TSR's 2022 D3 XC Top 10 Team Rankings (Men): Update #4

Admin (Garrett Zatlin)
Nov 14, 2022
7 min read

Written by Garrett Zatlin

Order by Kevin Fischer, Hannah Thorn & Brett Haffner

Additional edits and commentary by John Cusick

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.

KEY

(Unranked):

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. John Carroll Blue Streaks (Unranked)

We said in our regional meet preview that if John Carroll had a standout race this past weekend, that they would ultimately earn the last spot in our rankings.

Sure enough, that was the case, as a convincing Great Lakes title victory over a highly respectable Case Western team put the Blue Streaks back on our list.

Alex Phillip (1st) was great as always while Barrett Scheatzle (6th) and Joe Backus (7th) easily had the best races of their seasons. In fact, this was undoubtedly the best race we've ever seen from Backus who seemingly changes this dynamic of this team dramatically.

With Ryan Chapma (14th) offering respectable backend support and Tommy Naiman (20th) closing out the scoring relatively quickly, one could say the John Carroll men might be peaking perfectly going into the the NCAA XC Championships.

9. UW-Whitewater Warhawks (Unranked)

After being absolutely trounced by the UW-La Crosse men at the WIAC XC Championships, it felt like the UW-Whitewater didn't have the same scoring potential that we thought they would have coming into this season.

And then Saturday happened.

The Warhawks stunned the nation with a massive North regional title, taking home the victory over the rival Eagles by eight points.

Christian Patzka (1st) and Gunner Schlender (3rd) proved to be elite low-sticks, but that was far from shocking. Even seeing Justin Krause place 13th, for as solid as that was, didn't stun us in any major way.

But then the Warhawks' depth came through in a way that we had not seen throughout this entire season. The combination of Dan Anderson (27th) and Chris Allen (31st) closed out their team's scoring just fast enough to give UW-Whitewater the win.

Heck, even Nick Hardin held his own in 41st place!

We had been critical of UW-Whitewater's limited depth this fall, but their backend scorers were the real heroes of this on Saturday. If they can replicate this result on the national stage, then they might end the season higher than TSR #9.

8. Carnegie Mellon Tartans (+2 / 10)

Coming into this past weekend, we had the Johns Hopkins men listed in our top-10. However, you wouldn't have thought that given how they looked in comparison to the Tartans on Saturday.

The Carnegie Mellon men went 2-3-4-5-8 in the Mid-Atlantic region, scoring just 22 points to John Hopkins' 60 points. It was utter domination for the Pittsburgh-based men.

We do want to give credit to Carnegie Mellon for their win. They deserve the regional title and they deserve this slight bump up in our rankings. However, the Blue Jays didn't have three of their scorers from their conference meet lineup and low-stick ace Matthew Kleimann didn't have his best outing.

In other words, the final score is a bit misleading, although it still would've been a major challenge to take down the Tartans regardless of who Johns Hopkins fielded.

7. UW-La Crosse Eagles (-1 / 6)

After the WIAC XC Championships, where the UW-La Crosse men breezed through the field, we thought that the Eagles has finally improved their backend. They had easily defeated a UW-Whitewater team that was still working on major backend issues of their own.

However, on Saturday, the roles were reversed.

At the North Regional XC Championships, it was actually the Warhawks who had the better depth than the Eagles. Low-stick standouts Ethan Gregg (2nd) and Isaac Wegner (4th) were great as expected while Corey Fairchild (14th) continued to be a fairly solid middle-lineup contributor.

However, with their final scorer falling just a few spots behind UW-Whitewater's final scorer, the Eagles surprisingly didn't get the edge and had to settle for runner-up.

We're not going to drop UW-La Crosse too much in these rankings. They have still proven how dangerous they can be when they're firing on all cylinders and a lot needed to happen in order to get the result that we saw on Saturday.

For now, we'll place the Eagles at TSR #7.

6. RPI Engineers (-2 / 4)

One of the best matchups of the weekend was expected to happen in the Mideast region as the RPI men toed the line against NESCAC juggernaut, Williams.

The Engineers had tons of momentum coming into this race while the Ephs were certainly rallying after a somewhat slow-ish start to their season. In fact, at the Siena Invitational back in September, the Engineers easily trounced a Williams squad that looked a bit rusty.

But on Saturday, the Engineers just didn't have the same scoring edge. Seeing Matthew Lecky (2nd) run so well wasn't a surprise. Cory Kennedy (7th) could have maybe been a few spots higher, but he was largely in line with our expectations.

