2023 NCAA D1 Regional XC Championships Preview

Written by Garrett Zatlin, questions via Ben Weisel

The NCAA D1 Regional XC Championships are fast approaching. That, in turn, means that Friday will not just be another regular day of racing. Instead, the battles that we'll witness two days from now will determine which teams advance to the NCAA XC Championships...as well as which teams will be ending their seasons early.

Below, our Blue Oval Podcast co-host, Ben Weisel, crafted some pre-race questions for me, your site admin, to answer. And by utilizing Bo Waggoner's Kolas Calculator, I was able to craft some pre-race thoughts on what should be a wild Friday of national qualification calculations...

PLEASE NOTE: The NCAA national qualifying system (often referred to as the Kolas qualifying system) is a complex, points-based method of selecting the best cross country teams in the nation for the NCAA XC Championships. The slightest alterations in the regional results can produce drastically different outcomes as far as at-large qualifiers are concerned. The below analysis is centered around highly-variable baseline expectations that TSR has made.

Don't understand the NCAA D1 qualifying system? Click here to learn more.

Official Kolas Projections Coming Tomorrow!

I'm going to cheat and say two teams: Tennessee and Alabama.

Generally speaking, the women's South region will basically be the determinant for which teams do and do not qualify for this year's national meet. And of the top-five teams in that region -- Florida, Lipscomb, Ole Miss, Tennessee and Alabama -- it's the latter two who are projected to have very few Kolas points.

If Alabama and Tennessee finish in the 3rd and 4th place positions (or they're swapped) at the South Regional XC Championships, then the 5th place team, which would likely be Lipscomb or Ole Miss in this scenario, are most likely not going to be able to advance. This is because you can't "push" more than one team into the national meet in a specific region.

If a team like Ole Miss or Lipscomb (or Florida, which is unlikely) fall to 5th place, then they'll need to hope that either Tennessee or Alabama earn one of the two automatic qualifying spots. In that scenario, Ole Miss and Lipscomb would comfortably have enough points to advance and a "push" scenario could theoretically allow all five of these teams to advance to Charlottesville.

So in a weird twisted fate of Kolas calculations, the teams who will be rooting for the Volunteers and Crimson Tide to finish in the top-two or top-three on Friday may actually be the other teams who they'll be battling at the top of the South regional field.

However, teams in other regions who are also on the fringes of national qualification will likely hope that Tennessee and Alabama fade to 3rd and 4th place or 4th and 5th place.

Barring something crazy happening, I only see the Oregon men having one Kolas point on Friday. That point will likely come from the Colorado men advancing to the national meet, a team that the Ducks beat at the PAC-12 XC Championships.

This means that this squad will likely need to get "pushed" into the national meet by another team that finishes behind them that has more Kolas points.

It's very possible that the Oregon men finish in the top-two of their region -- and in that scenario, this question becomes negligible. In fact, even if the Ducks finish 3rd, then they'll most likely get "pushed" into the national meet if California Baptist, Stanford or Washington are the 4th place team behind them.

In theory, the Washington men are probably the least safest team in terms of "pushing" Oregon into the national meet. However, in numerous scenarios that I simulated, Oregon and Washington still get in if they finish 3rd and 4th place, respectively.

In other words, the only way that Oregon realistically doesn't get into the national meet is if they finish 4th place overall at the West Regional XC Championships and there's not a top team behind them to "push" them in (assuming the 3rd place team has already advanced).

Now, that said, our official projections (which are coming tomorrow) have Oregon finishing 4th and therefore not qualifying. So although there are more scenarios where Oregon advances than not, it's the most likely scenario that doesn't benefit the Ducks.

I'll say that Oregon has a 45% of not making it to the national meet. All of their favorable scenarios combined probably outweigh the small handful of scenarios that are singularly more probable (but only barely).

In my eyes, the regions in which only two women's teams are expected to advance (via automatic qualifiers) are the South Central, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest. The women's South region could send only two teams to the national meet, but it's more likely than not that they send more than that, so we'll remove them from this conversation.

The Midwest region is pretty much a lock. Unless a massive earthquake happens in the middle of the race and swallows up Oklahoma State and/or Iowa State, then those teams are almost definitely going to take the top-two automatic qualifying spots.

But the conversation with the Mid-Atlantic and South Central regions is a bit trickier.

In the Mid-Atlantic region, the Georgetown women are heavy favorites to be automatic qualifiers while the Arkansas women can say the same thing in the South Central region.

The second spot in the Mid-Atlantic region will likely come down to a battle between Penn State, Princeton, West Virginia and/or Penn. But truthfully, I can only envision Penn State and Princeton being the teams in contention for runner-up. And based on what we've seen from the Nittany Lions so far this fall, it feels fair to give them the nod as the second auto qualifier.

The South Central region, however, has tons of variability in the second automatic qualifying spot. You could make very strong arguments for Tulane, Texas A&M and Texas. Traditionally, the Longhorns usually snag runner-up, although the Tulane and Texas A&M have looked flat-out stronger this fall.

