First Thoughts: 2022 Regional XC Championships

On Friday night, after I had published our Kolas projections, I stood up from my desk and ventured my way into the living room. There, I found my roommate sitting on the couch. As I walked into the room, he looked over, paused, and then asked, "Have you left the apartment at all today?"

And the fact of the matter was that I had not left the apartment.

That's because for well over eight hours, I was glued to my laptop, working on calculations, sending updated results sheets to Bo Waggoner (at xcquals.com) and turning my workspace into a cross country-themed war room of sorts.

And even then, I had not fully digested the results. I only cared about Kolas points.

So allow me to jot down some thoughts about yesterday's races. Unfortunately, I won't be covering every. single. race. simply because a good number of these races and Kolas outcomes were largely unsurprising.

Alright, let's dive in...

---

Top-Ranked CBU Men & Portland Men Fail To Advance To National Meet, Gonzaga Earns Huge Auto-Lock Finish

Going into Friday, we made it abundantly clear that the West region could see major casualties in terms of top-ranked teams not qualifying for the NCAA XC Championships.

Many of the Kolas scenarios that we ran just simply didn't favor a mass number of teams coming out of that region, or at least not as many as usual.

Yes, the Portland men were projected to be our second auto-lock team in the West region, but we also felt like four other teams, Oregon, Washington, CBU and Gonzaga, had a somewhat realistic shot at finishing 2nd place overall.

Stanford was obviously the regional favorite, and they delivered.

When the results were tallied, it was the Gonzaga Bulldogs finishing runner-up. They were arguably the least favored team in that group to earn an auto-lock position.

In fact, in many of the Kolas scenarios that we had run, the Bulldogs were expected to finish 6th overall in the West region. And if they had finished that low, and more importantly had finished behind California Baptist, then their chances of advancing to the national meet would have dropped dramatically.

Gonzaga's 2nd place finish was clutch, but that result wasn't nearly as surprising as seeing Portland drop to 7th place overall. That finish put the Pilots behind California Baptist and Boise State, meaning that Portland wouldn't even be considered for a spot to the national meet until CBU advanced.

And with the Lancers not even qualifying at all, the Pilots ended their season early despite being listed as our TSR #15 team coming into the weekend and our TSR #14 team coming into the season as a whole.

I refuse to believe that the Portland men took their foot off of the gas thinking that they were relatively safe in terms of national qualification.

The Pilots are one of the few top-tier distance programs who have consistently attacked their regional meet with some level of urgency and emphasis. Coach Rob Conner is a veteran and knows how to navigate this field. And frankly, there were multiple Kolas scenarios out there from multiple outlets (including ourselves) which emphasized the possibility of a top team being left out of the West region.

In this case, it was California Baptist and Portland.

So generally speaking, I think the Pilots just had a flat-out bad day.

As for the CBU men, it's a bit of a bummer that they didn't advance. For the most part, the Lancers were a fringe national qualifying team. It felt like they had a 50/50 shot of making it to the national meet depending on how certain results from other regions unfolded.

And unfortunately for them, they got the unlucky end of the stick, but only barely.

CBU Women Push Oregon State Women Into National Meet On Wild Tie-Breaker For 4th Place

The Oregon State women were massive underdogs to qualify for the national meet. There was no scenario where if they had finished behind Stanford, Oregon, Washington and CBU, that they would have advanced to Stillwater, Oklahoma.

The Kolas projections flat-out didn't favor them.

The only legitimate way that the Beavers were going to qualify for the NCAA XC Championships was if they pulled off an upset and took down one of those four aforementioned teams.

That challenge wasn't entirely impossible, but it would take a heroic effort (and maybe the slightest bit of luck) in order for the Beavers to extend their season.

But sure enough, Oregon State had the races of their lives on Friday. Kaylee Mitchell took home the regional crown while teammate Grace Fetherstonhaugh gave the OSU women a lethal amount of low-stick scoring via her 8th place finish.

In fact, those two women comfortably gave the Beavers the best 1-2 punch in the field.

Admittedly, the final two Oregon State scorers faded to 55th and 66th place overall, but Christina Geisler may have had the most clutch performance of anyone on Friday, placing 20th overall.

Earlier this season, she had placed 183rd at Nuttycombe and 43rd at the PAC-12 XC Championships. There wasn't a whole lot to suggest that she would run as well as she did.

Oregon State may have placed 4th, but they actually TIED with California Baptist for that 4th place finish. And thanks to the potent top-three of the Beavers, they ultimately won that tie-breaker.

If the Beavers had lost that tie-breaker and finished 5th, then they would not be advancing to the national meet. Instead, that last national qualifying spot would go to Furman.

