Gauging Impact (Part Seven)

One of my favorite article series to write is something that we call "Gauging Impact". The article evaluates three high-level distance talents who are transferring. The goal is to figure out if that athlete's former team had a greater loss of talent from their transfer relative to the value gained by the athlete's new team that he or she is transferring to.

If that sounds complex, it's just because I'm not explaining it well.

You'll get the gist when you start reading.

With so many star-caliber transfers taking place over the last few months, now seemed like a good time to bring back our popular article series for the first time in over two years.

Yes, there are a few top-tier talents who we didn't touch on in this edition of Gauging Impact, but that's because their transfer scenarios are relatively easy to analyze.

So with that, let's begin...

Let's start with the biggest name who has everyone in the distance running world buzzing right now: Dylan Jacobs.

Unlike a few of the names who we'll discuss in this article, Jacobs' move to Tennessee was probably the worst kept secret in the country.

The departure of Sean Carlson, who left the assistant men's distance role at Notre Dame to take the Director of XC job at Tennessee, almost certainly prompted Jacobs, a former Notre Dame runner, to go to Rocky Top.

Would Jacobs have left South Bend if Carlson hadn't ventured to Knoxville? Our intuition says no, but it's never smart to assume things like that.

Either way, Jacobs is a graduate transfer who has finished his undergraduate work and is following his coach. To pretend like Notre Dame "lost" Jacobs would be misleading.

But Jacobs' transfer does have an impact on both Notre Dame and Tennessee.

Let's start with the Fighting Irish, the program that helped build Jacobs into the superstar that he is today.

Based on TFRRS results, Notre Dame is expected to lose Yared Nuguse, Andrew Alexander and Anthony Russo from their 2021 cross country lineup. On Instagram, Danny Kilrea also made a thank you post which ended with "On to the next chapter," signaling that he is also done with his time at Notre Dame.

This means that Notre Dame just lost three cross country All-Americans. If you include Jacobs, then the Irish men just lost four cross country All-Americans, many of them being Notre Dame's top-end scorers.

That is an absolutely BRUTAL loss of scoring potency for one team to handle. Even if Jacobs had stayed at Notre Dame, the Irish would have still had tons of challenges replacing the firepower that other men like Nuguse, Kilrea and Alexander will leave behind.

Still, Jacobs would have given the Irish one more year [1] for the younger guys to develop while the entire roster reloads and rebuilds.

The good news for Notre Dame is that they are probably the most prepared of any team in the NCAA to recover from this mass loss of talent. Their incoming class of distance recruits is easily the best in the nation, they introduce a top distance talent in Kevin Berry from Princeton, both Methner and Renfree have been All-Americans on the grass and Matthew Carmody, on paper, could be a top-30 cross country runner in the NCAA by season's end.

So sure, losing someone like Jacobs certainly stings (a lot), but the Irish are still well equipped to be nationally competitive in 2022.

Tennessee, on the other hand, is a bit of a different story.

The Volunteers finished 7th as a team at the South Regional XC Championships last fall. They also finished 5th as a team at the SEC XC Championships, 25th at Pre-Nationals and 8th at Roy Griak.

Those results aren't great...at all.

Let's look at the 2021 South Regional XC Championships results..

Tennessee's top-five scored a string of 7-31-45-68-77 to earn 228 points.

Now, let's make Jacobs the winner in these regional results and move everyone back one spot. In this scenario, every team not named Tennessee naturally adds five points to their score. However, for Tennessee, their scoring five would look like 1-8-32-46-69 for a total of 156 points.

As result, Jacobs' inclusion in this race would have skyrocketed the Volunteers all the way from 7th place in their region to...6th place in their region.

If we try this exercise with the 2021 SEC XC Championship results, then Tennessee goes from 5th place to 4th place despite cutting down over 40 points from their team score.

So on paper, and strictly on paper, Jacobs' inclusion in this lineup really doesn't make a dramatic difference.

We also haven't considered the fact that guys like Alex Crigger and Will Cronin were listed as seniors in last year's cross country results. Cronin, however, could come back this fall if his 2018 cross country season, when he ran two early-season rust-busters and then nothing more, is voided.

The good news for the men of Knoxville, Tennessee is that they have a bunch of younger runners who could thrive under the direction of Sean Carlson. Many of these runners already have their learning curves behind them and their best years ahead of them.

