Wisconsin adidas Invitational Recap: New Mexico Women (32 Points) Crush It; Wins For Syracuse Men (101 Points), Frosh Allie Ostrander (19:19 CR) And Marc Scott (23:35)

By LetsRun.com
October 16, 2015

The biggest meet of college cross-country’s regular season is in the books, and while the team champions came as no surprise (the No. 1 New Mexico women and No. 2 Syracuse men both delivered as favorites), there were a couple of minor upsets in the individual races. Boise State freshman Allie Ostrander set a course record to win the women’s race in 19:19, while Tulsa’s Marc Scott used a devastating kick to pull away from Justyn Knight of Syracuse and Sean McGorty of Stanford over the final 100 meters and win in 23:35.

Top 100 results below, followed by LRC analysis.

Men’s race

Scott blasted by Knight and McGorty to win in Madison

Team scores
1 Syracuse 101
2 BYU 186
3 Michigan 218
4 Virginia 238
5 Iona 268
6 Furman 310
7 North Carolina St. 311
8 Tulsa 327
9 UCLA 334
10 Columbia 361
11 Boise State 387
12 Michigan State 404
13 Washington 413
14 Eastern Kentucky 418
15 Providence 453
16 Indiana 459
17 Wisconsin 460
18 Florida State 467
18 Portland 467
20 Illinois 492
21 Stanford 494
22 Oklahoma 497
23 New Mexico 513
24 Mississippi 558
25 South Dakota St. 572
25 Dartmouth 572
27 Notre Dame 581
28 Iowa State 643
29 North Carolina 652
30 Northern Arizona 671
31 Princeton 674
32 Harvard 754
33 Penn State 772
34 Arizona State 783
35 Lamar 799
36 William and Mary 982

Top 100 individuals (full results here)

Men’s race analysis

Quick Take #1: Syracuse delivers

The Orange’s win last year surprised everyone, but that was not the case in 2015 as Syracuse entered as the highest-ranked team in the field (No. 2 overall) and ran like it, putting three in the top six en route to a 101-point total. Though this year’s squad scored more points than last year (101 vs. 85), they’re clearly more powerful up front. Martin Hehir was Cuse’s top runner in 2014, placing seventh overall. This year Colin Bennie finished sixth and he was Syracuse’s third man.

The knock on the Orange in the past has been that they didn’t have a true low stick, and last year at NCAAs, they finished fifth even though their #1 man, MJ Erb, was only 37th overall. Each of the four teams that beat Syracuse at NCAAs had at least two men in front of Syracuse’s #1; in fact, Stanford put four in front of Erb and Colorado’s entire top five came in before Syracuse had scored a single point.

While SU may have slightly less depth than last year, they should more than make up for that up front. Justyn Knight (2nd) and Martin Hehir (4th) are top-10 threats at NCAAs, while Colin Bennie (6th) has built on a breakout track season and looks like a top-20 guy at NCAAs. Fourth man Joel Hubbard was a solid 28th and if Dan Lennon (who was 61st today but 45th at NCAAs a year ago) can return to his 2014 form, Syracuse has a great chance to erase its 57-year podium drought. And given the uncertainty surrounding Stanford right now, the Orange could climb as high as second depending on how things break on the day in Louisville (it’s still hard to imagine them overhauling Colorado). In all, another great day in the Midwest for Chris Fox‘s men.

Quick Take #2: What’s up with Wisconsin?

When we criticized Wisconsin for going through the motions at the Greater Louisville Classic two weeks ago, it was with the opinion that the Badgers were one of the top five teams in the nation and that, had they not packed it up, they would have won the race or at the very least contended for the win.

Coach Mick Byrne promised that Wisconsin wouldn’t hold anything back today on their home course, and while they received strong runs from Malachy Schrobilgen (5th) and Morgan McDonald (10th), overall it was a very disappointing day for the Badgers as they wound up 17th overall, matching their worst finish in meet history (they were also 17th in 2012 but held out top runners Mo Ahmed and Reed Connor).

No other Badgers finished in the top 50 as Russell Sandvold (80th) and Joe Hardy (159th), both of whom ran with Schrobilgen and McDonald and Louisville, were well back of their teammates today. Tyson Miehe was Wisconsin’s fifth man in 205th, and that was it — only five Badgers finished the race.

