NCAA DI Men’s Events & Athletes to Watch on Conference Championships Weekend

NEW ORLEANS–It’s the busiest weekend of the year in college track & field. Nearly every Division I, II, and III conference championship is this weekend, meaning that nearly every healthy athlete who qualified for their conference meet is competing.

It’s an overwhelming amount of track; we believe that the sport is at its best when the competition between athletes is at its most intense. Below are ten men’s events with the best competition, plus a few individuals competing against the clock or the tape.

We can’t get to everything, so be sure to check out USTFCCCA’s Conference Championships Central for the low-down on all the conference meets this weekend.

The best part? Nearly all of it will be streamed live on the internet. Check out our weekend broadcast schedule breakdown for the list of what’s going on this weekend, and each individual event below includes the time and a link to its live broadcast, if available. Not all events will be streamed.

All times listed are for the final of the event.

SEC Men’s Long Jump

Friday, 4:45pm ET
Live Results | Live Video | Startlist

We don’t have enough nicknames in track & field. Marquis Dendy’s initials are M.D. We should be calling him Doc Dendy, or the Doctor. "Dendy’s jump is a useful one…it’s 8.45 meters…PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF!" Moving on.

Jarrion Lawson of Arkansas is the top returner from last year’s conference meet, has the farthest personal best in the entire NCAA, is the defending indoor national champion, and at at 8.03m has the top mark this season among athletes eligible for nationals. (Sadly, Jarvis "8.12" Gotch competes for a Louisiana Tech squad that’s not eligible for indoor NCAAs for not hitting academic benchmarks) But he’s at best a co-favorite with Dendy. Lawson did pop off a massive 8.39 at altitude last March, but he’s only gone past eight meters at sea level–indoors or outdoors–one time. Dendy’s done it eight times and is the defending outdoor champ.

MPSF DMR

Friday, 10:55 PM ET
Live Results | Live Video | Startlist

Oregon is in a shocking position: the bubble. Despite having the country’s best mid-d depth on paper, their DMR of 9:32 sits squarely 12th in Division I. Twelve teams make nationals, and there are enough squads right behind them on the list (Illinois, Columbia, Oklahoma, Loyola, and Texas A&M) that at least one or two of them will take a shot this weekend.

The only team that could definitely push them if they tried–Stanford— is entered, but with the Cardinal sitting a comfortable 7th on the descending order list and needing to get several individuals in, don’t look for an A team from them. A quick look at UCLA’s roster indicates that they might be capable of scratching out a 9:35 or so. Their three distance legs from last year’s 9:39 squad are all back, and they’ve had two men under 4:07 and one under 1:49. Expect UCLA to go for it. The Bruins currently have zero runners qualified for nationals, and a relay is their best shot. That combined with Oregon’s sheer talent should be enough to get Oregon in, and UCLA running 9:31 or so and sneaking in isn’t far-fetched.

Big Ten Men’s Weight Throw

Saturday, 1:45pm ET
Live Results | Startlist

Michael Lihrman vs. Chukwuebuka Enekwechi is the best head-to-head matchup of the weekend. The big dudes who are No. 1 and No. 2 on the all-time Division I weight throw list (if you’re an imperialist Anglophile, they’re also the only two DI men ever to throw farther than eighty feet) are facing off at the Big Ten championship in Geneva, Ohio. Lihrman is undefeated in the weight throw since transferring to Wisconsin. He doesn’t have the complete psychological edge over Enekwechi, though: the Boilermaker beat the Badger in the hammer at outdoor Big Tens last May.
And while Enekwechi is the No. 2 performer in DI history at 24.39m, Lihrman has thrown farther than that six times in the last month. The latter against Kibwe Johnson’s NCAA all-division record of 25.08m could end up being the more interesting matchup. (Johnson is also the No. 4 performer in world history, but the event is almost never contested outside of North America)

SEC Men’s 60-Meter Hurdles

Saturday, 2:10pm ET
Live Results | Live Video | Startlist

If Lawson doesn’t give the Hogs an event win and ten points this weekend, Omar McLeod likely will. No one has run within a tenth of a second of the sophomore this winter, and the 2014 SEC final is his only indoor hurdle final loss in his collegiate career. Of course, such a short hurdle race is a total crapshoot–one bad hurdle and you’re in deep trouble. Should McLeod falter, Dondre Echols has the second fastest time in the country and conference at 7.72 seconds.