Still, Jacobs' alone is not going to reshape this program. Yes, Thiessen is a strong front-runner, but Tennessee's depth has to be so much better and the gaps between runners cannot be as large as they were last year.

Jacobs, however, can at least be the spark that ignites a much brighter, orange-colored flame for Tennessee in the future.

For me, the choice is clear.

Few women in the NCAA held greater value in the transfer portal than Bailey Hertenstein. The Indiana star is a two-time All-American on the grass and has run outstanding marks of 4:35 (mile) and 15:38 (5k) on the track.

Hertenstein is technically leaving Indiana for Colorado as a regular transfer, but that's only because she wasn't applying to any graduate-level programs. She is actually finishing her undergraduate degree this summer before shifting her focus to Boulder, Colorado.

In other words, she's more or less a graduate transfer.

My general rule of thumb when it comes to transfers is that graduate transfers are never "lost" by their original school. In many instances, athletes simply can't find the graduate program that they are looking for at their current schools and have to explore other options.

Those last few paragraphs don't exactly matter a ton when it comes to my analysis, but it's an important distinction that schools, teams and coaches like me to make, so I'm just covering my bases here.

Anyways, let's look at Indiana first, the school that Hertenstein will be leaving.

For the most part, the Hoosiers have been a nationally competitive team over the last few years. Yes, they have struggled to enter the top-half of the results at the last few cross country national meets, but boasting a superstar scorer, a respectable secondary scorer and plenty of backend depth have allowed the Indiana women to get by.

But now Hertenstein is gone, and with her goes the identity of the Hoosiers' top-seven.

However, we already have an idea of what a Hertenstein-less lineup is going to look like for Indiana. This past fall, the BIG 10 standout was absent from competition while her teammates placed 17th at Joe Piane, 26th at Nuttycombe and then 5th at the BIG 10 XC Championships.

All things considered, Indiana's showing at the BIG 10 XC Championships wasn't all that bad. Still, last fall was essentially a preview of what we could expect to see from Indiana later this year...and it wasn't super encouraging.

The firepower in Indiana's varsity lineup was already thin and the Hoosiers were relying heavily on Hertenstein. Now, the team has to rally around their backend depth and find a few runners to truly complement Sarah Schmitt.

Luckily, Hannah Stoffel is the only woman from last year's team who is expected to be out of cross country eligibility (according to TFRRS). This means that, for the most part, the Hoosiers can build around their middle and backend scorers in hopes that their general growth can carry them to better results in 2022.

Yes, I know, that's not an ideal strategy when constructing a varsity lineup, but that scenario is far better than having tons of veterans leave all at once and being left with no options.

Speaking of losing tons of veterans, that leads us to our next team: the Colorado Buffaloes.

The Colorado women just lost Madison Boreman, Micaela DeGenero, Rachel McArthur, Abby Nichols and India Johnson. That is a ROUGH loss of talent in just one offseason.

The good news is that Bailey Hertenstein is now there to fill the gaps.

Colorado does return a standout front-runner in Emily Covert as well as a rising sophomore in Hannah Miniutti who quietly had one of the better freshman years of any rookie in the NCAA.

Covert is a low-stick and Miniutti is a very solid supporting scorer. Still, this team needs tons more depth and another top scorer...or two.

That's where Hertenstein comes in. The former Indiana star, when paired with Covert, gives Colorado what might be the best 1-2 punch in the PAC-12. The Buffaloes will have now two All-Americans to rally around while Miniutti looks like she can be an excellent third piece to this five-person puzzle.

But depth and additional scoring are still question marks for this team...or at least they were until last week. That's because Ella Baran, a superstar D3 runner who has run 15:49 for 5000 meters, is joining the Buffaloes later this year.

Baran was an all-time great at the D3 level, but it's hard to know how her talent will translate to the D1 level. Still, at the very least, the former Johns Hopkins runner likely gives the Colorado women a legitimate top-five scorer for this fall.

And if that assumption is true, then Colorado's 2022 cross country lineup looks much more complete than it did a few months ago.

We still aren't totally sure what to expect from the rest of the Buffaloes' roster, but women like Kaitlyn Barnhill, Annie Hill and Elizabeth Constien have shown tons of promise. And knowing Coach Wetmore, he will almost certainly develop exceptional depth.

