First Thoughts: 2023 NCAA Regional XC Championships

What a day...

The 2023 NCAA Regional XC Championships were plenty entertaining as always, providing us with results that made us look much smarter than we really are and other results that blew pretty much everyone away.

Below, I made an effort to analyze many of the key races that we saw on Friday. And no, we won't be covering every. single. race. simply because a good number of these regional battles and Kolas outcomes were largely unsurprising.

Alright, let's dive in...

In the summer of 2022, The Stride Report broke news that Pete Watson was going to be the newest Director of Cross Country and Track & Field at Boston College.

The former Virginia and Texas distance coach rose through the NCAA ranks as one of the best distance coaches in the entire country -- and now, he was going to have complete, unfettered control of a Power Five program.

Of course, if Watson was going to elevate the Golden Eagles to a nationally competitive level, we felt like it was going to take a few years. Boston College was largely a non-factor in the ACC and even though their women's team had a few strong moments over the last decade, expecting them to be a factor just 15 months into Watson's tenure seemed unlikely.

But on Friday, the Golden Eagles turned an unlikely scenario into reality.

At the Northeast Regional XC Championships, Emma Tavella was fantastic, earning a huge 8th place finish. The graduate transfer from UCLA has always been talented, but her rise as a reliable low-stick for this team had never been as evident as it was on Friday.

Behind her, Roshni Singh (17th) further showcased her improvements while Lily Flynn (21st) underwent a competitive revival of sorts, thriving as a scorer after a quiet career at Stanford. With Molly Hudson (30th) and Natalie Millerova (33rd) closing out Boston College's top-five, the Golden Eagles flexed a complete lineup that allowed them to finish 2nd place at the Northeast regional meet.

And now, the BC women don't need to worry about an at-large national qualifying bid -- they can cruise into the national meet without being at the mercy of the Kolas system.

Sure, Boston College was having a respectable season going in the Northeast regional meet. However, finishing 3rd at the Arturo Barrios Invitational behind Utah Valley and UCLA, as well as 6th place at the ACC XC Championships, didn't necessarily scream "automatic qualifiers".

And that's why I can't help but admire what Watson just did.

In 12 months, he took a team that finished 16th at last year's Northeast regional meet and turned them into automatic national qualifiers. Not only that, but he did so with west coast veterans (Tavella and Flynn) who had largely been cross country afterthoughts during their time in the PAC-12.

Nowadays, those two women are the focal scorers for a national qualifying team.

For what feels like the past month, I have consistently mentioned that the men's West region had the potential to be incredibly chaotic. This was because the usual contenders like Oregon and Washington were projected to have very few Kolas points.

However, maybe more notably, it felt like a handful of other teams had the potential to surprise. Certain squads like Boise State, Cal Poly, Gonzaga and Portland had been far from perfect in the fall of 2023, but those programs still held plenty of talent.

But even then, I don't think we could have anticipated Gonzaga earning the second automatic qualifying spot in the West region while Portland erased a poor regular season to get "pushed" into the national meet by California Baptist.

The Bulldogs were a great team last year. In fact, they even earned one of the automatic national qualifying spots last fall! But this year's team was missing tons of scoring potency and truthfully, their 2023 fall campaign, while solid, wasn't anything too exciting, either.

Wil Smith (6th) was unsurprisingly great for Gonzaga, but Drew Kolodge (12th) is undeniably the hero of this team from Friday. The former Michigan Tech runner had the race of his life to give the Bulldogs a third lead scorer while teammate Bryce Cerkowniak (15th) had a quietly strong effort of his own.

Redshirt freshman Michael Maiorano (28th) and junior Cooper Laird (37th) held their own, giving the 'Zags a backend scoring group that wasn't too far off from what Stanford had assembled.

But honestly, even if Kolodge didn't have a jaw-dropping performance, the Bulldogs may have been able to earn silver anyways. They did, after all, beat 3rd place Portland by 27 points.

Speaking of Portland, we most certainly have to talk about them.

To be blunt, the Pilots were having a bad season going into Friday. Between illness, injuries and a few poor outings, the Portland men had so many different areas of their lineup that needed to be fixed before we could even consider them as national qualifying threats.

And yet, you wouldn't have known that after seeing results of the West Regional XC Championships.

Matt Strangio (2nd) looked like the low-stick threat that we thought he would be at the beginning of the season while Daniel Abdala (18th) and Jona Bodirsky (20th) continued to be the only consistent bright spots for this team.

With Jonas Gertsen (33rd) and Nolan Hosbein (53rd) doing enough to get by, the Portland men closed out the scoring with 125 points. There was, however, a catch.

The California Baptist men also scored 125 points. This means that CBU and Portland tied for 3rd place. Portland would ultimately win the five-vs-five tie-breaker to earn bronze, but the story goes much deeper than that.