Echols is part of a deep South Carolina hurdle crew. The Gamecocks were the only team with three underclassmen in the SEC final in 2014, and they’re the only team with two of the seven fastest hurdlers in 2015.

Big 12 Men’s 60 Meters

Saturday, 3pm ET/2pm CT
Live results | Live Video

While the SEC and Florida State have historically dominated the 100 meters outdoors–athletes in that group won ten national titles in the event from 2000 to 2011–the Big 12 has had much better luck indoors. (They might be taking over outdoors, too: the conference has won the last two 100 finals, and it’s hard to imagine Trayvon Bromell losing as long as he stays in school) Athletes from the schools currently in the conference have won the 60 meters four times this century, and they’re favored to add a fifth in two weeks.

That’s because Bromell, the best young American sprinter in years (and by some measures, ever) might not even be the best 60 meter runner in his own conference. John Teeters took the track world by surprise when he ran a then-collegiate leader of 6.54 at Nebraska, and backed it up two weeks later with a new CL of 6.52 seconds in the prelims at Tyson. There, Teeters and Bromell were in separate heats in the prelims and semis–Teeters ran faster in both rounds–and then both skipped the final.

The duo have not raced each other this season. If they both make it safely through to Saturday’s final, that’s the track matchup of the weekend.

SEC Men’s 400 Meters

Saturday, 3:15pm ET
Live Results | Live Video | Startlist

This is the only event in the country where the top five athletes are from the same conference. Deon Lendore (Texas A&M), Vernon Norwood (LSU), Najee Glass, and Hugh Graham, Jr. (both Florida) are four of the five athletes in the country who return from last year’s NCAA outdoor final, and Texas A&M’s Bralon Taplin was the first man to miss the final. Lendore and Norwood are the top two returners from indoor nationals. (Arman Hall of Florida split that duo at indoor SECs a year ago, but hasn’t run a single open race this winter.)

There’s not as much parity as there appears to be on paper, though. Lendore’s PB is a world-class 44.36 seconds, which makes him the only man among those five to have broken 45.15 in his career. The 2014 Bowerman winner hasn’t lost a collegiate race since June 2013. Until there’s any indication that something is wrong with him, Lendore is the massive favorite.

Saturday, 4pm ET/3pm CT
Live results | Live Video | Startlist

In 2014, teammates Jacorian Duffield and Bradley Adkins of Texas Tech jumped the same height at the indoor Big 12 and national championships. In 2015, Duffield is tied with Kansas State’s Christoff Bryan at 2.28m (7-5.25) for the best jump in the country, and Adkins sits fourth on the descending order list at 2.25m (7-4.5). Bryan’s entire collegiate career consists of two meets: he cleared 2.25 in a triangular at home, and leapt 2.28 to beat Duffield and Adkins at Tyson.

Those three are the big favorites for conference and national titles. Iowa State’s defending conference champ Cameron Ostrowski has only jumped 2.21 this winter, but will jumping at home.

SEC Men’s 200 Meters

Saturday, 4:35pm ET
Live Results | Live Video| Startlist

Dedric Dukes looms over the proceedings here. He’s one of just nine men to have ever broken twenty seconds in the 200 meters while in college, and with his teammate Arman Hall sticking to the 400 and 4×400 this weekend, he’s the top returner from last year’s SEC meet. But the senior has only run 20.91 seconds this winter, which ranks fifteenth in the NCAA.

That opens the door for collegiate leader Shavez Hart, whose 20.57 on his Texas A&M home track three weeks ago would be faster than plenty of SEC-winning times. Aaron Ernest of LSU has run 20.66 at altitude; that’s the second fastest collegiate time of 2015, though it ranks fifth in the nation with the altitude conversion. And Hart’s teammate Bralon Taplin ranks eighth with a 20.80 season best.

If Dukes has something up his sleeve, no one can touch him. If he is who he’s been this season, then Hart is a clear favorite.

