TSR's 2023 D3 XC Top 10 Team Rankings (Men): Update #4 (FINAL)

Written by Conor Daly, Kevin Fischer & Gavin Struve

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. UW-Whitewater Warhawks (-6 / 4)

Despite high expectations in the early going, the Warhawks slipped a bit in the latter parts of the 2023 cross country season. Let’s start from the beginning.

Their runner-up finish at the Augustana Interregional Invitational in mid-October had us really excited about their upside heading into the postseason. It was an encouraging result, only falling to our then-TSR #1 team, North Central, and beating a solid Wartburg squad.

The Warhawks proceeded to battle UW-La Crosse twice. But despite the hype around the close matchup, to our surprise, it did not turn out to be so close. The Warhawks were humbled on both counts, losing to their Wisconsin rivals by a significant margin each time.

We didn’t look down upon the Warhawks for this as the UW-La Crosse men looked like a national title contender. At that point, we still foresaw Patzka and co. as a podium team.

At the national meet, the Warhawks’ front duo set them up for success. As much as Christian Patzka would have liked to win the individual title, a runner-up finish wasn’t a significant deviation in the projected team picture.

Gunner Schlender placing 11th was about as good as we could have asked, especially after some rocky outings on the conference and regional stages. But at the end of the day, the depth beyond Patzka and Schlender was just not what we thought it was. The Warhawks' fourth and fifth men were outside of the top-130 which forced this team to fade to 10th place.

Depth was a key aspect that we have monitored on UWW's roster over the last few seasons and a larger national meet field emphasized those lineup gaps. And as much as we would have liked to build an argument that the Warhawks were better than TSR #10 this fall, there wasn't much that we could point to that suggested otherwise.

9. Lynchburg Hornets (+1 / 10)

There’s no way around it: The Lynchburg men are on the come up. They just punched their highest team finish in school history with a 9th place result at the 2023 NCAA XC Championships.

They may not have gotten a ton of attention this fall, but the Hornets had a really solid season from start to finish. A runner-up finish to Carnegie Mellon at the SUNY Geneseo Mike Woods Invitational was a strong outing before dominating their conference and regional meets.

To be honest, the Hornets' 9th place run wasn’t even a spectacular day from them. It was a good performance, but they very easily could have been as high as 6th place if just a few things had swung their way.

Sophomore Chasen Hunt has been a criminally underrated second man and could have been an All-American on the right day behind Frank Csorba (14th). We should also note that the Hornets' usual fifth man was not able to make it to the line during the postseason. In theory, that could have saved them 30 or so points at the national meet.

8. MIT Engineers (-5 / 3)

On paper, the MIT men looked like a team that was capable of something more than a 8th place finish at the national meet, particularly after returning several key scorers from last year's national champion team.

Sam Acquaviva, Lowell Hensgen and Vedang Lad all figured to be All-Americans. And while the Engineers' depth was far from that of the title-contending teams, it was seemingly still good enough to keep them on the podium.

Earlier in the season, the MIT men traded wins with a highly regarded Williams program. Although the Williams men got the better of them in dual-meet conditions, MIT came out on top in a loaded D3 Pre-Nationals meet -- a field that more closely resembled the cross country national meet.

Yet, at the national meet, the Engineers just didn’t have much go their way. Their leading trio of Acquaviva, Hensgen and Lad was good, but just not overly potent.

Ultimately, an "off" day from their usual fourth scorer was the obstacle that the Engineers just couldn’t recover from in the team score. They were a solid program, but they were also vulnerable past their top-five. The Engineers didn’t have much margin for error and that is what put their podium hopes on hold until next year.

7. RPI Engineers (+2 / 9)

While RPI's 7th place finish at the 2023 NCAA XC Championships was a welcomed result, it had to instill a sense of "what if" in close observers of the Engineers this fall.

With Vince Simonetti stepping up in a major way (8th overall) behind teammate Cory Kennedy (5th), the Engineers had one of the largest gaps between their front-end and backend scorers. RPI's third runner came across the line in 98th place (Justin Cascio), although the final two men closed out the scoring within 20 places after that (Mitchell Dailey and Jason Gibbons).

 Beyond a midseason 3rd place finish at D3 Pre-Nationals, this was a somewhat difficult team to gauge. This finish was on the higher end of expectations for these Engineers and is an improvement on last year's top-10 national meet result. Despite an incongruent scoring structure, TSR #7 should be an applauded landing point for this team.

6. Carnegie Mellon Tartans (0 / 6)

Hats off to the Tartans who managed to live up to expectations on the national stage despite their usual two lead scorers, Matthew Porter and Matthew Coyle, having a much smaller impact than anticipated at the NCAA XC Championships.

Carnegie Mellon did not have any individual All-Americans, but put all five of their scorers in the top-95. Paired with comfortable wins at the UAA XC Championships, the Mid-Atlantic Regional XC Championships and the SUNY Geneseo Mike Woods Invitational, their 6th place finish is a season-ending result the Tartan men can feel proud of even.

Admittedly, this Carnegie Mellon team did hold podium upside when their balanced lineup was at its absolute best. With more firepower, something that Porter and Coyle clearly held, the Tartans could have validated our early-season suspicions are bit more convincingly.

That, of course, is not to take away from what was an excellent national meet showing.

