Division I Men’s Team Preview

NEW ORLEANS – Throughout the Wetmore era, the Colorado men’s cross country team has been painted by the media as a hard-working, under the radar team of no-names.  (Well, as under the radar as you can be after having an iconic book written about you)  And they’ve positioned themselves as the antithesis of the dream teams of foreigners and Footlocker winners cobbled together elsewhere in the country; Mark Wetmore told Running Times that he only recruits Americans.  The need for narrative, true or otherwise, is the defining lust of the sports fan, and the narrative that’s emerged in the last ten years is pretty unambiguous.  Colorado is the Spurs to Oklahoma State or Wisconsin or Oregon’s Heat.

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The central fallacy of the Heat vs. Spurs/“bought vs. built” dichotomy has always been this: the Spurs had one tremendous advantage that has absolutely nothing to do with coaching or player development. They lucked their way backwards into Tim Duncan.  Similarly, Colorado has massive built-in advantages that go overlooked sometimes: Boulder is the best place to run in the country¹, and Chris Lear’s book created a mythology around the program that gives the Buffs a recruiting leg up over every team in the country save Oregon.

Fallacious or not, narratives feed sports fans the thing they need most: something to root for, and more crucially, against.  It is not enough for teams to just wear different jerseys, they also have to have different styles.  Rightly or wrongly, cross country fans view Colorado differently than they view the other four programs that have won post-McDonnell national championships, and the sport is livelier for it.  Two of the other four—Stanford and Oregon—are covered with the fingerprints of Vin Lananna, the consummate recruiter.  And the other two, Wisconsin and Oklahoma State, were the fairly standard amalgamation of high school superstars and international studs.

Here’s a stat: every team that has won a national championship since the Last Night of the Arkansas Dynasty in 2000 has had at least one runner who held or would hold a national record or national junior record² at some point except for the 2004, 2006, and 2013 Colorado teams. Sometimes, image is reality.

Sports have a funny way of putting the spike on the other foot (among other brutally inadequate clichés), though.  In their three most recent title seasons, Colorado was ranked No. 1 for a grand total of two weeks: weeks five and six last year.  The season’s last poll before nationals had the Buffaloes ranked 4th, 2nd, and 3rd in 2004, 2006, and 2013, respectively.  Though Wetmore famously puts far more emphasis on execution than motivation, all of those teams had the added mental benefit of being the underdog.

The second episode of Flotrack’s series on CU covers 2004 and 2006 in depth.  In both of those years, Wisconsin was ranked No. 1 every single week of the season, and Colorado left Terre Haute with the biggest trophy. You can detect the joy in Brent Vaughn’s voice when he says the 2004 Badgers “were supposed to annihilate us.”

This year, Mark Wetmore’s men are in the exact same position as that 2006 Wisconsin team.  The defending champs have most of their big guns back and have been unanimously ranked No. 1 in every poll of the season. (The latter distinction is only held by the ’06 Badgers and ’14 Buffs)

Every preview is justifiably writing about Saturday as an inevitable Colorado coronation.  And it is! Jonathan Gault noted perhaps the stat of the year in his LetsRun preview: “Even if you combined Oregon and Stanford at Pac-12s, they would only have beaten CU by two points — and that’s a team with a top four of Cheserek, Jenkins, Rosa and Korolev.” Think about that.  If Oregon and Stanford combined their considerable recruiting and coaching powers, they could still only beat Colorado by a hair. That’s absurd.

I don’t think that Syracuse, Iona, Villanova, Oklahoma State, or anyone other challenger has a snowball’s chance of winning this meet.  But the same things were written in 2004 and 2006, and Colorado being on the other end of a titanic upset a decade later would be rich.

If Colorado wins, that would be their first repeat ever and their fifth title in program history. That would break a tie with Oklahoma State, Stanford, and Villanova, and tie them with Wisconsin. The only schools with more wins than the Buffs would then be Oregon (6), UTEP (7, all before 1982), Michigan State (8, all before 1960) and Arkansas (11, all before 2001).

Enough about the Buffaloes.  What about the other 30 teams running on Saturday?

The Podium Hopefuls

It’s been a combined 79 years since No. 2 Syracuse (1957) or No. 5 Villanova (1992) stood on the podium.  Maybe a chip is malfunctioning in my brain, but it seems like breaking a decades-long drought would be good enough for either of the former Big East rivals.  

