.

I went to a running camp with Plas one year. I learned a lot at the camp and thought he was a knowledgeable coach, but he was kind of weird. I know a lot of guys that have been recruited by him either really liked him or really didn't because of the weird factor. He's rather polarizing.

I think the Gopher men are doing okay, but I do agree with others that they have not had particularly impressive distance results given the amount of talent they recruit. Overall, I think the women's distance team has done much better.

My daughter is on the MN women's team. I am impressed with Sara Hopkins' ability to relate to the entire team and that translates into improvement across the board. You can go to the Team website and pull up performance lists and see the progression within each year and across years. Madeline Strandemo just finished 2nd in the Big Ten after starting as a walk on. While she is the best example there are many others. Improvement is the norm and the culture.

Contrast that with the Men's program and frankly it is night and day. I have a son in HS that looks like will be a D1 runner and it's unlikely he will consider MN with the current coaches for the reasons others have stated.

If I was the AD I would seriously consider combining the track and CC programs under the current women's staff. Coach Bingle and Hopkins together are a dynamic duo.

Look at Ohio State........they finished almost last and something like 7 teams had their 5th in front of OSU 1st runner.

Ohio is 4th in the country in regards to amount of HS kids running. THey cant lock down their instate recruits.

You guys are clearly looking at this wrongly, U of M’s problemo is that instead of recruiting smart they recruit dumb. IMO their single greatest misstep was failing to recruit THE DARK MOOSE