To respond to your question, I ran competitively at D1 level many years ago under a truly great coach and have coached my HS XC team to a state title and 4 top ten state finishes in my first 4 years I've been coaching HS XC. I experimented extensively myself (when younger), and with the XC teams I have coached, with taking:
1. no days off in last 5 days before a race, or
2. taking the day off before a race, or
3. taking off the day 2 days before a race, then light running the day before a race.
I have found fairly consistent anecdotal evidence from my running and my teams' running that taking off the day before the race leads most of my runners to a bit of sluggishness on race day and seems to sometimes hurt performance, or at minimum not help it. It is NOT a hard and fast rule, a handful of runners, including the best one I ever coached, ran faster when taking the day off before a race. I talk a LOT with my runners individually about how they are feeling in days leading up to the races and on race day to try to figure out what works best for each runner. Some runners (there have not been many) run better by taking off the day before a race. For the more important races that I have these runners take off (big invites and championship races), I usually don't have these runners take any other days off that week because taking 2 days off for rest each week in well-trained runners seems excessive to me.
Also have assessed taking off the day 2 days before a race, then a very light run with striders the day before a race with same approach (talking to runners extensively, monitoring race results) - oddly, this has seemed to be good for the same runners that benefited from the day off before a race, so even though physiologically I would have expected there to be a difference, possibly a big one, between the results of the two different approaches, or a different set of runners benefiting from each, that has not been my experience. Therefore, I consider the 2 approaches to be the same in my approach to pre-race training for my team and usually have these runners take off the day 2 days before a big race so that the team can be together the day before a race. We talk about these things as a team so that everyone understands that different runners benefit in different ways from tweaks in our approach and our one team goal is for the team to have the best outcome by having each runner do the things that work best for them, so there is some minor tailoring of training. The first-year runners sometimes find it a little weird at first and may grumble a bit about 1 or 2 guys being able to take that day off (usually a Thursday, 2 days before our Saturday meet), but I remind them that those off-Thursday guys ran on another day that week when the rest of the team was not running, and that they have also proven they race better off that - and the newbies usually come around, especially when they see the team's and individual's results. Again, a lot of good communication and a bit of individualization, as well as having good results in runner and team development, has been our key to adoption and acceptance.
Consistency is very important to me as a coach. I want to be able to rely on my runners to run well consistently, especially at year-end meets, and I want them to do the things in the days leading up to these big races that work best for them. The best and most consistent results for me personally as a runner and for the vast majority of runners on my teams have come from taking no days off in the last 5 days (standard Mon - Fri week for a Saturday race), but to do some running each day. Late in the season, when tapering, it would be a fairly easy 5 days with just a bit of race-pace maintenance work on Monday or Tuesday (for a Saturday race) similar to what has already been posted in other posts above.
Bottom line: Anecdotally, for me and for the vast majority of runners on teams I have coached, running the last 5 days before a race, no off days, has usually been the best way to ensure consistent high-level (nearing or exceeding previous bests) 5K HS XC racing. There have been only a few exceptions and we've adjusted for just those few. It works for us, and again, I'm only talking about 5K HS XC races here, and only the experiences of the teams I have coached. Your results may vary.