Can the NAU women overcome last year's disappointment and send coach Mike Smith out as a champion in his final year? Plus a loaded BYU team looks to put a bad day in '23 behind them, and does NC State have any chance at a four-peat?

Smith won five NCAA XC titles from 2017-22 but will leave the school at the end of the 2024-25 school year.

• Mike Smith Considering Offer to Be a Nike Coach in 2025 - Update it’s a done deal.
• The Mike Smith debacle shows everyone is for sale. Nike bought Citius, Mike Smith, etc. The Brojos would sell out too.
• Is Ed Eyestone next?
• What will Adidas think about letting a Nike coach work with Nico Young
• Ben Thomas is so disrespected

No women's team has three-peated since Stanford (2005-07) while the NAU women have never won NCAA XC. Will one of those droughts change on Saturday?

NAU beat OSU on a tiebreaker a year ago and both teams could be even better in 2023. Who will win it all in Charlottesville?

What links Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the NAU cross country team, and Sebastian Coe? Double threshold training, which is having a moment in 2023. Note, this article is behind our SC paywall for 72 hours (until Saturday).

Stanford crushed everyone at Nuttycombe, but BYU, OK State, and NAU (winners of 5 of the last 6 titles) all have legitimate shots to win on Saturday.

NAU is loaded once again. But so is Stanford, and OSU should be dangerous on its home course. Who will win it all in '22? *MB: Jonathan Gault unveils his top 10 men's NCAA xc teams. Agree or disagree?

"It's probably on the more unlikely side that we are putting him out there [this fall]," says NAU coach Mike Smith. *MB: Colin Sahlman may not race for NAU in 2022 - "It's probably on the more unlikely side that we are putting him out there."

Nur will be looking for his 3rd NCAA title in the 10k while Young is chasing his first against a strong 5k field.

NAU (60 points), Notre Dame (87), and Oklahoma State (142) were the three best teams at NCAAs last year. NAU has gotten worse, Notre Dame has improved a little, and Oklahoma State has improved a lot. That means it should be pretty close between the three of them on Saturday. NAU has won 4 of the last 5 men's XC titles. Oklahoma State won 3 of 4 from 2009-12. Will the blue bloods prevail in Tallahassee, or will Notre Dame win its first title since 1957?

The 77-year-old Warhurst, who has doled out running advice to everyone from Matthew Centrowitz to Tom Brady, has taken on a role coaching Kessler, who ran 3:57.66 on Sunday to break the US indoor high school mile record.

At last, the 2020 NCAA xc championships are almost here (in 2021). Will BYU repeat or will NAU win it's 4th title in 5 seasons? And can anyone stop Wesley Kiptoo?

The #2 BYU men may have upset #1 NAU, but NAU held out one of the top runners in the country in Luis Grijalva. Young finished an impressive second as NAU's Taryn O'Neill won the women's race.

The NCAA XC champs will be held on March 15, just two days after NCAA Indoors. Jonathan Gault spoke to several top NCAA coaches to figure out why the schedule turned out that way -- and how they're adjusting. Many coaches indicated they are likely to blow off one of the championships entirely.

Covid-19 has given us a real treat as this weekend's OSU Invitational will offer us something we wouldn't get to see if it weren't for the pandemic: a regular-season matchup between the sport's top three men's teams from 2019 NCAAs -- BYU, NAU, and Colorado. *MB: BYU vs. NAU This Weekend!

We hand out awards, including Runner of the Decade, Upset of the Decade, & Program of the Decade. Plus, what were the best single-season teams of the last 10 years?

NAU is so good that coach Mike Smith had a tough choice to make in figuring out what 7 runners should run NCAAs. We exclusively tell you who made the cut here. "They don't just have four or five very good runners. They seem to have 10," said Mark Wetmore,

#1 NAU seems poised to become just the third men's team to win 4-straight NCAA XC titles but #2 Colorado has a good team and #4 Stanford has 5 sub-13:50 guys. Can someone pull off a big upset?

We break down the biggest regular-season NCAA meet of the season for you. As good as NAU and Arkansas were, the men from the ACC were bad as their top 4 teams all bombed.

Who is going to win NCAAs? One of these five teams.