First Thoughts: Analyzing the Men's Regional Championships

The men's East and West Regional Championships have wrapped up and as we await the women's races to be finalized, we thought it would be best to discuss the overall impact of the men's races, specifically the numerous surprises that we saw.

Here we go...

Men's East 800 Meters

I have been saying for a while now that Duquesne's Collin Ebling is an outstanding talent. He has made promising improvements throughout his career and ran as fast as 1:47 on the indoor oval at the IC4A Championships this past winter, a race that came after national qualification.

Naturally, he fell under the radar.

After a spring season where he ran 1:48 (coming into this weekend), I felt confident that he was the best sleeper pick in this field despite his 32nd seed.

And sure enough, my fairly bold call was spot on.

But honestly, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little surprised myself.

It's not that Ebling hasn't raced great competition before or hasn't shown the potential to be a national qualifier. But most of the men in this East region 800 meter field were simply primed to be better than Ebling.

Or, at the very least, they gave us more reassurance that they would advance to Eugene rather than him...strictly on paper, that is.

But Ebling was excellent this weekend and showed us that he has enough tactical prowess to pair with his top-end firepower, effectively becoming one of the more dangerous names in the men's 800 meters this year.

Speaking of Ebling, his preliminary heat was STACKED and I even noted that in our latest Blue Oval Podcast episode. That heat was responsible for four out of the six time qualifiers in the 800 meters and seven finals qualifiers in total.

That heat also featured three Notre Dame men and while they were certainly all capable of qualifying for the national meet, the chances of them doing so in a prelim with so much talent seemed low.

And yet, in the end, two of those three Fighting Irish men still advanced, as did Baylor Franklin and Ebling.

In fact, Indiana's Camden Marshall, who was also part of that loaded prelim, was 0.01 seconds from advancing to the national meet as well. And although the Hoosier youngster didn't advance, his execution and patience on the final straightaway was brilliant.

But that's something that we have seen from him before. Marshall has shown us some great speed and his mature patience in high pressure scenarios is top-notch.

As for a few others, Michigan's Cole Johnson, Clemson's Tarees Rhoden, Notre Dame's Bashir Mosavel-Lo and Alabama's Jacob Lamb all showed tremendous promise this year. And sure, many of them weren't perfect or automatic national meet locks, but seeing this group as a whole not advance to Eugene was a little bit of a surprise.

Men's West 800 Meters

I'll admit, I looked at the men's 800 meters in the West region coming into this weekend was was...kind of underwhelmed? That's not to say that these athletes aren't talented, but there didn't seem to be the same level of reliability in the West region as there was in the East region.

That thought process felt validated once Arkansas' Kieran Taylor, Western Illinois' Ackeen Colley, Iowa State's Darius Kipyego and Texas Tech's Sven Cepus didn't advance out of the prelims.

Colley didn't even start the prelims and Kipyego is still very young, so there is at least some reason behind their results. However, Taylor and Cepus have been the definition of consistent throughout their careers, although certain races of their this spring have been better than others.

As for the top-12 names who made it out of the finals and will be racing at Eugene, it's not like this field was full of surprises. Roughly 10 of the 12 names who qualified for the national meet had some kind of background or history to suggest that a trip to the NCAA Championships was reasonable...although many of those names would not have been my first picks.

For instance, BYU's Sebastian Fernandez ran 1:47 at altitude earlier this season to get a converted 1:46 mark. However, coming into this weekend, that was the only recorded time on Fernandez's resume which sat under the 1:50 barrier.

But Fernandez qualifying isn't necessarily a surprise, it's just validation.

The one name who did actually surprise me was Arizona State's Dayton Carlson, but that's probably because he peaked better than almost anyone in the NCAA this spring. He went from 1:50 to 1:49 to 1:48 to now 1:47 this season. His progression has been phenomenal and his hot streak of momentum clearly carried him to the best set of races he's ever had.

But that's what happens with athletes like Carlson. Their youth gives them a very high ceiling and plenty of upside which can often be shown in races like this.

As for the men who missed out, seeing Stanford's John Lester miss the national meet was a little bit of a bummer. I thought he was a name whose youth wasn't going to make a dramatic difference given his poise, composure and consistency throughout this year as a whole.

Seeing Texas Tech's Marco Vilca not advance to the national meet was a little surprising, especially after the indoor track season he had, but he wasn't a complete lock to qualify, either. He's still due for a marquee season, I'm not just not sure when that will be.

