First Thoughts: OSU Invitational

The biggest weekend of meets for the 2020 cross country regular season, which includes the Oklahoma State Invitational, has concluded. On Saturday, we got to see a handful of top-tier individuals and teams toe the line to give us what may have been the best meet of the year.

Let's dive in and review some of the results...

Note: We are looking at the final results as if Clayson Shumway was officially scoring for BYU (he ran unattached since he's taking a gap semester) and if Colorado's men's and women's results counted in the team standings (minus Dressel and Tuttle who are out of XC eligibility). Any runners not within a team's top seven were not counted towards scoring displacement.

In those scenarios, the results would have read...

MEN

WOMEN

Coming into this race, most non-BYU fans figured that the Northern Arizona men were the favorites to take home the win on Saturday (but maybe that was just my perception). Their unique mix of firepower and depth proved to be too much for the Cougars, even if you include Clayson Shumway in the scoring.

The up-front scoring potency of Grijalva (1st) and Nur (7th), followed by a wave of Lumberjack scorers, overwhelmed the second-half of the Cougars' lineup which had a few gaps. What's even more impressive is that Northern Arizona didn't even have guys like Nico Young, Blaise Ferro or Theo Quax.

When that group is at 100%, it's hard to imagine a scenario where they lose (of course, we said that last year and look what happened).

Now, in fairness to BYU, when you count Shumway into the results, the team score between NAU and BYU narrows to only seven points. That's pretty impressive and it says a lot about the lethal 1-2-3 punch of Mantz, Clinger and Shumway which may be the best trio of scorers in the country right now.

They may not have secured the win, but BYU kept themselves in national title contention for whenever we next have a national meet.

In the official results, the Oklahoma State men pulled out a very impressive 2nd place finish, six points behind Northern Arizona. However, when you count Clayson Shumway into the scoring, the Pokes ended up finishing 3rd, just a single point away from tying Brigham Young (although they still would have lost to BYU on the tie-breaker).

Even so, that is a huge result and it's an incredibly encouraging for performance for the Cowboys. They took down Iowa State earlier in the season in what some people may call an upset. This past weekend, they proved that their win from a few weeks ago was no fluke by putting four runners inside the top-11 spots on Saturday (top-10 if you take out Dressel).

The only issue they had was seeing their fifth and final scorer (freshman Ryan Schoppe) place 21st overall. That's not necessarily a bad performance, and you have to give credit to the youngster for filling the fifth scoring spot on a top-ranked team.

Still, if Schoppe had closed that gap between himself and the rest of the scorers for Oklahoma State, the Cowboys could have not only beaten BYU, but maybe even Northern Arizona.

It's tough to gauge just how good this Oklahoma State squad is during this very unique and very odd cross country season. However, what we do know is that this is a completely revamped group that has far better scoring potency than last year and a complete top five.

They have now proven on two separate occasions this season that they are the real deal.

The Cougars may not have the same firepower that they had last year now that Courtney Wayment and Erica Birk-Jarvis are out of cross country eligibility, but gosh, you have to be impressed by how deep their roster is.

Whittni Orton took home the individual win as expected while Aubrey Frentheway finished 3rd. However, it was the contingent of runners behind them that proved to be too much for any other team to handle. The Cougars put six women in the top-10 of the overall results and 10 women in the top-24.

Not only that, but so many of those women were young and inexperienced. In fact, of those 10 women in the top-24, five of them are listed as either freshmen or sophomores in the TFRRS results.

The future is very bright for the women of Provo, Utah
 

When we look at the Colorado men and see that they finished as the 5th place team (despite actually racing unattached), it's understandable why some people may be surprised.
 

However, a lot of their backend scorers were young and inexperienced underclassmen. Not only that, but they didn't have Kashon Harrison or Stephen Jones race this past weekend -- two game-changing runners who could have drastically altered the team score in favor of the Buffaloes.

Yes, this team as a whole certainly could have performed at a higher level, and they admittedly looked a bit rusty. Even so, I wouldn't look too heavily into this result. Colorado is still a top team and they were clearly not at full strength this past weekend.

As for the Southern Utah men, you have to give them some props. They had an up-and-down 2019 cross country season, but they have since injected a few scoring weapons back into their lineup.

