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2024 NCAA D1 XC Championships First Thoughts: Graham Blanks Goes Back-to-Back, Lemngole Asserts Dominance & BYU Sweeps
- Admin (Garrett Zatlin)
- Nov 24, 2024
- 7 min read
I want to first start by apologizing for how delayed this article is.
As I'm sure many of you can understand, we were hard at work this weekend collecting and posting post-race interviews (on our YouTube page), publishing a variety of different photo albums (on our SNAPSHOTS page), recording a new episode of the Blue Oval Podcast and trying to navigate the logistics of travel that come with the NCAA XC Championships.
Yesterday's national meet performances were captivating. Each race made me feel invested in the final outcome -- even if I wasn't actually invested in any singular individual or team (ok, fine, I may have been rooting for Virginia Tech).
Below are a few initial thoughts and analysis on the major headlines from Saturday. This article won't be quite as long as most of our "First Thoughts" articles usually are. Part of that is because we are pressed for time. The other part is because I want to save some analysis for our final set of team and individual rankings.
Alright, let's dive in...
Graham Blanks Goes Back-to-Back, Wins NCAA Gold Over Shoe-Less Habtom Samuel
Going into Saturday, it felt like a variety of men were capable of winning the individual national title. The favorites, at least in the eyes of The Stride Report, were Habtom Samuel (New Mexico), Solomon Kipchoge (Texas Tech), Brian Musau (Oklahoma State) and Graham Blanks (Harvard).
And if you really wanted to extend the conversation, then guys like Parker Wolfe (North Carolina) and Patrick Kiprop (Arkansas) had arguments as well.
In my official predictions, I picked Brian Musau to win the individual national title. Of course, he wasn't the nation's popular pick -- and I completely understood why. Graham Blanks was, after all, the defending national champion. Plus, Habtom Samuel had defeated Blanks en route to a win at the country's most prestigious meet of the year (other than the NCAA XC Championships), Pre-Nationals.
My pick for Musau, however, was simply because he had done everything that we could have realistically asked him to do. Not only did he beat Habtom Samuel head-to-head at the Cowboy Jamboree, but he also won the BIG 12 title over Solomon Kipchoge and a handful of other superstars.
But when the gun went off and the national meet field began to unfold, it was the Harvard veteran who remained poised and controlled. And just like he did last year, Blanks took control in the final kilometer, powering away from a field that simply didn't have enough wheels to respond.
Funny enough, Blanks made the same move at the same part of the course that allowed him to win the 2023 title at the Nuttycombe Invite.
That, in turn, gave Graham Blanks his second individual national title. Habtom Samuel secured silver despite losing one of his spikes while Furman's Dylan Schubert (3rd) and Arkansas' Yaseen Abdalla (4th) had surprisingly great days.
Blanks has now reached a point where he is simply better than everyone else. If he's healthy, he's going to win. Not necessarily because he's more fit than his competition, but simply because he's one of the smartest and savviest racers that we've seen in a while -- and no, it's not just because he goes to Harvard.
In our still-unreleased episode of the Blue Oval Podcast, I asked my fellow podcast co-host, Ben Weisel, who Graham Blanks most reminded him of in the era of TSR coverage. And after some thought, we came to the conclusion that Wisconsin alum Morgan McDonald was the best comparison.
Maybe not by resume, but more so by skillset.
Both McDonald and Blanks had/have a knack for sitting with the lead pack, surveying the field and gauging when to respond (and not respond) to certain moves. They're both strength-based distance stars who were debatably at their best on the grass and could pull away from their opponents at will in the closing stages of most races.
And yet, despite the similarities, I feel compelled to say that, with a second cross country national title under his belt, Blanks has already surpassed McDonald in my personal all-time collegiate distance running hierarchy.
Doris Lemngole Makes Statement With Late-Race Kick, Wins NCAA Individual Cross Country Title
The women's battle for the 2024 individual cross country national title felt like a pretty straightforward conversation. Doris Lemngole (Alabama), Pamela Kosgei (New Mexico) and Hilda Olemomoi (Florida) were the three NCAA individual title favorites.
Sure, you could try to make an argument for someone else, but doing so would feel like a stretch.
Despite the race featuring a handful of aggressive front-runners, the pace actually seemed to be fairly light compared to expectations. That left Lemngole, Kosgei and Olemomoi right next to each other with roughly 300 to 400 meters remaining.
But at that point, Lemngole began to open up her stride. She pulled away from Kosgei, looking incredibly smooth while doing so while showing surprisingly great foot-speed. In the end, that kick gave Lemngole her first individual cross country national title. Kosgei (2nd) and Olemomoi (3rd) would round out the top-three as expected.
It's important to remember that Lemngole is only a sophomore and has won two national titles in four seasons (she won NCAA gold in the steeplechase during the spring). Naturally, one can't help but wonder how many national titles she'll have racked up by the time she leaves the collegiate realm.
In fact, the more appropriate question may be, how many national titles will it take for Lemngole to turn pro?