Illinois State' Riley Wells also ran 1:47 this weekend, a monster PR that nearly got him to the national meet. Wells had never run faster than 1:49 this spring up until the regional meet when he ran back-to-back 1:47 marks, earned a massive PR and quickly changed my mind about who had the best postseason peak this year.

Wells simply got unlucky with how his heat was constructed and how fast the times were. In the right heat, Wells is going to the national meet and he becomes my new favorite runner to watch in Eugene, Oregon two weeks from now.

He may not be advancing, but Riley Wells has a lot to be proud of.

Men's East 1500 Meters

I opened up my laptop, pulled up the Flash Results link aaannnddd....yeah, this looked about right.

It's hard to look at any of these results and be stunned about anyone who made it to the national meet. A lot of these names are fairly well established and while I definitely favored certain names over others, seeing men like Abel Teffra (Georgetown), Nathan Henderson (Syracuse) and Sean Peterson (Youngstown State) qualify wasn't a complete shock.

But Rhys Hammond? Yeah, I'm not going to lie, I didn't at all consider that the 33rd seed in this region from Cornell would make it to the NCAA Championships. He was probably one of the biggest stunners who advanced to the national meet round on Friday.

Hammond is strong talent who has been attacking the 800 meters quite a bit this spring. However, he only recently ran his now-former 3:42 personal best before the regional meet, a time that prefaced his newly posted 3:41 mark.

There are always a few of these surprises of this caliber each and every year, but this one took me by surprise quite a bit, mainly because his resume just didn't have a specific edge that would allow him to stand out.

Teffra is young with a lot of momentum, and Henderson is a sub-four miler who is super experienced. While they may not have been amongst the top-12 best names on paper in the East region, seeing them qualify isn't necessarily a jaw-dropper.

But the names who didn't make it?

Well, this is where things get interesting.

Georgetown's established veteran Jack Salisbury who has run 3:37? Out.

Michigan's 3:38 man Tom Dodd who has had the best season of his career? Out.

Virginia's up-and-coming star Wes Porter who has earned multiple marquee wins? Out.

The experience, the consistency and the proven ability to deliver in competitive meets made Dodd and Salisbury feels like near locks for the national meet. They are pros when it comes to the metric mile and they have simply been flat-out great this spring.

Porter, however, may have been the biggest surprise. This is a guy who ran 3:39 for 1500 meters earlier this season, taking down names like John Petruno, Jonathan Schwind, Sean Peterson and Nathan Green (in the aggregated results)

All of those men qualified for the national meet this past weekend.

Porter also ran 13:36 for 5000 meters earlier this spring and took down a slew of sub-four milers from Georgetown (and from his own team). He showed plenty of sharpness at the ACC Championships and generally speaking, he's just been flat-out great.

Porter is still on the younger side of his career, but not seeing him at the national meet will still be a bummer.

Men's West 1500 Meters

Oh boy, do we have quite a bit to talk about here.

When you look at the 12 men who will be advancing to the national meet, no one is looking at this results and feeling shocked.

Some of these men are super experienced (i.e. Kusche, Davis, Basten), some of these men are on the younger side and have capitalized on their upside (i.e. Green, Spencer, Cook) and some of these men have simply done enough where their national qualification just isn't that surprising (i.e. the rest of the national qualifiers).

But then we get to the men who didn't advance to Eugene, Oregon and man...there are some interesting misses.

The biggest and most shocking miss has to be Oregon's Reed Brown. Unbelievably, the 3:54 miler and 3:36 runner for 1500 meters, who us a multi-time All-American, faltered in his heat and was unable to qualify for the national meet.

Brown has a very up-and-down history when it comes to the postseason. Over the past year, he has been absolutely incredible, showing great patience and an improved level of composure. When he started running his 3:54 (mile) and 3:36 (1500) marks this year, it seemed like he had turned a new page where he was fully delivering on his potential.

But then Brown faltered at the PAC-12 Championships in what felt like an "off" day during a year that has been otherwise flawless. And maybe that should have been our first sign that a regional result like this was coming...

And not only did Brown not qualify for the national meet, but Texas' Crayon Carrozza also didn't make it inside the top-12! That's huge!

For someone who was so consistent and such a great tactical runner this year, it felt like a forgone conclusion that Carrozza would qualify for the national meet.

That, however, didn't happen, and that's an absolute bummer. However, I even told Ben on our Blue Oval Podcast episode that I didn't necessarily love the idea of Carrozza pursuing the 1500 meters over the 800 meters.

I even told Ben that when I went down the list of men in the West region 800 meter field, there were very few who I trusted more than Carrozza.