Hertenstein's introduction to Boulder, Colorado is undoubtedly going to have a major positive impact on the Buffaloes this fall. Without her, our optimism about Colorado this year simply wouldn't be as high.

At the same time, Hertenstein's value is amplified by Ella Baran. Hertenstein alone can't cover all of the gaps and the lost scoring that this team has incurred. She certainly makes a major dent in Colorado's reloading efforts, but five women are needed to record a nationally competitive team score and Baran makes that task a bit easier to accomplish.

On paper, this is an extremely difficult decision to make. If you remove Hertenstein from both teams, then Colorado would likely be better than Indiana. But in theory, Hertenstein's presence would likely have a greater relative impact on Indiana compared to Colorado.

And for that reason, I have made up my mind.

At first glance, this feels like a challenging question to answer.

Let's talk through it, shall we?

Ed Trippas, the graduate transfer from Princeton, is heading to Seattle later this year to join Andy Powell and the Washington men. Yes, Trippas' greatest value comes in the steeplechase, but let's talk about this from a cross country standpoint for simplicity sake.

The former Princeton Tiger isn't necessarily a cross country All-American superstar like Jacobs and Hertenstein are, but he's sneaky-good and holds tons of great value.

Trippas had a breakout year on the grass last fall, winning the Paul Short "Open" race, finishing a very respectable 39th place at Pre-Nationals, winning the Ivy League cross country title and finishing 67th at the NCAA XC Championships.

That is a very good season that features tons of consistency, an ability to thrive in numerous race settings and the potential to (eventually) be an All-American.

Let's start with Princeton, the team that developed Trippas into the steeple star that he is today.

The Tigers are an odd team in terms of how they were structured last year. Half of their best talents were (listed as) seniors while the other half were listed as freshmen and sophomores. And for the few veterans who hypothetically could have come back [2], they too are transferring. That includes Jakob Kintzele and Kevin Berry, two of Princeton's best runners.

This scenario, on paper, mimics exactly what is happening at Notre Dame right now. Their top scorer is leaving, a handful of other critical scorers are also leaving and the remaining team is loaded with promising youngsters.

Admittedly, having someone like Trippas return to this team would have greatly benefited the defending Ivy League champions. This team is very young and they probably need another year of development before they are thinking about contending for a top-15 placement at the national meet.

That said, losing Trippas will not be -- or at least, shouldn't be -- the straw that breaks the camel's back. Princeton is still returning five of the top-15 men and six of the top-20 men from last year's Ivy League XC Championships.

Things won't be perfect for the Tigers this fall, but they'll manage just fine.

Now let's chat about Washington.

TFRRS suggests that Brian Fay, Kieran Lumb, Tibebu Proctor and Isaac Green are all out of cross country eligibility. However, Lumb and Proctor are the only ones who truly aren't returning. We have good reason to believe that Fay and Green will be back in 2022.

Even so, those two departures still leave Washington with fairly significant scoring gaps that needs to be filled. Proctor and Lumb were top-100 finishers at the NCAA XC Championships last fall while Lumb also acted as a key scorer at the PAC-12 XC Championships and West Regional XC Championships.

That said, there are plenty of young and promising pieces on this roster such as Leo Daschbach, Joe Waskom, Luke Houser and Nathan Green. That latter trio of men were phenomenal on the track this past winter and spring, but they clearly gravitated towards the 1500 meter and mile distances.

Despite that, most of those men (except for Green who was redshirted) proved to be solid and reliable scorers. They showed plenty of promise last fall and although they weren't stars, they at least gave the Huskies a complete and competitive lineup.

But now Lumb is gone and his scoring potency that was often paired with Brian Fay needs to be replaced. That's where Trippas comes in. He doesn't need to be an All-American, but if the former Princeton talent repeats what he did in 2021 later this year, then Washington is going to be in a fantastic position.

Not just because they replaced their upfront scoring potency, but because so many of their younger runners could be primed for breakout years. And with a key scoring gap closed, Washington may be able to maximize their potential this fall.

By now, you can probably tell where I'm leaning.

[1] Jacobs actually has two seasons of cross country eligibility remaining, so he could theoretically come back for a second year.

[2] The Ivy League doesn't permit athletes to use a fifth year of eligibility, forcing many of them to explore graduate school options elsewhere.