Fear the Owls - TEMPLE wins Penn State National Open men's race

They've got a newish coach, who was an assistant at florida state when their men where a podium team. I'm sure he is getting the team going. Good job to him!

Bill Cosby wrote:

They've got a newish coach, who was an assistant at florida state when their men where a podium team. I'm sure he is getting the team going. Good job to him!

#MeToo

TBH, the PSU National Open doesn't really have much firepower at the meet this year.

I wonder if this could be an indicator if Temple could upset the field to get a top 2 auto qualifier at the Regional meet? The region is pretty weak IMHO.

Snyder is doing a nice job with the Temple program. Their top 5 (today) included 2 PA kids, a Dane, a Brit, and a kid from Illinois.

Good team battle between Temple, Penn, and PSU.

I was surprised to see Penn have the #2 finisher and then having their 2nd thru 5th runners come through in a 3 second spread. Could be useful come their HepsXC meet on 11/1.

It wasn't that long ago that Temple didn't even have mens XC!

Hats off to Temple being on the rise, that campus is maybe one of the worst places to go for your daily runs. Plus the party culture at that school is heavy.

Meanwhile, PSU women dominated, 1-4-5-6-15. Tennessee got 3 in the top 10.

Official team scores:

1. Penn State, 31

2. Georgia Tech, 63

3. Tennessee, 92

4. Princeton, 116

5. Penn, 131

6. Temple, 181

Go Owls!

PoisonIvy wrote:

It wasn't that long ago that Temple didn't even have mens XC!

+1

Im sirprized, too. WT heck?

Where do they run, its in a very dodgy naybuhood.?

PopTartsForHealth wrote:

PoisonIvy wrote:

It wasn't that long ago that Temple didn't even have mens XC!

+1

Im sirprized, too. WT heck?

Where do they run, its in a very dodgy naybuhood.?

I'm sure dodging bullets in North Philly makes for some pretty intense tempo runs.

North Philly Floater wrote:

PopTartsForHealth wrote:

+1

Im sirprized, too. WT heck?

Where do they run, its in a very dodgy naybuhood.?

I'm sure dodging bullets in North Philly makes for some pretty intense tempo runs.

When i ran there in the 80s they bused over to Belmont for practice every day. So we had as good a traiing envirnment as any city-based program could ever want. I'm guessing it's similar now.

Great job to the coach there...doing it with club track. Although I guess that helps stretch your scholarship $$ for distance kids.

Pretty hilarious that they beat Penn St. actually. Always hated them.

owl88 wrote:

North Philly Floater wrote:

I'm sure dodging bullets in North Philly makes for some pretty intense tempo runs.

When i ran there in the 80s they bused over to Belmont for practice every day. So we had as good a traiing envirnment as any city-based program could ever want. I'm guessing it's similar now.

Great job to the coach there...doing it with club track. Although I guess that helps stretch your scholarship $$ for distance kids.

Pretty hilarious that they beat Penn St. actually. Always hated them.

Penn State is where distance runners go to die...

I thought that was Pitt?

owl88 wrote:

I thought that was Pitt?

hee, hee... yes there as well

FranklinField wrote:

Snyder is doing a nice job with the Temple program. Their top 5 (today) included 2 PA kids, a Dane, a Brit, and a kid from Illinois.

Good team battle between Temple, Penn, and PSU.

Their 5th is a graduate transfer from a Division 3 school.

Tons of talent in southeast PA and New Jersey. All the top guys who want to stay local go to Nova. However, if you can recruit and offer scholarship there’s lots of talent for the taking. It’s just that area Is flooded with D3 schools that are high end academic. Also, Philly isn’t that bad if you know where to go.

rojo wrote:

So this weekend I'm trying to get up to speed on my NCAA xc knowledge and as I was looking for info on Nuttycombe/Pre-Nats, I realized the Penn State National Open was going on as we speak. I clicked on live results and was shocked to see Temple come up as the winning men's team.

What the hell?

I guess it's not that much of a shock as they were ranked ahead of Penn State (but behind Penn) in the regional rankings but when did Temple get decent at xc?

I just looked up last year's results and they were 2nd in the AAC and 6th in their regional. Now it looks like they are 3rd or 4th in the region.

https://results.flotrack.org/XC-PTT.html?mid=1806

Temple should be good. It's generally hard to recruit to an XC only program but Temple has extremely low admissions standards, the cost is cheap,, good location (surrounded by talent) and they have a lot of scholarships (they bring in a lot of internationals). So that balances out recruiting.

Then once you have a bit of talent on the team, being XC only is a huge advantage. They can accumulate a ton of mileage during the winter, spring, and summer. You can stay healthy because you aren't racing 9 months out of the year.

Looks like Temple has 4 seniors in the top 5 so this year is all-or-nothing for them.

Philly Guy wrote:

Tons of talent in southeast PA and New Jersey. All the top guys who want to stay local go to Nova. However, if you can recruit and offer scholarship there’s lots of talent for the taking. It’s just that area Is flooded with D3 schools that are high end academic. Also, Philly isn’t that bad if you know where to go.

Also worth pointing out that some teams in the region are massively underachieving. Penn State's team is a joke. Villanova and Georgetown have fallen far. And others.