As brilliantly highlighted by Jon Gault, the second and third scorers for Portland (Abdala and Bodirsky) beat the men directly behind them by a (rough) combined total of 0.10 seconds. If either of those men had fallen one spot back, then...

In other words, the Spartans were literally less than a tenth of a second away from qualifying for the NCAA XC Championships (based on the results of a completely separate region).

Oddly enough, the exact same scenario happened last year when the Oregon State women won a tie-breaker over (yes, you guessed it) California Baptist to get pushed into the national meet. That, in turn, removed the Furman women from national qualification.

At the end of the day, I don't know what to think about Portland. That performance came out of nowhere and they looked like a completely different team compared to what we saw from them earlier this fall.

This does, however, go to show why you should never doubt Coach Rob Conner in the postseason.

Gonzaga, however, is a bit of a different story. Sure, they had a poor outing at the Nuttycombe Invitational, but this is now the second year in a row where they have secured an automatic qualifying spot despite being the underdog to do so. And when you look at their season outside of the Nuttycombe Invite, it's at least respectable.

A lot of the Bulldogs' success at the national meet will be centered around whether or not Drew Kolodge can replicate his fantastic regional meet performance again and how close Gonzaga's latter two scorers can stay to him.

For every exciting underdog success story there is usually an accompanying feeling of disappointment for those who were initially favored.

Throughout this season, the Washington men struggled to stand out. They were 17th at the Virginia Invitational and 27th at the Nuttycombe Invite. And outside of Luke Houser, the rest of this lineup simply had too many gaps to ignore.

Yes, the Huskies were better at the PAC-12 XC Championships where they finished runner-up, but a 5th place finish at the West Regional XC Championships was not a favorable Kolas scenario for them.

On paper, the Washington men actually had a solid quartet of scorers as Nathan Green, Evan Jenkins, Jamar Distel and Luke Houser went 17-19-21-25, respectively. But with their final scorer back in 47th place and Houser having an unfortunate "off" day, the Huskies fell short of CBU and Portland by just four points.

If they had simply finished 4th, then Washington would have pushed Portland into the national meet and both of the purple-clad West region teams would be on the national stage.

And then we come to Oregon.

The Ducks basically raced as little as they possibly could this fall. They started their season with a rust-buster at the Dellinger Invitational, but they clearly put little emphasis on that meet. Their next competitive race wasn't until the PAC-12 XC Championships where they finished 3rd overall, falling to Washington and Stanford, but defeating Colorado.

With such a limited schedule, the Ducks were projected to hold only one Kolas point on Friday, and that was only after Colorado had qualified for the national meet.

In other words, that meant that the Ducks were going to bank VERY heavily on the idea that they could finish in the top-two of the West region (to qualify automatically) or that they would get "pushed" into the national meet.

But at the end of the day, the Kolas calculations largely didn't matter for the Ducks. With a 7th place finish at the West Regional XC Championships, it wouldn't have mattered if Oregon had a billion Kolas points, they still wouldn't have advanced to the national meet (with all else remaining the same).

This all boils down to one question...what was the plan for the Oregon men this season?

Look, I'm just some guy sitting at a computer. I'm sure there were plenty of things that happened this season that I'm simply not aware of. Maybe a couple of guys got ill on Friday. Maybe certain men were battling injuries this fall. The possibilities go on, and in case you can't tell, I truly want to give this team the benefit of the doubt.

But while the future of this program still looks unbelievably bright, I'm not exactly sure what the blueprint for the Ducks' 2023 fall campaign was.

If you are the women of Wake Forest, North Carolina and Duke, then you are probably incredibly frustrated with Tennessee right now.

Allow me to explain.

Let's assume that all of the women's regional results from Friday stay the same. However, the only difference would be that the Tennessee women finished 3rd rather than winning the South regional title. In turn, Florida and Ole Miss would have been the automatic national qualifiers, the Vols would have placed 3rd, Alabama would still be in 4th place and Lipscomb would still be in 5th place.

In that scenario, only Florida and Ole Miss advance out of the South region. Tennessee and Alabama had very few Kolas points and therefore block the opportunity for Lipscomb to "push" another team into the national meet.

And with five national qualifying teams suddenly dwindling down to two teams in this theoretical scenario, that would have opened the door for Wake Forest, North Carolina and Duke to advance out of the Southeast region.

There was also a scenario where if Florida, Ole Miss and Lipscomb were the top-three teams in the South region, then Wake Forest and North Carolina qualify for the NCAA XC Championships.

But do you know who is Tennessee's biggest fan right now? Alabama and Lipscomb.

Again, if Tennessee had finished 3rd and Alabama had remained in 4th place (or swapped), then neither of those teams would have qualified and Lipscomb would have been blocked from a spot to the national meet.

So just like I mentioned in our regional meet preview, the teams who were rooting the hardest for Tennessee on Friday may have actually been some of the teams that they were racing against.