This Texas middle distance star a 1:46 PR and has generally been pretty consistent at this distance throughout his career. With so many top-tier names like John Rivera, Sam Whitmarsh and Jones Jones opting out of the half-mile, it felt like a given that Carrozza would have had better success in that event.

Now, in defense of Carrozza, the only name of those three who he could have known was scratching from the 800 meters was Jonathan Jones. Other than him, neither Carrozza nor Coach Watson likely knew what the top-end of the men's 800 meter field was going to be.

Still, the shock or Carrozza not advancing has made it difficult to not do some self reflection.

Quick notes...

I never expected Jacob Brueckman to qualify for the national meet, but he has run 3:39 this season and Gavin was the only one who called him to get a bid, so I can't act too shocked if one of my writers also saw that the talent was there.

Jack Yearian, despite being a 3:54 miler this year, didn't make it out of the prelims, but he didn't necessarily blow us away this spring.

Fouad Meessaoudi not qualifying was a little surprising, but neither Gavin nor myself had him qualifying, likely because we knew a few talented names were going to be left out.

Zach Stallings, Martin Prodanov and Karl Winter are both excellent and proven milers, although I don't think anyone would have been surprised about whether they did or didn't make to Eugene, Oregon.

As for Garrett MacQuiddy, I loved his combination of youth and incredible tactics coming into the regional meet, but unfortunately, this just wasn't his year.

Men's East 3k Steeple

I'm going to give myself a pat on the back for this one. No, my predictions weren't unbelievably perfect or anything like that, but on a recent Blue Oval Podcast episode, both Ben and myself made concentrated efforts to avoiding overvaluing recent performances from the ACC Championships.

No, we didn't cut the ACC men out of our results entirely, but we still saved ourselves from being too burned in our predictions.

In fact, we probably didn't hedge enough.

Brett Gardner, Marshall Williamson, Nathan Mountain, Josh Higgins, Mike Ungvarsky, Evan Addison, Jack Miller and are recent ACC standouts who did not qualify for the national meet, but their inexperience and newness to a nationally competitive level can sometimes be responsible for that.

The only name who really surprised me was El-Hocine Bouchrak, the High Point standout who was so. darn. consistent. all year long, and I just didn't expect him to drop enough in the results to fall out of a national qualifying bid.

The same could be said for Felix Kandie who hails from Liberty.

In terms of national qualifiers, Tom Seitzer (Notre Dame) and Ben Garner (Samford) were the only surprises reflected in the top-12, but not ALL runners from ACC Championships needed to be dismissed and I guess that's where Seitzer steps in.

As for Garner, he peaked at a last chance meet, running 8:44, so if you believed that he was peaking at the right time, then his top-12 result shouldn't exactly be a shock. The same can be said for Eastern Kentucky's Ahmed Kadri.

Men's West 3k Steeple

I thought there were going to be a ton of surprises in the men's East region steeplechase...but I couldn't justify myself to drop too many of the top names in this field.

Well, sure enough, I was thinking too hard about it. No one in the top-12 was a major surprise in terms of national qualification. The top names are still the top names and generally speaking, I I don't think anyone is looking at someone in these results and thinking, "You qualified???"

...well, maybe except for one.

I'm not going to lie, I have no idea how BYU's Garrett Marsing made it to the national meet.

And I know what you're thinking, "Garrett, c'mon! He's from a powerhouse steeplechase program, has an 8:31 steeplechase PR from last year and was a 4th place All-American in this event last spring. What's not to like?"

Great question, hypothetical reader.

Marsing's personal best is 8:31.

It took 8:40.00 to qualify for the national meet this year and that time came from a different heat than Marsing's. This spring, this BYU veteran ran 8:50, 8:47, 8:56 and 8:51.

From the perspective of national qualifying, Marsing has been flat-out not good and I honestly didn't like his chances -- at all.

But that's why they run the race! Kudos to Marsing for having a wildly clutch performance.

It's a similar story for Arkansas State's Bennett Pascoe. He was incredible last year, but has run 9:00, 8:48, 8:55...and now 8:39. Sometimes you just never know what to expect!

Other names like Bryce Lentz and Adam Bunker may have been a little surprising to anyone not familiar with their resumes, but those guys have proven to be super talented and I think most of the predictions we made race reflected our trust in their abilities.

The only two names who surprised me by not making it to the top-12 were Portland's Riley Osen and Santa Clara's Zach Litoff. Both of those men are highly accomplished veterans, so having them both out of the national meet was not on my bingo card.

