TSR Collaboration
Nov 24, 20239 min
Written by Marissa Kuik & Grace McLaughlin
Additional edits and commentary via Garrett Zatlin & Gavin Struve
NOTE: These rankings are based on how a team fared throughout the entirety of a season, not just how they ran at the NCAA XC Championships or at a singular meet. You will notice that these rankings may mirror the national meet results, but not precisely. That is intentional. These rankings are intended to be an aggregate. They are not recency lists.
Was not ranked in our last update.
First number indicates how much the team has moved in the rankings.
The second number indicates where the team was ranked in our last update.
10. Azusa Pacific Cougars (Unranked)
Azusa Pacific emerges as our TSR #10 team in our final round of rankings after their 10th place finish at the cross country national meet. The Cougars have been a “Just Missed” team for the better part of the season before establishing themselves as a deserved top-10 program last weekend.
The Cougars' top-four scorers showed impressive pack-running on the national stage and finished within five seconds of each other. Their scoring lineup consisted of Juan Diego Castro (60th), Nixon Korir (63rd), Felix Perrier (64th), Jared Wright (65th) and Ben Sumner (113th).
With 317 points, this PacWest program was only eight points away from a well-established Chico State team, further indicating that Azusa Pacific is an up-and-coming program and a worthy Golden State adversary for the Wildcats.
That performance, combined with their runner-up finish at the West Regional XC Championships and dominant victory at the PacWest XC Championships, proves that the Cougars are the real deal and a top-10-caliber program.
However, what's more impressive is that they were able to achieve that at the national meet without any true low-stick results.
Coach Sean Smith was brilliant this fall, adding in key transfer pieces during the offseason while maintaining strong development of his returning members. What's even more interesting is that this appears to be just the beginning for a team who should return many of their top runners next year.
9. Chico State Wildcats (0 / 9)
Chico State has seen minimal movement in our rankings this fall as their limited schedule simply led to them consistently earning comfortable victories. And truthfully, it was hard to get a gauge on them at times. But lo and behold, our TSR #9 ranking ended up being spot-on -- that’s exactly where the Wildcats finished at the 2023 NCAA XC Championships.
On Saturday, the 'Cats went 27-48-51-98-134 for a total of 309 points. Brayden McLaughlin had a fantastic race and earned All-American honors, further cementing himself as a consistent lead low-stick.
Meanwhile, teammates Mario Giannini and Daniel Hernandez worked to provide stable middle-lineup scoring. Matthew Gordon and Joshua O’Neill rounded out their lineup while usual scorer Dylan White ended up as their sixth man in 164th place.
There’s not much more to say about this Chico State team other than McLaughlin peaked perfectly and White is definitely better than what he showed. The Wildcats have been dominant on the west coast this fall and they have an impressive amount of talent and depth to work with in their scoring lineup.
Their 9th place finish this past weekend is on par with what we expected from them and Chico State continues to be a constant on the national level.
8. Colorado Christian Cougars (-1 / 7)
The Cougars end their season at TSR #8 after an 8th place finish at the NCAA XC Championships which mostly matched expectations.
Colorado Christian sticks to a pretty limited racing schedule, so we only saw them race at full strength at the NCAA XC Championships, the South Central Regional XC Championships and the Lewis XC Crossover.
And truthfully, their South Central regional performance still seemed somewhat conservative.
CCU's runner-up finish behind Colorado Mines at the Lewis XC Crossover was solid and their 5th place finish at the South Central regional meet mostly aligned with our expectations. Overall, an 8th place finish last Saturday matched these performances.
Matthew Storer earned the individual bronze and was the lone All-American for CCU, a slightly surprising development for a team that once had three men inside of our top-25 individual rankings. Alexander Vance (44th), Caleb Hershey (79th), Trent Cochran (101st) and Zachariah Vance (104th) rounded out the scoring for a total of 292 points.
This is a talented team, but they needed more firepower to be able to compete with top-five programs and the best in the RMAC. Cochran finishing closer to expectations, in the All-American range, would have provided a needed boost.
Luckily, this group is relatively young and they showed a lot of potential this fall.
7. Grand Valley State Lakers (-5 / 2)
If not the order of the podium teams, then this is probably the elephant in the room.