Sometimes, bad races happen. And unfortunately for the Oregon State women, one of their bad races happened at the worst possible time.

Let's be clear: Oregon State's 9th place finish at the West Regional XC Championships is not at all indicative of their talent. Remember, this is a team that finished 7th at the Nuttycombe Invitational.

And yet, despite that, the PAC-12 XC Championships (where they faded to 6th place) were a good example of how wildly volatile the Beavers' lineup structure was this season. When everyone was clicking on all cylinders, they were juggernauts on the grass. However, when just one runner faded, the scoring potency of this team took a significant step back.

But on Friday, pretty much no one on Oregon State's team ran well other than veteran stars, Kaylee Mitchell (1st) and Grace Fetherstonhaugh (3rd). Those two were the only Beavers to crack the top-50 at the West regional meet.

The Harvard women should be breathing a heavy sigh of relief right now. If just one of the backend scorers for Oregon State had run near their best (and effectively chopped off 60 points), then the Beavers place 5th overall and get into the national meet. The Crimson would then be out of the national meet.

And if Oregon State had just settled for 6th place? Well, then they would have "pushed" Gonzaga into the national meet. That, in turn, would have left both Harvard AND Providence out of the national meet.

In other words, those two Northeast teams just escaped a VERY realistic Kolas scenario where their cross country seasons end earlier than expected.

In the Mountain region, we felt pretty confident that the quintet of Northern Arizona, BYU, New Mexico, Air Force and Colorado were all going to qualify for the national meet. However, I also posed the following question in our regional meet preview...

"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 sure enough, that is exactly what happened.

The Montana State men looked flat-out bad at the Joe Piane Invitational earlier this season. Luckily, they began to show signs of life at Pre-Nationals when they placed 4th overall, just 25 points behind Virginia.

On Friday, the Bobcats came through in the clutch. Ben Perrin (10th) has been a reliable low-stick for this team all season long and Matthew Richtman (21st) is rounding back into form. Owen Smith (28th) has had a few quietly great moments, Rob McManus (34th) could be even better in the future and the same thing could be said about Levi Taylor (42nd).

That scoring combination allowed Montana State to defeat Colorado for 5th place, comfortably I may add. And all of the sudden, the team that looked lost without Duncan Hamilton earlier this season now looks refocused and well-prepared for the national stage.

It's a similar story for NC State...except, they showed very few signs of promise prior to Friday and they weren't a team that I was projecting to come even close to national qualification.

In defense of the Wolfpack, their start to the season wasn't nearly as poor as what Montana State showed us at Joe Piane. There, the Raleigh-based men placed 4th overall. But after an ugly 31st place finish at Nuttycombe and a rough 8th place outing at the ACC XC Championships, it was hard to see how this team was going to rally for Friday.

I don't know what changed with NC State at the Southeast regional meet. The team that we saw on Friday didn't look anything like the team that we had seen earlier in the season.

Hannes Burger (12th) stepped up yet again over the 10k distance and during the postseason while Brett Gardner (15th) finally had a solid rebound race after a string of tough efforts.

Toby Gualter (21st) produced the result that we expected from him when he transferred into the program and Dan McGoey (23rd) remained as the one of the more quietly-valuable scorers on this team. With Zach Hughes (35th) closing out the scoring, the Wolfpack men looked incredibly formidable.

A 3rd place result meant that Wake Forest was able to "push" NC State into the meet. And even if NC State had finished 4th, then they still would have been "pushed" into the national meet by Virginia.

In the grand scheme of things, you could argue that NC State's regional result was just as surprising as Portland's 3rd place finish in the West region. If NC State had instead placed 5th, then they would not have advanced and Washington would have earned the final at-large bid.

Brilliant running from the Wolfpack. I don't know how they did it, but I was completely dismissing them from the national qualifying picture. That kinda reminds me of a somewhat recent quote that my fellow football fans may enjoy...

I like to ask this question each and every year because the conversation always comes up in some way, shape or form.

I'm of the opinion that very few things in life are ever perfectly fair. I don't believe that the Kolas national qualifying system is optimally balanced from a fairness perspective and I don't think that it's void of arguments.

But is it the "most fair" qualifying system that we have?

Yes, I think so.

Despite it's complexity, I don't know of any other athletic postseason qualifying system that puts the most emphasis on a team's entire body of work from a single season, but still gives teams one last chance of redemption at their regional meets (either via auto qualifiers or "push" scenarios).

To me, that seems pretty darn fair.

Of course, there are very rare moments like what we saw with the Gonzaga men in 2019 where the math checks out, but the logic behind the Kolas system doesn't. I can also recognize that the Alabama men were (probably) better this season than the Portland men and NC State men were. And yes, the South Central region needs some realignment.

But at the end of the day, I have yet to hear a better alternative than the Kolas system.

And until I do, I'll continue to champion this national qualifying selection process.