First Thoughts: Weekend of the ACC

We got to see a ton of teams from the ACC make their season debuts all along the east coast. Below, we dive into the some of the action and offer some analysis. Let's get started...

The NC State women, as expected, took care of business in Blacksburg, Virginia this past Friday, dominating both Virginia Tech and Duke with a sweep score of 15 points. The group of Steelman, Clairemonte, Chmiel, Mareno and Shaw comfortably secured spots 1-2-3-4-5.

However, we didn't get to see either Katelyn Tuohy or Marlee Starliper -- the two superstar freshmen who created a ton of headlines prior to this season due to the potential scoring impact that they could have on this program.

It's not necessarily shocking that both Tuohy or Starliper were sitting out of the first meet. This is a year without a national meet and a year where NC State could win the ACC title, even without those two youngsters. It's also the very first meet of the season and we haven't even reached October yet.

In other words, let's just take a deep breath. Maybe we see these two later in the season. Maybe we don't see them at all. Whatever the plan is for them, they'll likely be ready when the time comes.

As for the rest of this elite freshmen class, they were admittedly a bit quiet on Friday. Claire Walters was the top freshman in the race with a 12th place finish while her fellow first-year teammates were scattered throughout the rest of the results.

We could try to do some fancy analysis or really dig deep into these performances, but the fact of the matter is that this was the very first collegiate race for some of these women. It's hard to pull any serious insights from a race that many would consider to be a rust-buster.

The NC State men looked very strong in their season opener as Bistritz, Flavin and Shanklin took the top three spots in the race (in that order).

This was a Wolfpack group that lost both Bistritz and Flavin during the regular season last year, so having them back in this lineup is massive from a firepower standpoint. Their expected availability for this season was a big reason why we had them ranked at TSR #13 in our preseason rankings.

You also have to give a nod of respect to Nate Kawalec (who finished 5th) as well as the freshmen duo of Ian Harrison (8th) and Brett Gardner (10th). That's some solid depth and a pair of nice performances for two true freshmen.

Based on last year's results and this year's roster, it looks like the NC State men didn't run all of their potential varsity runners this past Friday, leaving us very impressed with their season debut, even if it was just a rust-buster.

However, we've seen this story before where the NC State men will be great at one meet, but not-so-great at another meet. They've had that happen over the past two cross country seasons.

Consistency will be a major aspect to watch for this Wolfpack team, but they have all of the necessary pieces to be one of the best squads in the NCAA this year (regardless of who is and isn't running this fall).

Friday's Virginia Invitational gave us our first look at the UNC women, a program that was listed in the "Just Missed" portion of our preseason rankings.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to see women like redshirt sophomore Enyaeva Michelin, true freshman Ava Dobson or veteran Alex Morris toe the line. Those are a handful of talented pieces who could eventually play a key role for the Tar Heels later this season.

Instead, our initial analysis told you to keep an eye on women like Paige Hofstad, Taryn Parks and a handful of other freshman and veterans. However, one runner who we only briefly mentioned was Sasha Neglia, a true freshman who dominated the 5k course on Friday, beating fellow teammate and TSR #39 runner Paige Hofstad by a whopping 14 seconds.

The Tennessee native was an extremely talented high school runner, owning personal bests of 4:49 (1600m) and 10:17 (3200m) on the track. During cross country, she made three appearances at the NXN Championships, finishing 15th overall in 2018 and 24th in both 2017 and 2019.

On paper, she looked to be a promising young talent, but I'm not sure there were a ton of people picking her to win this past Friday, much less soundly defeating her veteran teammate.

The group of Neglia-Hofstad-Clahane-Harrington-Fisher finished 1-2-4-6-8 in the final results, giving the North Carolina women a comfortable win with a total score of 21 points to defeat conference rivals Virginia and Wake Forest.

In all, the freshmen group of Neglia, Harrington, Trainor and Parks finished 1-6-9-12 in the final results. As is the case for most of these September meets, we shouldn't get too excited about a rust-buster race which featured only two other teams.

Even so, you have to be encouraged by what we saw from this UNC group on Friday.

Some people may have been surprised to see the Virginia men come in at TSR #24 in our preseason rankings. They had lost so many veterans from last year, many of whom were top scorers for their 2019 team.

However, their overwhelming depth, promising recruiting class and mass number of lineup options gave the Cavaliers a comfortable win over UNC and Wake Forest this past Friday.

Despite not fielding Colton Bogucki or top scorer Peter Morris, the Virginia men comfortably took home the win on their home course. Rohann Asfaw was strong in his debut, taking home the individual victory by a total of eight seconds over runner-up Jack Tiernan of Wake Forest.

The final results had the Virginia men finishing 1-4-5-6-10. Of those five scorers, three of them were freshmen (either redshirt or true). The men from Charlottesville, Virginia fielded a massive number of youngsters on Friday, so it was only natural that a few of those underclassmen found their way into UVA's top five.

Even so, just like we've been talking about with the UNC men and women, the future looks bright for the Cavaliers who are now reaching into their recent recruiting classes for extra scoring help.

We then come to Thomas Ratcliffe (TSR #6), the recent transfer from Stanford who rejoined his former coach Chris Miltenberg in Chapel Hill this past offseason. He was the heavy favorite to take home the win this past weekend, but faltered to 8th place finish overall and was the second scorer on his team (freshman Will Coogan was UNC's top scorer in 7th place overall).

Considering we're not even in October yet and that this was the very first race of the season, it's important that we don't overreact to this result. It wasn't a great debut for someone of his caliber, but considering that Ratcliffe has a history injuries and raced only once this past indoor track season, it's nice to see that he's at least competing again.

We also saw freshman Patrick Anderson -- who finished 3rd at the Foot Locker National Championships last fall -- record a DNF on Friday. He was expected to be a major scorer for this team, but we'll have to wait until we see him complete his first collegiate race.

With veteran Alex Milligan absent from the results, it's fair to say that the men of UNC have more to offer than we what we initially saw on Friday.

In one of the very first cross country meets of this unofficial season, the Army women took home the win in what many would consider to be an upset victory over the Syracuse women.

However, the Orange weren't running four of their projected top seven at that meet, making their loss a little surprising.

Even so, this past Friday proved to be an exciting rematch between the two programs. Ultimately, the Syracuse women came out on top this time, posting 33 points to Army's 37 points. However, just like last time, the Orange still did not run a handful of their expected varsity scorers, although they did have a few younger talents step up and contribute to their team scoring in a meaningful way.

Even though Army finished 2nd, it was still a nice performance from them and it helped validate their win from two weeks ago. They may not be a Power Five juggernaught program, but they seem to have a respectable group led by the freshman duo of Georgia Jones and Helen Shearer.

Remember, this Army squad took down a Boston College team on Friday which qualified for the national meet last fall. Sure, the Golden Eagles lost a handful of scorers from last year, but they're still a respectable program. Beating them by 15 points should give the Army women a boost in confidence moving forward.

We then come to the Syracuse men who continue to dominate. They would have swept the field had it not been for Army junior Marshall Beatty who finished 3rd overall. Even so, the Orange took home seven of the top eight spots and they did it without Aidan Tooker yet again.

I'll continue my campaign to see Aidan Tooker toe the line again as we have only seen him race a handful of times over the last few seasons. That said, if there was season to remain absent from competition, the fall of 2020 would certainly make the most sense...