TSR's 2022 Preseason D1 XC Top 25 Rankings (Men): #15 Alabama Crimson Tide

When The Stride Report crew sat down to craft our rankings, we spent two hours trying to determine which lineups were better than others.

And when we came to the Alabama men, we were confident that they would be anywhere from TSR #19 to TSR #23 in our preseason rankings.

But as we really dived into their lineup structure and began to play with the numbers, we realized that the Crimson Tide, at a minimum, were a top-20 team in the country.

And here's the craziest part: This team, structurally, is almost no different from what you have seen from them over the past five years.

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Following a rust-buster at the North Alabama Showcase, the Crimson Tide toed the line at Joe Piane for their first true test of the 2021 cross country season. And while the team wasn't necessarily favored to take home the win, Alabama did have all eyes on them.

That's because everyone wanted to see what their two newest Kenyan superstars, Victor Kiprop and Hillary Cheruiyot, could do on the grass next to top returner Eliud Kipsang.

While that Crimson Tide trio didn't necessarily blow away their competition, they still proved to be very dangerous. Kiprop posted an excellent 8th place finish while Kipsang locked down a very strong 14th place result of his own. Cheruiyot would fade a bit to 35th place, but all things considered, that was still a promising performance.

With Jacob Wiggers placing 53rd, Alabama had a respectable scoring option at the fourth spot in their lineup. However, seeing the team's fifth scorer falter to 116th ultimately inflated the Crimson Tide's score to 225 points, well out of reach of the top-three teams.

Alabama would leave the Notre Dame-hosted meet with a solid 6th place finish. Falling behind Furman, Michigan, Butler, Florida State and Southern Utah was fairly understandable, as was defeating Weber State, Ole Miss, Charlotte, NC State and a very limited Notre Dame squad.

The Crimson Tide would eventually toe the line at Pre-Nationals -- and the results were somewhat similar.

This time, Kiprop posted a monster 3rd place finish, giving the Crimson Tide a huge scoring edge. Kipsang was great once again, placing 13th overall in a field that was comparatively better than Joe Piane.

The same could be said for Cheruiyot who placed 33rd overall, two spots better than his Joe Piane performance which, again, was in a less competitive field than what Pre-Nationals offered.

Through three runners, Alabama had the third-best scoring trio in the field, sitting only behind Northern Arizona and BYU.

Of course, like we had seen at Joe Piane and in multiple seasons prior, the bottom two scorers in Alabama's lineup created a gap that might as well have been a chasm. With their final two scorers placing 128th and 153rd overall, Alabama fell to 9th place in the team standings, another result that was on par with expectations.

Unfortunately, things fell apart for Alabama at the SEC XC Championships.

Seeing Kipsang and Kiprop finish 1st and 4th place was surprising, but only because we were expecting them to finish in reverse order. As far as their actual scoring value was concerned, five points seemed about right.

From there, Cheruiyot placed 22nd. That was a fine result and somewhat in line with what we had seem from him earlier in the season. Even so, it would have been a bit more ideal to see him close the gap on his top-two teammates.

Of course, with their final two scorers placing 55th and 56th overall, Alabama just didn't have enough support to stay with the top teams in the field. In fact, they had to settle for a 4th place finish behind a Missouri, a result that surprised us at The Stride Report.

After earning a top-two finish in the South region, Alabama advanced to the national meet. And while their lineup structure theoretically favored them in this field, that largely wouldn't matter.

Simply put, the Crimson Tide just had a rough day.

Kipsang placed 48th overall, roughly 20 places behind his full potential, but Cheruiyot held his own, placing 53rd overall and fully delivering on the upside that we knew he had.

However, the real dagger was seeing Kiprop record a brutal DNF result. That, paired with no Alabama runner finishing in the top-200 overall spots, set the Crimson Tide tumbling down the standings.

In the end, they would place 27th as a team.

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When you look at this team's 2021 fall campaign, it's hard to think that they would be ranked at TSR #15 in 2022. Cheruiyot wasn't necessarily a low-stick for most of the season, the backend of this lineup created significant gaps and the team's scoring relied almost entirely on Kipsang and Kiprop.

So...how did they get to this point?

This is usually the part of the article where we breakdown the team athlete by athlete. But that won't necessarily explain why we ranked the Crimson Tide at the spot that we did.

Instead, let's do some fun math.

In our preseason individual cross country rankings, we have two Alabama men in our top-50 (Kiprop and Kipsang) and one Alabama runner in our "Just Missed" column (Cheruiyot).

Kiprop is ranked at TSR #18, Kipsang is ranked at TSR #25 and Cheruiyot, for the sake of this discussion, is ranked at TSR #55.