Grand Valley State took a drop in the final round of our rankings after a disappointing 7th place finish at the 2023 NCAA XC Championships.
Most of us here at TSR predicted the Lakers to finish 2nd or 3rd, so a 7th place finish is not a particularly great result. Yes, this team was better than the 7th-best team throughout the season. However, there's truthfully not a ton of separation between the Lakers and the teams who finished just in front of them, so trying to justify a ranking higher than this is bit more challenging.
GVSU displayed their trademark scoring depth and balance, but were lacking for elite firepower as they went 31-38-47-49-59 for a total of 183 points.
Koby Fraaza and Caleb Futter were their only All-Americans, and the latter was expected to be better. Other than that, it's difficult to pinpoint what went wrong that led to the difference between our predictions and results. This team is short on superstars, but we figured that the whole would be greater than the sum of the parts on the national stage.
Elias Bergman, Cal Yackin, and Andrew Hylen performed mostly on par with, if a bit under, expectations. Brock Wooderson fell back and was just outside of the scoring lineup. Even so, we perhaps overestimated this team heading into the cross country national meet.
Regardless, the Lakers still had a solid season overall, and their end result does not tell the whole story of the talent on this team, even if their end-of-season-ranking suggests otherwise.
6. Western Colorado Mountaineers (0 / 6)
Western Colorado maintains their TSR #6 ranking after placing 5th at the NCAA XC Championships. Simon Kelati was the individual runner-up and provided dependable low-stick scoring potency for the Mountaineers.
Meanwhile, Tyler Nord finished his redshirt rookie cross country season with a fantastic 15th place finish, delivering on the fitness that he flashed on the oval throughout last year.
Kyle Partin also earned All-American honors in 39th place, capping off what was a quietly respectable postseason streak of racing for him. Branden Davis (68th) and John Houdeshell (74th) rounded out the scoring lineup, admirably. Michael Grabowski was a bit further back in 86th and had a bit of an “off" day, but Davis managed to step up and prevented the point total from taking a hit.
This was an unsurprising result from the Mountaineers who have been every bit as good as expected this season. They have firepower, consistency and they displayed incredible pack-running after their top-two. After placing 3rd at the RMAC XC Championships and 4th at the South Central regional meet, the Western Colorado men finished as a top-five team at the national meet.
Compared to other top programs, the Mountaineers have a much smaller and more limited roster in terms of volume of talent. That makes the success that they’ve enjoyed recently that much more impressive.
Yes, we kept Western Colorado at TSR #6 despite placing 5th at the national meet. That, however, is because Adams State took a tumble in our rankings, but not enough to fall past the Mountaineer men.
5. Adams State Grizzlies (-2 / 3)
Seeing the Grizzlies fall a few places in our rankings is surely disappointing, especially when looking at their impressive lineup on paper. However, a lackluster 6th place finish to end the season meant that we had to drop them in our team rankings.
The biggest reason why the Grizzlies did not perform up to par at the cross country national meet was because the majority of their team faded in the last kilometer of the race...well, except for Dayton Brown who finished in 25th place.
Awet Beraki did hold on for 32nd place, but he also faded seven spots in the last part of the race. Yonas Haile dropped to 42nd place and Romain Legendre fell back to 55th, two runners who we thought should finish in the top-25. That left the Adams State men without dynamic up-front scoring despite the fact that they got all of their scorers across the line through the first 55 runners.
The Grizzlies stay ahead of Western Colorado in our rankings after beating them on both postseason stages leading up to the NCAA XC Championships. Plus, Adams State also beat West Texas A&M and Azusa Pacific at the Louisville XC Classic. When you look at their entire resume, we felt like they still did a bit more to remain in our top-five.
4. West Texas A&M Buffaloes (+1 / 5)
West Texas A&M showed out on the national stage, securing a podium spot as a couple of near-locks for top-five status faltered. Though they move up in our rankings because of their performance last weekend, it helps that the Buffaloes were fairly consistent all season long.
At the cross country national meet, West Texas A&M put four men among the All-American positions and two in the top-20, one of which featured William Amponsah’s individual title. Harry Louradour (20th) peaked perfectly yet again after having a regular season that didn't give us much to be excited about.
