DI South Central Region Preview

The 2015 South Central Region Championships will be held Friday morning in College Station, Texas. The women’s 6K race begins at 10 a.m. CT, followed an hour later by the men’s 10K.

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

Women’s Race

Team Breakdown

Welcome to the South Central Region, where it’s Arkansas and everybody else.

The third-ranked Razorbacks have been the class of this region since 2011, when they won their first of four consecutive titles. Last year Arkansas scored 29 points and put four runners inside the top-10 on its way to a masterclass rout.

Expect history to repeat itself this year as the Razorbacks are the cream of the crop once again. Arkansas, led by multiple-time All-American Dominique Scott, enters the meet fresh off a dominant performance at the SEC Championships (38 points).

So what teams are going to be fighting for the region’s second bid to NCAAs once the race gets underway Friday morning in College Station, Texas?

The current No. 2 team in the region is SMU. Two weeks ago the Mustangs finished second to Tulsa at the American Athletic Conference Championships.

Rice is right behind SMU and recently captured the Conference USA Championship. The Owls went 1-2 in Bowling Green, Kentucky and held off Middle Tennessee State.

Don’t forget about Texas either, a team that is ranked fourth in the region. Earlier this season the Longhorns looked strong, even capturing a top-30 ranking in the National Coaches’ Poll, but they struggled down the stretch.

Last year’s runner-up Baylor is currently ranked sixth in the region.

Individual Breakdown

This is Dominique Scott’s race to lose.

Scott has been on fire since her debut at the Arkansas Chile Pepper Festival and recently won her third consecutive individual title at the SEC Championships, a feat never before done in the long history of that league.

So who will be running for second?

The leading returner is SMU’s Agnes Sjostrom, who finished third last year. Sjostrom, however, hasn’t raced well this season and was 23rd at the AAC Championships two weeks ago.

Rice’s Cali Roper, the C-USA champion, is a better pick. Roper also showed she can run well in big meets, placing 22nd at the Pre-National Invitational.

Here are two others – and you might have heard of them: Arkansas’ Devin Clark and Baylor’s Maggie Montoya. Clark has showed the 6K distance doesn’t bother her and raced well at the SEC Championships and the Wisconsin adidas Invitational. Montoya was fifth at the Big 12 Championships and was 11th at the Roy Griak Invitational.

Men’s Race

Team Preview

Any preseason questions surrounding the Arkansas men have been answered in definitive fashion. Yes, indeed, the Razorbacks are still the class of the South Central after trouncing the field at the SEC Championships and finishing third at the Pre-National Invitational to move up to No. 8 in the polls.

A balanced pack of Christian Heymsfield, Frankline Tonui, Alex George and Austen Dalquist lead the way for the Razorbacks as they seek and are heavily favored for their third consecutive regional title.

The South Central is a region that will most likely only advance the two automatically qualifying teams to the NCAA Championships, injecting a bit more urgency into the rest of the field chasing that all-important second spot.

Each of the next eight teams in the final Regional Rankings are from the state of Texas, headlined by Texas and Texas A&M. The former is a program that has advance to NCAAs 10 of the past 11 years; the latter has only made the big dance eight times in school history.

The results of the late-September Texas A&M Invitational reinforce that notion. Texas won with 37 points, while A&M was fourth with 116. But the Aggies ran without leader Cameron Villareal and have grown stronger with every successive meet. A&M is coming off a program-best runner-up finish at the SEC Championships behind Arkansas.

Texas, meanwhile, is coming from a third-place Big-12 finish two weekends ago after having previously finished a disappointing 16th at the Pre-National Invitational.

Stephen F. Austin and Lamar have unsettled business from the Southland, as the Lumberjacks only narrowly topped the Cardinals, 27-29.

Individual Preview

Brady Turnbull and Cameron Villareal will be leading their respective Texas and Texas A&M squads this weekend near the front of the pack as their teams battle for that all-important runner-up finish. Turnbull was ninth in the Big 12 and Villareal was eighth in the SEC.

Arkansas’ group of Heymsfield, Tonui, George and Dalquist will also be running up near the front, but likely without the same heightened level of urgency.

Houston’s Brian Barraza is the top returning finisher from a year ago after finishing fourth in 2014. He was fourth in the American Athletic Conference.

Charles Mathenge of Stephen F. Austin and Troy Taylor of North Texas were seventh and eighth at this meet a year ago to get into NCAAs, but their 2015 seasons have taken much different arcs. Mathenge was the Southland runner-up and top-20 at the Pre-National Invite, but Taylor has yet to regain that form in a 55th finish at Conference USA and 147th at Pre-Nats.

Mathenge was runner-up in the Southland to another man to watch in Lamar frosh Iliass Aouani.

From C-USA, keep an eye on UTSA’s Dusan Makevic, who was a close fourth behind UTEP’s formidable top three.

Sun Belt champion Eric Ojeda of Texas-Arlington will also likely run with that lead pack with individual qualifying aspirations.