No. 4 Oklahoma State is the polar opposite of those two schools: they’ve been on the podium each of the last five years.  But this would be the most impressive trophy for the Cowboys, as nobody on their roster has ever been a cross country All-American.

No. 3 Oregon has just one more returning AA than OK State does. (You might have heard of him)  The Ducks haven’t been in the top four since taking second in 2009; BYU beat them by seven points for the last podium spot a year ago. 

By the way, Andy Powell and Dave Smith coaching two teams with a combined one returning All-American to the podium would fly in the face of the entire narrative described above.  Touted recruiters can coach ‘em up, and supposed diamond-in-the-rough miners like Wetmore can land generational talents.

Four freshmen, two sophomores, and a senior make up the No. 6 Wisconsin top seven. That composition would make them the youngest team in at least fifteen years³ to make the podium.  Judging by our interview with Mick Byrne, he knows how treacherous natties can be with such a preponderance of young bucks.

Byrne’s former team, No. 8 Iona, is one of the hardest to peg down in the nation.  The Gales have yet to simultaneously unleash Jake Byrne, Kieran Clements, and Chartt Miller in a competitive meet.  The only race all three started together in 2014 was the MAAC championship, where the trio finished nine-tenths of a second apart in a phalanx of nine Iona runners that beat the rest of the field.

Iona has very much been the rich man’s version of No. 7 Portland over the last two decades: a small Catholic school in/near a major city and in a minor conference that has somehow emerged as one of the best distance programs in the United States.  Since 1996, the Gaels have been in the top ten twelve times with five podium finishes.  In that same period, the Pilots six teams with zero podiums. 

Finishing on the podium might not be more meaningful to any coach than it would be for Iona’s Ricardo Santos (who has yet to make the top four without Byrne-recruited athletes) or Portland’s Rob Conner.

Shooting for the top ten

No. 9 Stanford and No. 10 Northern Arizona clearly have the most accomplished squads outside of those listed above.  Stanford’s recent history at nationals is a bit tortured.  Since legendary coach Peter Tegen left after the 2007-08 school year, here’s how the Cardinal have done at nationals and where they were ranked the week before:

2008: ranked 3rd, finished 3rd
2009: ranked 1st, finished 10th
2010: ranked 1st, finished 4th
2011: ranked 5th, finished 5th
2012: ranked 2nd, finished 16th
2013: ranked 4th, finished 19th

It would be deliciously ironic if Maksim Korolev were the man to deliver Stanford from its historic inconsistency.

NAU was thought of at the start of the season as a possible podium contender, in large part due to Tyler Byrne (29th at NCAAs last year) transferring in from Louisville.  But Byrne hasn’t quite returned to his 2013 form, finishing 84 places worse at Wisconsin this year.  He may be coming on: at regionals he ran a faster pace for 10k at altitude than he did in any of his sea-level 8k races.

If those ten teams simply take care of business, they are clearly better than the rest of the nation.  But it’s nationals. At least one of them will fall apart, and someone else will step up.  No. 15 BYU finished just three points behind Portland at their conference meet.  No. 11 Providence beat Iona at regionals.  No. 12 UCLA has lost to NAU by a total of 21 points in their two meetings.  And the more good teams bomb, the wider the door is open to heretofore unnamed teams.

Happy to be there

No. 19 Furman is in the meet for the first time since 1970, No. 22 Southern Utah is in for the second time ever in program history (and first since 1999), No. 24 Mississippi is in for the first time ever in program history, and UTEP is in despite not having been ranked one time (including right now!) in the last six seasons.

These teams frequently run better than expected.  This calls for a data post next season, but generally, running is such a mental sport that when pressure—and these teams have zero pressure, as just making nationals is a huge accomplishment—and expectations are removed, performance tends to improve. 

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These teams want to beat their national rankings, and are free to use their lack of a mention as motivation: No. t13 Virginia, No. t13 Georgetown, No. 16 Washington, No. 17 Michigan State, No. 18 Michigan, No. 20 Tulsa, No. 21 Arkansas, No. 23 North Carolina, No. 25 Indiana, No. 26 New Mexico, No. 27 Colorado State, No. 28 Florida State, No. 29 Eastern Kentucky, and No. 30 Texas.