5. Wartburg Knights (0 / 5)

This is one of the teams in our top-10 that we learned the least about since our last update.

But given that they remain in the top-five, that's not necessarily an unwelcome development.

The Knights had just one All-American this fall, Christopher Collet, but pieced together a strong enough middle lineup group (going 48-51-61) to finish 5th at the NCAA XC Championships. Sam Schmitz was a more potent scorer throughout this fall, Jacob Green still provided good scoring value despite being capable of more and Jack Kinzer quietly had a strong season from start to finish.

Sure, another podium finish would have been nice, but it became evident relatively early-on that this team likely wouldn't be able to challenge for a national title as it did en route to finishing runner-up last fall. Admittedly, a handful of things needed to break their way (between Schmitz, Green and Kinzer) in order for that to happen, although the Knights still salvaged a strong season.

Wartburg's individuals seemingly ran better to end this season than they did earlier during their American Rivers Conference title victory or their 3rd place finish at the Augustana Interregional Invite.

4. Williams Ephs (+3 / 7)

With a balanced scoring group and a defined lineup structure, Williams exceeded expectations more than anyone except for the national champion team at the NCAA XC Championships. As such, the Ephs were rewarded with a podium finish.

Despite the team surprising, none of Williams' individuals stunned us relative to expectations. John Lucey (6th) offered great up-front scoring value while Nikhil DeNatale (20th) joined him as a top-half All-American. Charles Namiot (52nd) connected that lead duo to the backend scorers who were good enough in 72nd place (Nate Lentz) and 120th (Ryan Hardiman).

Williams was a steady team throughout 2023, suffering their only losses at the national meet and D3 Pre-Nationals where they finished runner-up. As such, this result probably lies more in line with what we should have expected of the Ephs than what we projected for them.

3. North Central Cardinals (-2 / 1)

Undefeated against Division Three competition all year entering the national meet, North Central looked to be a slight favorite to win the team title and get their dynasty back on track, but that isn’t how it ultimately played out.

Putting three men in the top-20 (Max Svienty, Andrew Guimond and Braden Nicholson) was huge for them, but Connor Riss had a tough day after missing the regional meet the week prior. And unfortunately for the Cardinals, no one in their next group stepped up enough to make up for that scoring gap.

Even so, it's fun to see the Cardinals reaching the podium again after a few years' hiatus. This is still a group that has a lot to be proud of given how incredible their scoring potency was when everyone was firing on all cylinders.

2. UW-La Crosse Eagles (0 / 2)

UW-La Crosse came about as close as you can get to winning a national title without actually doing so. Despite Ethan Gregg comfortably taking the individual title, the Eagles weren’t quite able to hold on to what looked like a solid lead with two kilometers to go.

Depth wasn’t necessarily the issue, either, as their sixth runner finished ahead of every other team's fifth runner. However, with Isaac Wegner, Grant Matthai and Aidan Matthai all dropping significantly in the latter part of the race, the deficit between their middle scorers and Pomona-Pitzer's proved to be too much.

In the end, the Eagles finished runner-up, one point behind the Sagehens.

That close of a margin of defeat and the way it played out has to sting, but the Eagles had a great season by all accounts, including comfortably defeating rival UW-Whitewater three times in as many postseason races. The depth of this team came together beautifully as the season progressed and few teams peaked better than they did.

1. Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens (+7 / 8)

Thinking back to last year’s cross country national meet, it was supposed to be a tight battle between Pomona-Pitzer and MIT. The four writers who predicted the team title in 2022 were split 50/50 between the Engineers and the Sagehens.

But instead of being in close contention for the title, Pomona-Pitzer finished in 5th place and missed the podium entirely, drawing bewilderment from a lot of cross country fans — and from us as well.

This season, after one tough race at D3 Pre-Nationals, we moved the Sagehens to the back of our minds and didn’t look at them as national title contenders despite their talent. So for the first time in years, the 2019 and 2021 national champions were underdogs at a cross country national meet. Of course, as fate would have it, the underdogs delivered a knockout punch to everybody whom we had ranked above them.

The first four Sagehens to cross the line last Saturday — Lucas Florsheim, Derek Fearon, Cameron Hatler and Colin Kirkpatrick — were each All-Americans, performing so well that a large gap between their forth and fifth scorers proved inconsequential. In fact, those first two men cracked the top-10!

This squad won their third national title since 2019 partly due to their great talent, but also because they were the most composed team in a chaotic last few kilometers featuring lots of carnage.

Yes, these rankings evaluate a team's overall seasonal resume. And yes, this team did fade to 4th place at D3 Pre-Nationals. But when you look at three teams who beat the Sagehens that weekend -- MIT, Williams and RPI -- none of them had strong enough national meet efforts to say that their two biggest performances of the season's were better than Pomona-Pitzer.

And given how strong this west coast powerhouse was throughout the entire postseason, we were able to muster just enough of an argument to put these men at TSR #1.

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KICKED OFF

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JUST MISSED (in no particular order)

Johns Hopkins Blue Jays

George Fox Bruins

St. Olaf Oles

Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Stags

HONORABLE MENTIONS (in no particular order)

John Carroll Blue Streaks

Central College Dutch

NYU Violets

Washington U. Bears

Calvin Knights

Tufts Jumbos

Amherst Mammoths

Middlebury Panthers

Emory Eagles

UW-Stout Blue Devils

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