It would be foolish to entirely write off the Badgers. Wisconsin has been doubted in the past but the Badgers have put together top-10 NCAA finishes like clockwork — 19 years in a row, dating back to 1996. Hardy, the Big 10 1500 champ, ran poorly today and should be better next time out. Byrne is one of the nation’s best coaches and knows what it takes to succeed in November.

But this team is also facing some major issues, which will make returning to the podium for the first time since 2012 a tough task. The main one, surprisingly, is depth. Wisconsin’s roster is stocked with talent, but aside from Schrobilgen, Hardy and McDonald, most of the Badgers’ biggest guns haven’t been factors on the course this season. Sophomore Ryan Kromer (the team’s #3 at NCAAs last year) has been MIA and fellow soph Carl Hirsch (#4 man at NCAAs last year) was only the team’s seventh man at the Iona Meet of Champions and reportedly dropped out today. True freshman Olin Hacker (2014 NXN/FL runner-up) hasn’t raced this fall; redshirt freshman Kai Wilmot (2013 NXN champ) ran the open race today but was only 67th in 27:00.

If all those guys were 100% fit and ready to run, Wisconsin would be a podium contender. But as it stands, Wisconsin has two sure things in Schrobilgen and McDonald and a bunch of question marks behind them. If Hirsch can get it together and Sandvold (14:08 5k pb) and Joe McAsey (1:47/3:48) step it up, this can still be a top-10 team — perhaps top-5. But after Michigan’s great run today (3rd, 242 points ahead of Wisconsin), the Badgers can no longer be considered the favorites in the Big 10.

Quick Take #3: What a kick from Marc Scott

With under 200 meters to go, Syracuse’s Justyn Knight appeared to have this one locked up as he pulled away from Stanford’s Sean McGorty. Suddenly, Scott, the 21-year-old Brit running for Tulsa, appeared out of nowhere and laid down a move no one could respond to, winning by 0.8 of a second over Knight in 23:35.0. It was particularly impressive considering Scott’s mile PB is just 4:11 (Knight has run 3:39 for 1500, McGorty 3:40).

Scott, who was 14th at NCAAs last fall and owns PBs of 13:36 and 28:30, is the real deal, and will be one of the leading contenders duking it out for the #2 spot behind Edward Cheserek at NCAAs.

Quick Take #4: Here are the teams that best over/underperformed expectations

Below, we ordered the top men’s teams at Wisconsin based on their rank in the most recent USTFCCCA coaches’ poll. Then we compared how they ran at Wisconsin based on how the polls expected them to run.

*receiving votes

Observations

• XC MBoard Talk Official Live Wisconsin Invite Thread 2015 Did Ryen Frazier Fall during Wisco invite????  W&M Almost Cracks 1,000 Pt. Barrier!  Rider XC Team Suspended for Hazing for Atyempting to Run Naked Around The Track 2015 A10 Cross Country Official 2015 Heps XC thread

  Stanford “underperformed” the most but considering they held out top runners Jim and Joe Rosa and Grant Fisher, no one expected them to run that well. Apart from the Cardinal, the biggest disappointments were No. 27 Princeton (seeded 16th, finished 31st), No. 19 Ole Miss (seeded 11th, finished 24th) and No. 26 Iowa State (seeded 15th, finished 28th).

• Led by Scott’s victory, Tulsa picked up the most spots, finishing 8th after being seeded 18th, followed by No. 24 Furman (seeded 14th, finished 6th).
• Aside from Wisconsin, Ole Miss was the biggest disappointment on Friday. We pegged the Rebels for ninth in our preseason top 10 and this was the second straight meet they’ve underperformed. Finishing fourth at the Greater Louisville Classic was not an awful result, but this one was.
• Ivy League nerds, here’s a stat for you. We believe this is the first time Dartmouth has beaten Princeton in a cross country race in a decade. Dartmouth beat Princeton at the 2005 Heps to win the title but don’t think it had happened since.