But because CBU finished one spot behind Oregon State, we had a "push" scenario and that's ultimately how the women from Corvallis, Oregon qualified.

To put it simpler terms, a 4th place tie-breaking scenario in the West region is what ultimately determined whether Furman or Oregon State went to the national meet. That last national qualifying spot literally came down to less than a single point.

Wow.

Should We Be Concerned About Cole Sprout's Absence?

Normally, I wouldn't be concerned about a top-tier team keeping one of their best runners out of their regional meet lineup. That's not entirely uncommon as the national meet is obviously the greater priority.

But then my fellow podcast co-host, Ben Weisel, went to Strava and navigated to Sprout's profile. The Stanford star, who seems to be pretty good about logging his miles, has recently been doing a lot of bike work and is recording very few miles.

We'll admit, that's not super encouraging to see.

Could we be over analyzing this? Yes, absolutely. There's a very good chance that we get to the national meet, see Cole Sprout toeing the line and he runs exceptionally well.

Still, it's something to monitor...

Ole Miss Men Snag Second Auto-Lock Spot In South Region

Going into Friday, it was clear that the Tennessee men and Alabama men were the favorites to take the top-two spots in the South region.

However, we were keeping an eye on the Ole Miss men. This was a team that didn't have many Kolas points, was coming off of a very encouraging performance at the SEC XC Championships and had more motivation to go all-out than the Volunteers and the Crimson Tide did.

Sure enough, the Rebels beat unfavorable odds as they finished 2nd overall on Friday, four points ahead of the Alabama men who faded to 3rd place. After a highly promising conference meet result, Friday had to feel like massive validation for an Ole Miss team that we had completely written-off during the first-half of the season.

Anthony Camerieri (5th) is the real deal, Cole Bullock (11th) is beginning to find some momentum after a slow start, Chris Maxon (16th) continues to be one of the more underrated support scorers in the NCAA, Dereck Elkins (18th) is making sneaky-good progress and Shane Bracken (32nd) did just enough to close out the scoring.

What a wildly clutch effort by the Ole Miss men. Going into the postseason, I thought the Rebels had no chance of making it to the national meet. But on Friday, I was happy to be proved wrong. They may be peaking better than almost any other team in the country.

The Northwestern Women Are Going Dancing

There's not really a whole lot to say about the Midwest region, but I think the Northwestern women deserve some credit...for making me look much smarter than I really am.

In an early-season episode of the Blue Oval Podcast that we released earlier this fall, I made the claim that the Northwestern women would be a national qualifying team, citing a fairly weak year for the Midwest region and the recent graduate transfer of Ari Marks.

(Start at 18:55)

I probably won't ever get that lucky again, but I have to give major kudos to Coach Jill Miller. She left Wisconsin to work with the Wildcats and now she is advancing to national meet with her entire team after a 20-year drought.

Rachel McCardell (8th), Ari Marks (13th) and Kalea Bartolotto (15th) all came together to give the Northwestern women a sneaky-good amount of upfront firepower on Friday. And with their final two scorers staying in the top-30, the Wildcats were just the flat-out better team over the rest of the field, minus Oklahoma State.

Congrats to Coach Miller and all of her athletes. She has turned that program around in a dramatic way and it's wildly encouraging to see.

Iowa State Men Fail To Advance To The National Meet

To be clear, the Iowa State men are actually a fairly strong, nationally competitive cross country team. Just because they didn't advance to the national meet on Friday doesn't mean that they're not talented.

Unfortunately, Iowa State simply didn't deliver on their regular season opportunities. Their decision to race at early-season meets like the Gans Creek Classic or the Mizzou XC Opener is fine, but that puts a lot of weight on how they performed at Nuttycombe.

And with a 22nd place finish in Madison, Wisconsin, that wasn't going to give this team enough Kolas points to advance out the 3rd place spot at the Midwest Regional XC Championships.

Are the Cyclones as good as our TSR #12 preseason ranking suggested? No, maybe not, but there are a handful of teams that advanced to the national meet that I think Iowa State is (probably) better than.

Is The Kolas System Fair?

I don't think any national qualifying system in sports is ever going to be perfectly fair. However, in my opinion, the Kolas cross country qualifying system is probably the most fair selection process that we have in all of sports.

It rewards you for the quality of the wins that you earn throughout the regular season. However, it also allows for teams who had breakout races at the regional meets to have a realistic shot at national qualification.

Are there flaws in the system? Sure. We saw that in 2019 with the Gonzaga men.

But for the most part, I like this system and the nuances that come with it...even if it's wildly challenging to calculate.