NCAA DI Championships: Two Press Conference Takeaways

LOUISVILLE – Tomorrow’s the day national titles, team podium finishes and All-America honors are up for grabs as teams and individuals face off against one another at the NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships.

But today it was time for some of the country’s top coaches and athletes to face the press. Here’s a couple big takeaways from Friday’s press conference.

Be sure to follow along with Saturday’s championships with live results and live video, and visit the USTFCCCA National Championships Central page for all the meet details.

Takeaway #1: It sounds promising that we’ll see something special from New Mexico on Saturday.

All year long we’ve seen the No. 1 New Mexico Lobo women dominate whenever they’ve raced at full strength. Notre Dame? 29 points to win by nearly 50 points. Wisconsin adidas? 32 points to win by more than 150 points. 24 points to win the Mountain West by nearly 50 points.

It started out as the “fearsome foursome” with Courtney Frerichs, Rhona Auckland, Alice Wright and Calli Thackery, and has grown into a full-fledged “ferocious five” with Molly Renfer. In that ultra-competitive Wisconsin adidas Invitational race those five all finished in the top-10 – Frerichs, Auckland, Thackery, Wright in fourth through seventh and Renfer in 10th all within 16 seconds of one another – to decimate now No. 3 Arkansas, 32-188.

As scary as that performance was to competitors around the country, many have also suspected that it may not be all the Lobos are capable of.

Turns out those many people might be right.

“The first two races we definitely worked together,” Frerichs said during the press conference. “I think our fitness was all at the same level, anyways. The last two races we’ve had some pretty strict racing plans. Tomorrow we’re definitely focused on the team – that’s our first goal, all of us – but we’re all going to race hard and not hold anything back.

“I wouldn’t count any of us out as far as individuals go, as well.”

That rings especially true for Frerichs – who was 13th at NCAAs a year ago and went on to become one of the best steeplechasers in collegiate history – and Auckland, who finished 19th at the World XC Championships a year ago.

The number to keep in mind tomorrow: 36. That’s the championships record for fewest points scored by the 1981 Virginia women in the very first NCAA Championships. That team featured four top-10 scorers and another scoring 15.

Only two other teams have broken 60 points in DI women’s history, and none since the mid-80s: Virginia with 48 in 1982 and Wisconsin with 58 in 1985.

Another number to look for: margin of victory. Villanova won by 90 over Providence in 1990. As mentioned before, the Lobos blasted Arkansas by more than 150 points over No. 3 Arkansas.

Even in a conservative effort (likely for both teams) against No. 2 Colorado at the Mountain Regional in which they held out Wright and packed up to conserve energy and advance, they only lost to the Buffaloes by one point and had five across the line before Colorado’s No. 3.

Takeaway #2: Don’t expect the Rosa Brothers to lead Stanford’s pack

Despite losing a key pair of seniors in Maksim Korolev and Michael Atchoo from last year’s NCAA runner-up team, the Stanford men entered the 2015 season ranked No. 2 in the country. A significant reason for that rank: one final season of both Jim and Joe Rosa.

The multiple-time All-American brothers from New Jersey have alternated injury-plagued seasons – Joe in 2013 and Jim in 2014 – but both were poised to race together on the fall circuit for the first time since NCAAs in 2012.

Well, that hasn’t exactly unfolded as planned.

“We have had more adversity dealt our way than probably we could have ever even anticipated, whether it was with the Rosas or with Jack Keelan,” head coach Chris Miltenberg said. “We’ve gone week-by-week and we’ve taken what we’ve had, and taken the cards we’ve had and played them the best we could each week. I think it’s going in the right direction right now.”

Jim has been dealing with knee issues – in August, he nearly had season-ending knee surgery for a second consecutive year – while Joe has been battling an ongoing hamstring injury, but the twins made their much-hyped return at the Pac-12 Championships. Joe was eighth as Stanford’s No. 2 and Jim was 20th as the Cardinal’s No. 5.

“They’re both getting better by the day,” Miltenberg said. “They’re better today than they were yesterday. If this meet was two weeks ago, we wouldn’t be very good. But those guys are literally every day making progress.”

Then at the West Regional Jim was sixth within a second of teammate Sean McGorty and Joe in seventh and eighth.

Since McGorty has been a sensation this season with top-five finishes in every other meet he’s run, the Rosas should be on pace to replicate the form that led Jim to a fifth-place finish in 2013 and Joe to a 33rd-place effort in 2014, right?

Not so fast, says Miltenberg.

“I think the key for them will be that they’re not in a position right now to have huge individual expectations. From the outside looking in that would be logical given their history. But I think they’re in a place where they can run really good team races, and if they can embrace that and be excited to do that, then our whole team will go with that as well.”

That makes Stanford a team of “x-factors” along with frosh phenom Grant Fisher running his first collegiate 10K, Sam Wharton looking to bounce back from a rough 2015 to replicate his 2014 All-American status, Garrett Sweatt continuing to emerge as a potential top-five runner for Stanford, and early-season breakthrough candidate Jack Keelan struggling with recent injury adversity.