That question is more impactful than one may realize. Lemngole's teammate-turned-rival, Hilda Olemomoi, has yet to win a national title of her own. And with Pamela Kosgei now in the NCAA, the opportunities for the Florida star to secure gold over the next few years will become increasingly more challenging.
However, my biggest takeaway from Lemngole's performance is that she is, definitively, the better distance runner than Kosgei and Olemomoi.
In a race that was expected to be a three-person battle, Lemngole's ability to almost effortlessly pull away from her competition was beyond impressive. In that race, experience wasn't the differentiating factor -- pure talent and fitness were.
Jenna Hutchins-Less BYU Women Secure NCAA XC Team Title With Four Individual All-Americans
In the eyes of many, the BYU women were viewed as the national title favorites going into the NCAA XC Championships. But then news arose that Jenna Hutchins, a strong All-American favorite, was potentially not racing for the Cougars.
And yet, for whatever reason, that didn't seem to sway too many opinions -- although it certainly swayed mine. I personally chose the Northern Arizona women to win, a group that, in retrospect, needed more potent scoring at the 3-4-5 spots of their lineup.
Of course, the consensus of the masses turned out to be the smarter decision when making final predictions. The BYU women rallied in the latter-half of the race while the other top teams around them began to falter at crucial scoring spots.
Lexy Halladay-Lowey (14th) was unsurprisingly great. However, the recent success that we had seen from Riley Chamberlain, Carmen Alder and Taylor Rohatinsky earlier this fall was the main reason why the Cougars had enough All-American firepower to secure the win.
That trio did, after all, go 31-39-43, respectively, in the overall results.
But the biggest reason why I didn't trust BYU to win the national title without Jenna Hutchins was simply because I didn't know who their fifth woman was going to be -- or if that fifth woman could be relied upon to quickly close out the scoring.
In the end, that final scorer turned out to be Carlee Hansen who, for the second-straight year, saved her best race of the season for the national meet where she placed 65th. That super clutch result gave BYU a little bit of breathing room against a West Virginia team that was closer to winning than some may realize.
How lucky are we as cross country fans that we get to witness two all-time great coaches, Diljeet Taylor (BYU) and Laurie Henes (NC State), competing against each other at the same time?
Sure, the Wolfpack may not have been contending for NCAA gold this time around, but that's not the point. The fact that both of these coaches reside in the same era -- and will likely be around for quite some time -- is a rare treat. And on Saturday, it was Coach Taylor who climbed yet another rung on the ladder of all-time elite NCAA distance coaches.
BYU Men Thrive, Win NCAA XC Team Title With 124 Points While Oklahoma State Men Struggle
Last year, the Oklahoma State men dominated the field at the NCAA XC Championships. By scoring just 49 points, the Cowboys won the national team title and positioned themselves as favorites for NCAA gold in 2024.
However, at the BIG 12 XC Championships earlier this season, the BYU men pulled off what was, at the time, an upset win over Oklahoma State. And while that result didn't necessarily guarantee that the Cougars would win the NCAA title, it did tell indicate that they were capable of doing so.
Sure enough, that's what happened on Saturday.
In Madison, Wisconsin, the BYU men emerged victorious, scoring 124 points in a complete reversal of last year's results. And truthfully, nothing about their lineup structure on Saturday surprised us -- it was largely what we expected to see.
Casey Clinger (6th), Creed Thompson (12th), Joey Nokes (31st), Lucas Bons (39th) and Davin Thompson (50th) were the five scorers for BYU. The former four men emerged as individual All-Americans, giving the Cougars a complete lineup which didn't have the same imbalances as other programs.
Of course, if there are any specific heroes on this team, then it has to be Bons and Davin Thompson.
The former is considered to be a miler, but has made tremendous progress on the grass this season. Bons slowly improved throughout the fall months and capped his season by peaking perfectly at the national meet.
Davin Thompson, meanwhile, deserves a lot of credit. This is a guy who was injured throughout last year. Late August was his first race back since December 3rd of 2022. Without his 50th place finish, BYU still would have won...but only barely.
But maybe the most impressive part in all of this was that James Corrigan, the team's Olympic steeplechaser and an All-American favorite, faded to 62nd place on Saturday. If I told you on Friday that I came from the future and that Corrigan would finish outside of the top-60 at the national meet, then you wouldn't have thought that BYU would win the team title, would you?
However, you also wouldn't have anticipated Oklahoma State falling to 8th place overall. Frankly, no one in the country saw that coming. And if someone says that they did, then they're probably lying.
Through two runners, the Cowboys looked great as Brian Musau (6th) and Denis Kipngetich (11th) delivered on low-stick expectations. But to see so many crucial scorers like Victor Shitsama (70th), Laban Kipkemboi (107th), Adisu Guadia (110th), Ryan Schoppe (121st) and Fouad Messaoudi (222nd) all struggle was...odd.
It's one thing for one or two of those men to not run well, but five of them? I can't lie, I was scratching my head on that one.
Even so, I think most people can still see that, from a raw talent perspective, Oklahoma State is still a top-three team in the country. That, of course, was not seen on Saturday.