Women’s race

The top finishers in Wisconsin (photo courtesy Boise State XC)

Team scores
1 New Mexico 32
2 Arkansas 173
3 Virginia 199
4 North Carolina St. 221
5 Providence 241
6 Boise State 249
7 Iowa State 259
8 Washington 269
9 BYU 289
10 Penn State 319
11 Syracuse 343
12 Notre Dame 370
13 Princeton 379
14 Michigan State 382
15 Minnesota 386
16 William and Mary 414
17 Vanderbilt 432
18 Columbia 433
19 North Carolina 445
20 Dartmouth 446
21 Northern Arizona 497
22 Indiana 504
23 Wisconsin 517
24 Arizona State 519
25 Harvard 536
25 West Virginia 536
27 Tulsa 537
28 Ohio State 654

Top 100 individuals (full results here)

Quick Take #1: It’s time to start the Greatest Team Ever debate

Thanks to a 4-5-6-7-10 finish, the No. 1 New Mexico Lobos destroyed the field en route to a meet-record low score of 32 points (previous low was Duke’s 78 in the inaugural 2009 edition). Runner-up Arkansas was well back with 188 points; no one else scored under 200.

Against a field that contained 20 of the top 25 teams in the nation, the Lobos would have been competitive against an All-Star squad today. Remove champ Allie Ostrander from the results, and New Mexico would have scored 27 points. The rest of the field, as a team, would have scored 28. You can slice the stats however you want, but the result will always be the same: dominance.

The key for UNM was fifth woman Molly Renfer. New Mexico’s top four (Courtney Frerichs, Rhona Auckland, Calli Thackery and Alice Wright) were known quantities, and all placed in the top six at the Notre Dame Invitational two weeks ago. Renfer’s 12th-place finish there came as a surprise, considering she has never run at NCAAs on the track or in XC and owns relatively modest PBs of 4:18 and 16:25. But grad student Renfer, following in the footsteps of Sammy Silva, who went from solid at Harvard to stud at New Mexico, was even better today, taking 10th overall in the deepest field of the year outside of NCAAs.

At this point, the question isn’t whether New Mexico will win NCAAs. They will, barring an injury to multiple members of their top five (sixth woman Whitney Thornburg, another Harvard fifth-year, was a solid 50th today; seventh woman Heleene Tambet was 73rd). No, the question now becomes whether this New Mexico squad can become the greatest of all time.

Normally the best indicator of a team’s greatness is to look at their point total at NCAAs, but that metric is a little wonky when it comes to women. The NCAA didn’t hold an official women’s cross country championship until 1981, and the four lowest point totals in meet history (led by Virginia’s 36 in 1981) all came within the first six years of the meet. That makes those early scores misleading as there was less depth in women’s collegiate running nationally. In addition, the average field size at NCAAs from 1981-86 (15.2) was less than half as big as today’s field and much smaller than the men’s fields at that time (22.0).

Since then, the lowest score is BYU’s 62 in 2001, followed by Colorado’s 63 in 2004. The 2008 Washington women also come to mind; that squad scored 36 at Pre-Nats (back when there were two races), went 1-2-3-4-5-6 at Pac-10s and scored 79 points at NCAAs. Those seem like reasonable totals to shoot for; Michigan State scored 87 at Wisconsin last year and 85 at NCAAs. And considering the dazzling PBs of New Mexico’s top four (at 15:47, Frerichs has the slowest PB of that group), this UNM team stacks up favorably against anyone historically.

UNM still has three meets remaining, so we’ll hold off on any heavy-duty analysis until at least NCAAs. But right now things are looking very bright in Albuquerque.

Quick Take #2: What a run from Allie Ostrander

The true freshman from Alaska, who won NXN last fall, has had quite a season so far. On September 19, she won the junior race at the World Mountain Running Championships in Wales. Seven days later, she took second at the Roy Griak Invitational, leading her Boise State squad to the team title. Today represented her best performance yet, as Ostrander pulled away from NCAA 10,000 champ Molly Seidel of Notre Dame to win in 19:19.5, smashing seven-time NCAA champion Abbey D’Agostino‘s 2013 course record of 19:31.

This year’s crew of freshmen women is looking like one of the most talented classes in history. NC State’s Ryen Frazier defeated a tough field at the Notre Dame Invite two weeks ago (but was just 38th today), and now Ostrander has won the biggest invitational of the season. And don’t forget about two-time Foot Locker champ Anna Rohrer of Notre Dame, who was 12th today.

