DI Great Lakes Region Preview

NEW ORLEANS – The Zimmer Championship Course in Madison, Wisconsin will live up to its name on Friday when it plays host to the 2015 Division I NCAA Great Lakes Region Championships.

The women start things up at 12 p.m. CST with the men getting underway an hour later.

You can follow the race on the National Results Wall, and via live results.

Women’s Race

Team Breakdown

If you’re wondering what state will produce the team champion from this region, look north – way north – and find the one that is shaped like a mitten.

History has a tendency to repeat itself and if nine of the past 10 years are any indication, the state of Michigan will be home to yet another champion.

The Michigan Wolverines and the Michigan State Spartans have dominated the Great Lakes Region since 2005. Michigan won five titles in that span, compared to Michigan State’s four and Notre Dame’s crown in 2009 was the only entity separating them from a clean sweep.

Last year the Spartans ran away with the title and ruined the Wolverines’ attempt at a four-peat. Michigan State put four runners in the top-7 and scored 28 points, the fewest by a team champion – from either gender – in the past 10 years.

Coming into the season, many thought the Spartans had the firepower to bring another title back to East Lansing. That’s also when those same people assumed Michigan State would be at full strength at this point of the season. The 18th-ranked Spartans are far from it. Last year’s runner-up at this meet, Rachele Schulist, hasn’t raced since mid-September and Michigan State’s No. 2 finisher at NCAAs last year, Lindsay Clark, hasn’t toed a starting line at all in 2015.

Needless to say, that opens the door wide-open and seventh-ranked Michigan is more than willing to be the first team to walk through.

Two weeks ago the Wolverines finished second at the Big Ten Championships behind upset-minded Penn State. Michigan didn’t get a usual race out of No. 2 runner Shannon Osika and the Nittany Lions packed four in the top-12 to earn the win. Should Osika finish where she usually does, which is right behind teammate Erin Finn, no other team in the region has the depth right now that the Wolverines do.

Notre Dame is the third and final ranked team in the region and could be a sleeper pick. The 15th-ranked Irish should get two low sticks from Anna Rohrer and Molly Seidel and if the rest of the team solidifies, the stars could align.

Individual Breakdown

We should be in for a dandy of a duel between Michigan’s Erin Finn and Notre Dame’s Molly Seidel. This will also be the first head-to-head meeting of the season for them.

Finn could add to her already impressive list of victories this season – the Vanderbilt Commodore Classic, the Greater Louisville Classic and the Big Ten Championships. The only “blemish” on Finn’s record this season is a sixth-place finish at the Pre-National Invitational four weeks ago.

Seidel hasn’t finished outside of the top-3 in 2015 and recently won the ACC individual crown. She was second at the Wisconsin adidas Invitational and third at the Joe Piane Notre Dame Invitational in September.

Finn and Seidel should be joined in the lead pack – at least early in the race – by several other runners. Be on the lookout for Michigan’s Shannon Osika, Michigan State’s Alexis Weirsma and Notre Dame’s Anna Rohrer.

Men’s Race

Team Preview

There are certain things in life you just don’t see every day. Pigs flying, for instance. Or the Wisconsin men not qualifying for the NCAA Cross Country Championships.

Don’t count on seeing the former, but the latter is very much a real possibility in Madison, Wisconsin, this weekend as the Badgers host the Great Lakes Regional Championships with their 43-year streak of NCAA Championships appearances in mortal danger.

Wisconsin’s season has fallen apart since being named the preseason No. 4 team in the country. The now-infamous “jog session” at the Greater Louisville Classic gave way to a disappointing 17th-place finish at its home adidas Invitational and a disastrous eighth-place finish at the Big Ten Championships two weeks later.

With leader Malachy Schrobilgen not in peak form after dropping out of the Big Ten race, the Badgers – winners of 12 of the past 13 editions of this race – face an uphill climb to avoid missing the NCAA Championships for the first time since 1972. They get one final shot at redemption this weekend, with the wild card of increasing to the 10K distance.

No. 5 Michigan has taken over as the class of the region and will look to win its second regional crown in the past three seasons. The Wolverines are coming off their first Big Ten title since 1998 and leader Mason Ferlic will look to lead them in a continuation of their winning ways.

That leaves the second automatic NCAA Championships bid up for grabs between most proiminently No. 30 Indiana and the vote-receiving duo of Mid-American Conference champion Eastern Michigan and Michigan State.

Only one point separated fourth-place Indiana and fifth-place Michigan State at the Big Ten Championships – 112-113 – but the two squads went about it in two very different ways. Indiana ran strong up front with top-six finishes from Rorey Hunter and Jason Crist, but MSU had all five scorers across the finish line before Indiana’s fourth runner crossed.

Eastern was dominant in a win at the MAC Championships, scoring 26 points with five top-nine runners and a group of seven across in the top-13.

Individual Preview

With five returning All-American runners from the 2014 season, the Great Lakes is only surpassed in returning top-40 runners by the West with six and matched by the Mountain with five.

Headlining that group of five in the Great Lakes are a pair of top-10 finishers in two-time defending regional champion John Mascari of Indiana State (eighth at NCAAs) and Schrobilgen of Wisconsin (10th).

Both have been up-and-down this season, with Mascari turning in a disappointing 30th-place finish at the Pre-National Invitational before winning his fourth-consecutive Missouri Valley title and Schrobilgen finishing fifth at the adidas Invite before dropping out of the Big Ten race.

That opens the door for Big Ten champion Matt McClintock of Purdue (19th at NCAAs), Big Ten runner-up Ferlic of Michigan (13th) or Big East third-place finisher Erik Peterson of Butler (22nd) to rise to the top of the region.

In total, nine of the top-10 finishers from last year’s race are back in action. That also includes Caleb Rhynard of Michigan State, Michael Clevenger of Notre Dame, Joseph Stewart of Miami (Ohio) and Ben Flanagan of Michigan.

In the potential absence of Schrobilgen, look for Morgan McDonald to potentially step up for Wisconsin. He was 10th at the adidas Invite earlier this season.