When you remove any men who aren't returning or aren't expected to be on national qualifying teams, Kiprop, Kipsang and Cheruiyot actually sit at 15-22-50 in terms of theoretical team scores.

And if those men were to deliver those exact results at last year's national meet, then that trio would produce just 87 points -- and that might be a conservative estimate.

Now let's assume that the final two scorers in Alabama's lineup see an absolute worst-case scenario. Let's say that the final two scorers in the Crimson Tide's top-five finish dead last at the national meet and that the sixth and seven runners both record DNF results.

If we're looking at last year's national meet results, then that means Alabama would score 213 points and 214 points in the final two spots of their lineup.

87 + 213 + 214 equals 514 points.

In the fall of 2021, that team score would have finished 20th place overall at the national meet.

And again, that's the absolute worst possible result that Alabama could have recorded last fall as long as their top-three met expectations for this upcoming year.

Now let's assume that Alabama's bottom two scorers finish 201st overall and 202nd overall. Based on last year's national meet results, that would equate to 169 points and 170 points.

Add 'em all up and you get 426 points.

Good for 16th place at last year's national meet.

With just three runners in the top-200 overall spots.

Math is wild sometimes.

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Of course, everything that I just mentioned above relies on one major caveat: Alabama's top-three has to meet expectations. That top-three will all need to be All-Americans and one of them likely has to be in the top-20 (or close to that).

If one of those men has a poor showing at the national meet like they did last fall, then this entire lineup structure crumbles.

As far as scoring diversity goes, Alabama doesn't have a lot of it.

But would you rather have five decent scorers on Team A who all need to run well on the same day to place in the top-half of the national meet? Or would you rather rely on three stars from Team B to run well on the same day?

Well, the fewer runners that you have to rely on, the better chance you have of being a top-half team. The tradeoff, however, is that a poor showing by someone from Team A would be far less damaging than an "off" day from someone on Team B.

When it comes to Alabama, we already know how good their top-three men are (or can be). It's their bottom two scorers who will be the most impactful later this fall.

And when you compare this roster to previous Alabama teams over the past five years, this might be their deepest supporting case yet.

Guys like Jacob Wiggers, Jack Hawes, Rich Saenz, Jace Jones, Carson Burian and Gavin Saacke all return from last year.

Wiggers showed promise at Joe Piane by placing 53rd and later running a 14:13 personal best for 5000 meters this past spring.

Jones, Burian and Saacke were all very underrated high school standouts who were just true freshmen or second-year freshmen last fall with very little experience. While they did go through their growing pains, they still have a ton of upside and great potential entering the 2022 cross country season.

Burian, in fact, ran 8:57 in the steeplechase this past spring. For someone who simply needs to be a top-200 finisher at the national meet, that's a very encouraging sign.

However, maybe the most important development was seeing Brady Grant (formerly of Texas A&M) and Jacob Harris (formerly of Toledo) join this program as graduate transfers earlier this summer.

On paper, Grant and Harris aren't all too different from the rest of this supporting staff, but it would be surprising if neither of these men were in Alabama's top-seven this fall.

Harris placed 4th at the Mid-American Conference XC Championships in 2021. He also placed 11th in the "Open" race at Pre-Nationals with a time of 24:26. That result would have put him around 130th place in the "Garnet" race which would have been a top-half finish.

Grant, however, could be the biggest support piece that Alabama has this year.

The former Aggie has posted times of 8:17 (3k), 14:29 (5k) and 9:00 (steeple) on the track. However, his most important result was when he finished 31st at the SEC XC Championships last fall.

If Grant was running in an Alabama singlet that day, his finish would have allowed the Crimson Tide to cut 22 points off of their team score (although they still would have placed 4th as a team).

When you pair Grant and Harris with the plethora of lineup options that we mentioned earlier, you have to imagine that at least one of those men could crack the top-200 at the national meet.

In fact, it would almost be surprising if two of those guys didn't crack the top-200!

* * *

Alabama's upside in 2022 will only go as far as their backend scorers allow them to go. And truthfully, their lineup structure may not be as effective in smaller fields.

In fact, there's a very real possibility that Tennessee and/or Arkansas will beat the Crimson Tide at the SEC XC Championships this fall and then lose to Alabama at the national meet.

But with this team's downside only being limited to their top-three runners, the chances of this team being a top-15 program in the NCAA is debatably stronger than them not being a top-15 program.

Let's also not forget, when Alabama had their three-headed monster of Gilbert Kigen, Vincent Kiprop and Alfred Chelanga in 2017, that same lineup structure placed 14th at the NCAA XC Championships after underwhelming earlier in the season.

And if we think that this year's Alabama team has better depth than they did in 2017 then...how much better could they be in 2022?