Ostrander is certainly a contender for the NCAA individual title — only one freshman, NC State’s Suzie Tuffey in 1985, has won NCAAs — but it should also be remembered that Ostrander was beaten convincingly (16 seconds) at Roy Griak three weeks ago by Cal’s Bethan Knights. It’s possible that Ostrander was still recovering from her race at the World Mountain Running Championships at Roy Griak; it’s also possible that Knights is really, really good. We’ll know more after Knights races at Pre-Nats tomorrow, but the women’s individual race is shaping up to be a great one at NCAAs.

One other thing about a freshman – at least a redshirt freshman. It’s worth noting that 2013 Foot Locker champ Tessa Barrett, who didn’t run for Penn State as a frosh, is running this year as a red-shirt frosh and was 49th.

Quick Take #3: Please don’t freak out about NC State’s Ryen Frazier

After winning Notre Dame, Frazier was only 38th today, causing some on the messageboards to panic. (MB: Did Ryen Frazier Fall during Wisco invite????). We have some advice, once passed on by a Wisconsin icon: R-E-L-A-X.

Frazier is a true freshman and today was her first 6k race. Previously, she ran exceptionally in 5ks at the adidas XC Challenge and Notre Dame but the added distance hurt her today as she slipped from 10th at 4k to 38th at the finish. The fact of the matter is, it’s very tough for anyone to run a good race every time out, especially a college freshman. As we noted after Notre Dame:

“Maintaining her form all the way through November will be difficult for the freshman as many frosh burn it too hot too early, but two wins in two races is obviously a good sign.”

Frazier could certainly rebound by ACCs but let’s not heap expectations on her. She won’t always run as well as she did at Notre Dame, but she won’t always run as poorly as she did today. Her true ability likely lies somewhere in the middle, and as she gains experience at the college level, her performances should become more consistent.

Quick Take #4: Who was missing?

Let’s tackle the notable absences on the women’s side one at a time:

• Sarah Disanza, Wisconsin (2nd at NCAAs in 2014). Mick Byrne called Disanza a “game-day decision” for today’s race and ultimately he and coach Jill Miller erred on the side of caution, holding Disanza out.
• Rachele Schulist, Michigan State (4th at NCAAs in 2014). Schulist had run two races for the Spartans already this year but wasn’t in the results today.
• Annie Bothma, Boise State (3rd at Roy Griak). Bothma, the Broncos’ #2 at Roy Griak, did not start today, though Boise State still managed okay without her (6th).
• Catarina Rocha, Providence (3rd at Battle in Beantown). Rocha was the Friars’ top woman at the Coast-to-Coast Battle in Beantown three weeks ago. Though the No. 3 Friars still finished fifth overall, they could have leapt up a few places by running a healthy Rocha.

Quick Take #5: Here are the teams that best over/underperformed expectations

Below, we ordered the top women’s teams at Wisconsin based on their rank in the most recent USTFCCCA coaches’ poll. Then we compared how they ran at Wisconsin based on how the polls expected them to run.

Observations

• No. 14 Wisconsin (seeded 9th, finished 25th) and No. 20 West Virginia (seeded 15th, finished 27th) were the two biggest underperformers but both were missing key runners. The Badgers didn’t run Disanza or Emma-Lisa Murphy while the Mountaineers were once again without top runner Jillian Forsey, who is still recovering from injury.
• No. 17 Virginia had the biggest jump of any team, finishing third overall. With three women in the top 30 (Cleo Boyd, Iona Lake and Megan Rebholz), it was a great day at the office for the Cavaliers, who should join their men’s squad in the top 10 of the next coaches’ poll.
• Hats off to No. 11 Arkansas. The Razorbacks took some serious graduation hits to last year’s fifth-place team, but the 2015 edition could be even better thanks to Dominique Scott’s usual brilliance and a major breakthrough from freshman Devin Clark (18th today).

Discuss the 2015 NCAA cross country season on our messageboard:

• Official Live Wisconsin Invite Thread 2015
• Did Ryen Frazier Fall during Wisco invite???? 
• W&M Almost Cracks 1,000 Pt. Barrier! 
• Rider XC Team Suspended for Hazing for Atyempting to Run Naked Around The Track
  
• 2015 A10 Cross Country
• Official 2015 Heps XC thread