Even Jason Gibbons (11th) ran fairly well, continuing to offer steady scoring and great consistency.

However, the gap between Gibbons and the final two scorers on his team was relatively large in comparison to the Ephs. With the Engineers' final scorers finishing 17th and 20th overall, there just wasn't enough backend support to keep the RPI men competitive with Williams.

This result was a combination of RPI having a slight "off" day while Williams had probably one of the best races of their season. That said, the Engineers fall to TSR #6, but still have a realistic chance of being a podium team.

5. Wartburg Knights (+2 / 7)

Seeing Wartburg finish runner-up at the Midwest Regional XC Championships was a somewhat expected result, although the reason why they move up in our rankings is more because other teams are falling back a few spots.

Chris Collet (1st) is still elite, Sam Schmitz (9th) probably had one of the better races of his career, Morgan Shirley-Fairbairn (12th) yet again offered highly valuable scoring consistency, Jacob Green (14th) continues to be sneaky-good and Connor Lancial (19th) may have had a few more points that he'll be able to cut off at the national meet.

Regardless of how much better that I think Lancial can/will be, there's not a whole lot that we were able to take away from the Knights this past weekend. However, I do think that this team's floor is probably higher than it was last year.

And that's saying a lot considering how talented they were last fall.

4. Williams Ephs (+1 / 5)

After losing to RPI at the Siena Invitational, there were significant questions about just how good the Williams men could be in 2022.

But slowly and surely, the Ephs have rallied and it looks like they are peaking right on time. The Williams men took home a massive win over a highly talented RPI squad at the Mideast Regional XC Championships on Saturday. The NESCAC stars took home the win by a somewhat convincing 17-point margin.

There are two major storylines for this team.

The first is that Grahm Tuohy-Gaydos may be inching closer back to his top form. Sure, a 4th place finish this past weekend doesn't make him the same megastar that we thought he would be, but the more impactful of a low-stick that Tuohy-Gaydos is next weekend (alongside Elias Lindgren), the more likely it is that the Williams men will sit on the podium.

The second storyline is that the Ephs' depth came through in a HUGE way. The next five runners to cross the line for Williams went 10-12-13-14-16 which is far better backend support than we've seen from them throughout this entire season.

If we see that same kind of depth on the national stage, then the Ephs will have a crazy-high floor and it will be challenging to imagine them having a poor race.

3. North Central Cardinals (0 / 3)

We were curious as to how the North Central men would handle Wartburg at the Midwest Regional XC Championships, but the Cardinals took care of business fairly easily. And with that regional title, they validated our TSR #3 ranking.

There's no other way to say it: North Central is just flat-out talented.

The Cardinals put four men in the top-10 of the results this past Saturday, a result that simply overwhelmed a Wartburg team that was still fairly competitive in their own right.

Braden Nicholson (2nd), Max Svienty (4th) and Connor Riss (6th) ran exactly how we thought they would, but it was also super encouraging to see Andrew Guimond (7th) emerge closer to the top-half of this lineup.

Admittedly, the scoring drop-off to their fifth runner in 22nd place was pretty large, and that may need to be addressed before this weekend. But if Guimond is going to finish that close to Nicholson, Svienty and Riss at the national meet, then that gap may not matter too much.

2. MIT Engineers (0 / 2)

There's really not a whole lot to say about the MIT men. They went 2-3-4-5-7-8 for a six-man time-spread that was less than nine seconds. They easily dominated the East region and scored just 21 points.

We didn't really learn anything new about the Engineers, but that doesn't make them any less talented...or any less of a threat to our TSR #1 team.

1. Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens (0 / 1)

The Pomona-Pitzer men easily took care of business on Saturday, handling Claremonte-Mudd-Scripps with a 29-point margin of victory en route to the West regional title.

Lucas Florsheim (1st) continues to emerge as the main star of this ridiculously loaded roster. Meanwhile, Cameron Hatler (5th) left us feeling very encouraged, especially since we hadn't quite seen this level of scoring potency from him before (although his Augustana result was pretty solid as well).

Colin Kirkpatrick (7th), Ethan Widlansky (10th) and Nathaniel Getachew (13th) closed out the scoring while Derek Fearon and Ian Horsburgh were able to comfortably keep themselves in the top-20.

The Sagehens continue to be one of the most perplexing teams in the country given that their lineup order is constantly changing and ever-evolving.

I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, but it's also new territory for us when a national title favorite enters their season finale and we don't truly know what we're going to expect from their lineup structure.

But hey, if it works, it works.