Aidan Reed is finally back and looks healthy/fit enough to contribute as a legitimate top five scorer. Freshman Travis Feeny is back from his church mission and found himself inside this team's top five this weekend. Meanwhile, veterans such as Nate Osterstock and Christian Ricketts offered some scoring stability as well.

The Thunderbirds don't have the same firepower that NAU, BYU, Oklahoma State or Colorado do, but they do have a tight pack of respectable scorers that can keep this team competitive.

The Colorado women, just like the Colorado men, didn't seem to have all of their weapons this past weekend. The difference, however, is that they were clearly the 2nd best team in this field, even if the Southern Utah women were only seven points behind them.

Rachel McArthur had an excellent race by finishing 4th overall, but there was a bit of a drop-off after her. Still, that drop-off stopped 11 places later as the combination of Emily Covert, Annie Hill, Kaitlyn Barthell and graduate transfer Abby Nichols finished 15-18-19-22 in the overall results. Tayler Tuttle, who finished 8th overall, is a Colorado graduate who no longer has eligibility.

In that grand scheme of things, you have to be encouraged by what we saw from this squad. The Buffaloes were without Holly Bent and Emily Venters, TSR #33 Abby Nichols will likely be better in the future, Emily Covert had a strong collegiate debut and Kaitlyn Barthell looks like a legitimate varsity contributor.

They may not have secured a big win, but the Colorado women should leave Stillwater, Oklahoma feeling like they have a lot of potential moving forward.

Speaking of encouraging races, how about the Southern Utah women? Alison Pray, an individual national qualifier from the 2019 cross country season, secured a strong 5th place finish while teammate Julieta Navarette-Lamas finished 11th overall.

The rest of their lineup was a bit spread out through the results, but the scoring never got away from them and they were able to stay within seven points of Colorado. We had high expectations for the Thunderbirds going into the 2019 season, but it looks like they would have been more competitive in 2020 based on this one race.

Not a great result for the Oklahoma State women. They struggled a bit at the Cowboy Jamboree a few weeks ago, but they didn't have Molly Born and Taylor Somers had a tough race.

That, however, was exactly what happened this past weekend. We still didn't see Molly Born toe the line and Taylor Somers continued to struggle, placing 48th overall. The good news is that Taylor Roe looks like the real deal after finishing 2nd this past Saturday while Gabby Hentemann ran well enough to place 12th.

In the end, Oklahoma State would finish 4th overall (when you include Colorado) which was 13 points behind Southern Utah in our scoring.

On paper, the Cowgirls could be a serious problem for a handful of teams when they are at full strength. However, until Molly Born returns to racing and Somers replicates her fitness from 2019, it's hard to consider them a top-tier squad right now.

There isn't a whole lot to talk about in the women's individual race. Whittni Orton is just that good and Taylor Roe is experiencing a breakout season (as we have mentioned numerous times before). While there were certainly plenty of talented women from Saturday's race, there weren't quite as many storylines compared to the men's race.

On the men's side, Northern Arizona's Luis Grijalva out-kicked BYU's Conner Mantz for the overall win, a result that some people would say is a minor upset. Grijalva is super talented and clearly took a step up in fitness this past winter after he ran 7:43 for 3000 meters. However, when it comes to cross country and the longer distances, Mantz has a resume which suggested that he had the edge.

We shouldn't immediately jump to conclusions after just one race in a season where there is no National Championship, but this Oklahoma State course (which is expected to host the NCAA XC Championships this winter) seems to favor someone like Grijalva who has great turnover and an underrated kick.

And based on an interview with Flotrack, he seems to agree.

As for Casey Clinger, we have to give props to the guy who was absent from collegiate racing for three years. We knew he was fit and there were rumors that he was going to be much better than when we he left, but actually seeing that in a true collegiate race brings some validity to those rumors.

He didn't seem to show any rust after placing 3rd overall and put together a really nice finish as he fended off Eduardo Herrera and Isai Rodriguez.

Speaking of Eduardo Herrera, this was a spectacular race for him and I would argue that it was one of the best cross country races he's had in his career. This was a super top-heavy field and he held his own against some of the most elite distance runners in the NCAA.