Men's East 5k

Here's the thing: This field was so darn loaded that there are at least six to seven names who could be viewed as surprise national qualifying misses. And yet, at the same, no one who qualified for the national meet in this event out of the region really shocked us.

For example, Ole Miss' Cole Bullock earned a top-12 spot and will be going to the national meet. And if you had asked me to rank the 12 qualifiers by my original likeliness to qualify for the national meet, I probably would have put Bullock last.

But what's crazy is that Bullock has run 13:39 for 5000 meters this spring and depending on the race, he can be a juggernaut on the grass...so how surprising was his result, actually?

Names like Barry Keane (Butler), Parker Wolfe (North Carolina), Jack Aho (North Carolina), Ian Shanklin (NC State), Ryan Drew (Liberty), Antonio Lopez Segura (Virginia Tech), Nate Kawalec (NC State), Graham Blanks (Harvard), Ben Veatch (Indiana), Victor Kiprop (Alabama) were tough to see them out of the top-12...but I could have added another 10 names to that group. I just had to stop myself from listing practically everyone in this field.

Out of that group, Butler's Barry Keane is the one who I'm most bummed about (maybe more than Lopez Segura...go Hokes). Keane has been the definition of consistent this year. Not just in terms of top finishes, but running insanely fast times while facing top-tier competition.

Now, in Keane's defense, he already qualified for the national meet in the 10k, but I really thought that he would have been one of the better names in the NCAA capable of being competitive during the 10k/5k double at the national meet.

This is usually the part where I dive even further into some analysis but...these longer races, as we found our yesterday, are you usually pretty straightforward.

Men's West 5k

Unlike the men's 5000 meters in the East region, these two 5k heats in the West region produced plenty of headlines.

Let's just jump right into it: Colorado's Eduardo Herrera and Andrew Kent BOTH didn't qualify for the national meet...and neither did Northern Arizona's Drew Bosley! Nor Stanford's Charles Hicks! Nor Washington's Kieran Lumb! What is going on?!

Unbelievably, three of our four writers (myself included) accurately predicted that Drew Bosley would not qualify for the national meet. Gavin was the only one who predicted that he would.

Bosley was omitted from our predictions mainly because of the crazy depth in this field, not necessarily because of anything that he had done. And while we did omit Bosley from our predictions, it felt like he was going to make us regret this decision.

But shockingly, Bosley's season is done and we are now left scratching our heads and asking ourselves how we got to this point.

However, if Bosley's failure to qualify for the national meet isn't the most surprising development, then Eduardo Herrera ending his college career two weeks early is certainly the bigger surprise.

Herrera has been incredible all year long, running unbelievably fast times and emerging as a name capable of taking down elite talents. And just this past winter, after a top All-American finish at the national meet in the 3000 meters, it seemed as though he had gotten past his postseason woes.

That, unfortunately, was not entirely the case.

I love both Bosley and Herrera. I think both men have proven to be unbelievably talented in an era where elite 5000 meter runners become the focal point of the distances. Not having BOTH of those men is really tough blow and I do wish that Herrera's college career ended in a different way.

As for Hicks and Lumb, this would be a much bigger deal if neither of these men weren't already qualified for the national meet in the 10,000 meters. The 10k is, after all, Hicks' best event, although historically, I think I like Lumb in the 5k (prior to his time in the NCAA).

Then there is Andrew Kent, an all-around stud who I like quite a bit. However, the impact of his non-qualifying performance simply isn't as high as Herrera, Hicks, Bosley and Lumb. The same can be said about Thomas Boyden and Isaac Green.

Let's now shift our discussion to a different point: Who were the surprise national qualifiers?

Much like the East region, this field was so stacked that a lot of men had reasonable arguments to be top-12 names. Sure, Ryan Ford, Sam Gilman and Michael Power weren't my first picks, but if you know anything about their resumes, then you know that they are talented enough to be Eugene.

But Vincent Mauri? I'm not going to lie, he's one of the last men who I expected to play a role in this race.

Mauri, an Arizona State standout, has always struck me as more of a middle distance runner. He has run 1:49 for 800 meters and 3:41 for 1500 meters, marks that were both posted this spring.

But coming into the regional races, Mauri had only ever run under 14:00 once in his career. At the NCAA level, he had only ever finished four 5k races. His 13:40 PR came earlier this spring.

Mauri's 13:40 personal best was promising, but his inexperience in the event, paired with the wild amount of firepower in these 5k fields made it seem like the Sun Devil ace was at a disadvantage.

But sometimes, I'm not as good at my job as I think I am.

And now, Mauri is going to be the national meet.