Saturday, 6:05pm ET
Live Results| Live Video | Startlist

Baylor won the men’s 4×400 at indoor nationals in 1990, ’91, 92, ’98, 2002, ’04, ’07, ’08, and ’09. Since the end of Bear hegemony, now-SEC schools have won the last five indoor national titles in the relay. Here’s a stat, though: in none of those years did the same team win the 4×4 at SECs and nationals. In the one of the two years Texas A&M won out of the Big 12, the first SEC 4×4 team at nationals still wasn’t the SEC champ.

*then in Big 12

This tells us two things: the best team doesn’t always run its best lineup at the conference meet, and there has been some chicanery with batons and bumping at the national meet. Texas A&M is the obvious favorite to three-peat this year–they’ve run a second faster than Florida and LSU, and Lendore and Shavez Hart have run on all three of the fastest collegiate quartets in history, with two of those times coming in the last four weeks. But should Pat Henry elect to protect his athletes for the national meet, Florida and his former school are well-equipped to capitalize.

Friday, 9:20pm ET/6:20 pm PT (5k) and Saturday, 5:30pm ET/2:30pm PT (3k)
Live Results | Live Video | Startlist

Edward Cheserek isn’t running the 5k at indoor nationals. It’s official–he hasn’t run one yet this season, and he’s not entered in the 5000 at the MPSF meet. Two notable entrants in Friday night’s 5k: Scott Fauble and Jim Rosa. Fauble, of Portland, hasn’t raced since XC nationals in November, while Stanford’s Rosa is racing for the first time since outdoor nationals last June. With Aaron Nelson of Washington sitting 16th nationally at 13:47 and entered in hopes of protecting his slot at nationals, we could see all three dip into the 13:40s.

Ches is entered in the 3k, which is not far from a middle-distance re-run of the PAC-12 cross country championship meet. Four men who finished in the top ten at the conference meet in November are either out of eligibility or haven’t raced this indoor season: Stanford’s Maksim Korolev and Joe Rosa, and Colorado’s Connor Winter and Blake Theroux. The other six–Cheserek and Eric Jenkins of Oregon, Ammar Moussa, Pierce Murphy, and Ben Saarel of Colorado, plus Chris Walden of Cal–are all entered in this race.

Ches, Jenkins, Will Geoghegan (in the 3k) and Murphy plus Oregon’s Parker Stinson (in the 5k) and Johnny Gregorek (mile) are all safely qualified for nationals. The others listed above, plus Jake Hurysz of Colorado, Jeramy Elkaim and Jake Leingang of Oregon, and Erik Olson of Stanford are either on or well outside of the bubble for nationals.

Look for this race to eschew the usual championship meet sit-and-kick and take on more of a last chance feel. Multiple tickets to Fayetteville will be punched; Cheserek, Jenkins, and Geoghegan might be in the race to pace Elkaim, Stinson, and Leingang.

Individuals to watch

• Shawn Barber of Akron at the Mid-American Conference championships. Two of the past three times he’s competed, he’s set the collegiate record in the men’s indoor pole vault, and he’s made attempts at new collegiate records nearly every weekend this season. Look for his historic season to continue in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, this weekend.

• Jarvis Gotch of Louisiana Tech at the USA championships. With NCAAs off the table for Gotch (as covered above), he’ll have to settle for contending for a USATF long jump title in Boston.

• Wally Ellenson of Marquette at the Big East meet. Ellenson is tied with Duffield and Bryan for the NCAA lead in the high jump at 2.28m (7-5.25) and no one in his own conference has jumped within eighteen centimeters of him. Also, he should quit the Marquette basketball team.

• Montana State’s Christian Soratos at the Big Sky meet. Under the radar, the Big Sky has produced some of the best American professional runners on the scene right now–think Pat Casey of Montana State and Diego Estrada of Northern Arizona–and Soratos might be next. The DI leader in the mile at 3:55.27 is just a few tenths away from being one of the fastest collegians in history, and will be taking on a deep NAU distance squad on its home track.

• Andre Dorsey of Kennesaw State at the Atlantic Sun meet. Having qualified for past national meets in the high jump, long jump, and triple jump, Dorsey is one of the most versatile athletes in the NCAA. He’s dabbled in the multis before, completing heptathlons in 2012 and 2013, but the 2015 edition of Dorsey is a different beast. His 5644 score at Minnesota is the 7th best in DI this winter, and more than a thousand points better than his best score from his sophomore year.