On top of that, Enrico Oddone, who has been a key scorer in other races, finished 85th, definitely an “off” day by his resume's standards.
If Oddone would have finished up with the rest of the four scorers, then this team could have snuck into 3rd place ahead of East Central. Hypotheticals aside, the Buffaloes raced a relatively loaded schedule, seemingly got better as the season progressed and got to celebrate on the podium to cap it off.
3. East Central Tigers (+5 / 8)
Look no further than the men from Ada, Oklahoma to see who made the biggest jump in these team rankings. East Central's stock continued to rise throughout the fall months as they consistently forced us to reevaluate what they were capable of.
Of course, the main reason why they make such a large jump in our top-10 isn't so much based on their national meet performance, but rather how little we actually knew about them prior to Saturday.
However, at the cross country national meet, we began to realize the full scoring potential of the Tigers, a team that placed four men in the top-40 with their fifth scorer narrowly missing All-American honors in 43rd place.
Having such a tight spread, and lethal up-front scoring with Aspel Kiprob (6th), allowed the Tigers to surprise a few teams en route to a podium finish. Amos Pkiach (21st) was roughly on par with how strong we thought he could be while Oliver Kiptoo (33rd) and Peter Kipkemboi (35th) validated the suspicion that this team had better firepower than some people realized.
We knew that this team was good, but we did not know how good they'd be given that they largely did not race in as competitive of meets compared to the teams previously ranked above them. That didn't seem to matter as the Tigers finished their season close to home in Joplin, Missouri and came away with some serious hardware and newfound respect.
2. Colorado Mines Orediggers (-1 / 1)
Though Colorado Mines continued to dominate one of the toughest conferences and regions in all of Division Two and entered the national meet as a clear title favorite, they didn't come away with a national title.
And yet, that was mostly through no fault of their own. Wingate simply had too much firepower for this squad to contend with, ultimately relegating the Orediggers to a fairly unexpected runner-up result.
This team definitely looked different this year without the likes of Dillon Powell. However, they were still winning every meet that they toed the line for -- and comfortably. They also still ran really well at the national meet with Loïc Scomparin finishing 8th, Duncan Fuehne coming in 12th, Logan Bocovich placing 16th and Paul Knight taking 24th.
John O’Malley coming in at 41st place could have been better, but you could say the same thing about most of these backend runners. And truthfully, these men largely lived up to their respective lofty expectations.
Wingate was just better and you can’t really fault the Orediggers for that.
1. Wingate Bulldogs (+3 / 4)
Welcome to the top of the podium, Wingate!
With impeccable racing, the Bulldogs stunned the Division Two world by unseating the defending champions at the national meet. But while their victory did come as a surprise for a lot of people, maybe it shouldn't have.
With each race, the Bulldogs got better and better, adding more and more pieces to their lineup, including Hamza Chahid and Soheil Boufrizi (who both made their season debuts at the South Regional XC Championships and finished top-10 at the national meet).
Easy wins at their conference and regional meets gave way to an incredible victory at the cross country national meet. Both Chahid and Boufrizi finished in the top-10 and the rest of the Bulldogs' scorers — Ricardo Barbosa, Cas Kopmels and Titouan Le Grix — were all within the top-30!
Wingate was on our radar throughout the fall, but we didn't know how to evaluate them until the national meet. They had toed the line for Paul Short, but they didn't truly face any top-tier D2 teams, thus making it a challenge to properly gauge them.
In retrospect, this team was about as good as the 2022 Orediggers which makes it more understandable as to why they stole the crown in 2023.
Azusa Pacific Cougars
KICKED OFF
Lewis Flyers
JUST MISSED (in no particular order)
Pittsburg State Gorillas
CSU-Pueblo ThunderWolves
Fort Lewis Skyhawks
Lee (Tenn.) Flames
Western Washington Vikings
HONORABLE MENTIONS (in no particular order)
Augusta Jaguars
Saginaw Valley State Cardinals
Cal Poly Pomona Broncos
Charleston (WV) Golden Eagles
NW Missouri State Bearcats
Florida Southern Moccasins
Mississippi College Choctaws
Lewis Flyers
Catawba Indians
UC-Colorado Springs Mountain Lions
New Mexico Highlands Cowboys
- N/A