If you throw SMU into the mix, a team that I would project to finish in 5th place, then I would say that the South Central is tighter and a bit less predictable for the silver medal spot compared to the Mid-Atlantic region.

I would probably look at the Providence men in the Northeast region and the Montana State men in the Mountain region.

In order for those teams to get in, they would need to pull off an upset. But would anyone be surprised if Montana State got 5th place and was later "pushed" into the national meet by Colorado, Air Force or New Mexico? That's a very realistic scenario.

And what would happen if Providence finished 3rd and Iona finished 4th? In a lot of those scenarios, both of those teams are getting into the national meet thanks to the Gaels "pushing" the Friars into a national qualifying spot.

There are also numerous scenarios where teams like Charlotte, Duke or NC State finish ahead of Eastern Kentucky or Wake Forest and therefore get "pushed" into the national meet. And if that happens along with the above two scenarios, then the simulator shows neither Oregon nor Washington advancing.

I think it has to be Lipscomb.

Other than Florida, the only top contenders in the South region with a good chunk of Kolas points are Lipscomb and Ole Miss. Other challengers like Alabama and Tennessee are expected to have very few points and may have to rely on some help from other teams.

Yes, Ole Miss did beat Lipscomb at the Loyola Lakefront XC Classic earlier this season, but the Bison later upended the Rebels at the Nuttycombe Invite. And at the SEC XC Championships, Ole Miss struggled a bit, fading back to 5th place.

Not only that, but The Stride Report has recently learned that one of the Rebels' key scorers, Kristel Van Den Berg, is not expected to race on Friday (although that could certainly change).

So when you consider everything that I just said, Lipscomb feels like they are void of any true deficiencies and are therefore the next-most likely team to advance to the national meet out of the South region.

I think it may be the West region.

The Mountain region has a ton of contenders, but nearly all of those teams will simply be focused on advancing to the national meet. The order in which they finish likely won't make a difference in the grand scheme of things.

The Southeast region has an argument where we could see some surprising finishes, but it feels like we have some level of known value that each of those squads carry.

But the West region, at least in my eyes, could get really messy.

California Baptist is the only team I feel comfortable about in the West region. Every other team that they'll be facing have all had some hurdles that they have had to clear (or still need to clear) this fall.

Stanford was great at the PAC-12 XC Championships, but every other race before then was underwhelming. The same thing could be said about the Washington men, only to a greater extent. Oregon, despite beating Colorado at the PAC-12 XC Championships, are basically huge unknowns in this field. They have barely raced this fall and we still don't have a good idea of what their true potential is.

It also feels like some people are dismissing Cal Poly. But why? Sure, we haven't seen them race against top competition this fall, but there's an avenue where they are a major problem for some of their West region opponents on Friday.

Remember what Gonzaga did last year? Stunning the field for the second automatic qualifying spot? What kind of role could they play this year? And how about Boise State? In a lot Kolas scenarios, they earn a good number of Kolas points, but can they finish high enough in the standings?

Oh, and isn't this the point in the season where, despite what happened last fall, the Portland men are supposedly at their best? It's been a tough season for the Pilots, but what if this team is somehow able to get healthy and peak at the right time?

I just feel like there are a thousand different variables to consider in the West region and I don't see many other regions that have that kind of volatility.

At the beginning of the season, did you even think that this is a question that we would be entertaining in November?

In our official projected scenario, both of these teams advance to the national meet. However, if the South region has one small change and five teams come out of that region rather than two, then both of these teams are out.

But now let's suppose that just four teams come out of the South region, effectively leaving Alabama or Tennessee out of national qualification (but not both). In that scenario, Boston College falls out of national qualifying contention while UNC remains. And even if only three South region teams make it to the national meet (which would almost definitely be Florida, Ole Miss and Lipscomb), then Boston College is still left out (and the Tar Heels are still in).

Sure, the Golden Eagles could get "pushed" into the national meet if they were to place 3rd and beat Harvard, Syracuse or Providence in the process. But the same thing could be said about North Carolina and a few of the top contenders in the Southeast region.

The South region is where we are expecting to see the most variability in terms of possible outcomes. And through most of those scenarios, North Carolina still makes it into the national meet. That's why I say that the Tar Heels have a better shot of qualifying.

This is a tricky question. Both of these teams are clearly the third-best teams in their respective regions and it's unlikely that they crack the top-two (although it's certainly possible).

These are also the last two teams expected to qualify for the national meet in our projections.

When we look at other fringe teams such as Michigan State, Oregon and Washington, those programs often fall out of national qualifying contention before Iona or Georgetown. And even if a Southeast regional team like Wake Forest or Eastern Kentucky have to "push" another team into the NCAA XC Championships, then Georgetown and Iona should still qualify.

The only instance where things get tricky is if the West region produces an automatic qualifier other than California Baptist and Stanford. In that case, Georgetown has a few scenarios where they don't advance and the same could be said for Iona.

At the end of the day, both of these teams have fairly equal chances, although Iona likely has the edge given their additional Kolas point or two.