TSR's 2022 Preseason D1 XC Top 25 Rankings (Women): #14 Wisconsin Badgers

Going into the 2021 cross country season, I would have told you that the Wisconsin women were doomed.

They had lost a handful of top-tier scorers from a few seasons prior, they saw their coach step away from the program in January of 2021, they were flat-out bad in their lone BIG 10 XC Championship race during the winter cross country season and their strongest low-stick (Brogan MacDougall) would ultimately not race last fall.

And yet, despite all of that, this team somehow rallied throughout last year, putting together a fall campaign that was far better than what anyone expected.

It's true, this team does lose their best runner from last year's lineup, but the collective whole of the Wisconsin women likely puts them in the conversation to win a BIG 10 title this year.

And with a new coach now at the helm of this women's program, the Badgers may end up being one of the last teams that anyone wants to face come October and November.

* * *

After a few rust-busters, the Wisconsin women truly began their fall 2021 cross country season at the Louisville XC Classic, a nationally recognized meet that always had a few highly ranked teams in the field.

The Badgers would toe the line for the "Gold" race, ready to face the likes of Michigan and West Virginia, two programs that would go on to qualify for the national meet in November.

In that race, Wisconsin flexed a very strong top-three with then-sophomore Shea Ruhly posting a highly promising 6th place finish. Victoria Heiligenthal and Stella Gillman proved to be strong scorers in their own right, placing 11th and 13th, respectively.

Those were highly respectable results and the emergence of Ruhly was extremely encouraging. However, with the next three runners in Wisconsin's lineup placing 22-23-24, the Badgers just didn't have the necessary scoring potency to fend off a Michigan team that was far more complete.

Seeing veterans like Crouch (22nd) and Niggemann (24th) falter to the latter-half of this lineup was a surprise. Those two women had proven to be highly valuable scorers in past fields that were notably stronger than what we saw in Louisville.

But maybe that was just another reason to be encouraged about the Wisconsin women last year. If that result was far from their best, then their upside was exciting to think about.

In the end, the Michigan Wolverines would take home a dominant win, scoring just 39 points while Wisconsin settled for 2nd place, scoring 75 points and comfortably holding off 3rd place West Virginia.

Fast forward to Nuttycombe, a national-caliber meet hosted on Wisconsin's home course, and the Badgers looked no better and no worse than what we saw from them at Louisville.

This time, Niggemann thrived in the larger field, placing 29th overall and giving Wisconsin a fairly respectable scoring edge. We wouldn't see the next Badgers cross the line until 61st place (Heiligenthal) and 63rd place (Gillman), but all things considered, that was still a solid top-three.

This is usually the point in our story where we highlight a significant scoring drop-off and focus on a weak point that a team needed to improve upon...but the opposite was true for the Wisconsin women last fall.

While the Badgers frontend scoring potency admittedly seemed limited, their depth was outstanding.

Ruhly and Scarlet Dale quickly closed out the scoring by placing 85th and 86th place overall. Not only that, but Lucinda Crouch and Samantha Stieve were the sixth and seventh runners who placed 96th and 98th place!

There were only two teams in this Nuttycombe field that had all seven of their varsity runners finish inside the top-100 spots. Wisconsin was one of them and the New Mexico women, who won the overall meet, was the other one.

Despite the incredible team effort, the Badgers would settle for a 10th place team finish, a solid result, but one that could have been better with greater firepower next to (or ahead of) Niggemann.

But then the BIG 10 XC Championships arrived...and things got interesting.

Coming into their conference meet, Wisconsin had their hands full. Minnesota looked like a nearly untouchable juggernaut and the Michigan women had quietly dominated the Badgers at the Louisville XC Classic. The Michigan State women also proved to be a major threat.

Once again, the Badgers were limited on firepower. Niggemann placed 10th overall while Stieve placed 11th. Minnesota, Michigan State and Michigan all had at least two women in the top-10 of this race.

However, behind those front-runners is where this race actually unfolded.

Gillman placed 16th overall while Heiligenthal was 18th. And with the final four Badgers finishing 23-24-25-29 (a team could field more than seven runners), the Wisconsin women were able to close out their scoring faster than any other team in the field -- by a lot.

Minnesota's fifth runner placed 35th, Michigan's fifth runner placed 36th and Michigan State's fifth runner placed 40th. And with Wisconsin's fifth runner placing 24th, the Badgers were able to rally, scoring 78 points to finish 2nd overall, falling behind Minnesota by just six points.

The Wisconsin women had a ton to be happy about from that race. One could argue that they had the best collective team effort of anyone at the BIG 10 XC Championships that day. Their depth proved to be their saving grace and as they advanced to the postseason, momentum was on their side.

After earning an automatic bid out of the Great Lakes Regional XC Championships, the Wisconsin women primed themselves for the national meet. On paper, their depth limited the idea of this team having a poor outing. There was simply too much scoring insurance for the Badgers to have a bad day.

And that theory turned out to be true.

Niggemann would go on to earn a respectable 68th place finish. And while the rest of this team was somewhat spread out, the Badgers still put together a scoring five that had almost no major gaps.

Heiligenthal placed 83rd, Westley was 98th, Crouch finished 107th and Orie closed out the scoring by placing 112th. Not only that, but the team's sixth scorer, Samantha Stieve, placed 129th overall, giving the Badgers fairly respectable backend scoring.

And in the end, the Wisconsin women would walk away from Tallahassee with a huge 12th place team finish, a result that shattered expectations with some of the best team-centric running we had seen all year long.

* * *

I'll just say it -- the Wisconsin women weren't supposed to be as good as they were in 2022, mainly for all of the reasons that I laid out in the introductory portion of this article.

And while we knew that the Badgers had multiple varsity options, seeing them put together one of the deepest seven-person lineups in the NCAA came as a stunner. Not necessarily because they had so much depth, but because that structure was so effective.

As we look forward to the upcoming cross country season, Wisconsin will still be deeper than ever. They return six of their top-seven women from last year's national meet and nearly all of them will be considered veterans in terms of age, eligibility and experience.

However, the one woman who they do lose was easily their most important scorer.

I am, of course, talking about Alissa Niggemann.

The steeplechase standout was excellent for Wisconsin last fall. While she wasn't necessarily an All-American talent on the grass, her consistency and scoring value at the front of this lineup clearly helped the Badgers who were high on depth but limited on firepower.

And the numbers? Well, they actually don't look too bad when you remove her from last year's cross country results.

If you took Niggemann out of the Nuttycombe Invite, BIG 10 XC Championships and NCAA XC Championships and replaced her with Wisconsin's sixth runner, then the Badgers aren't expected to falter all that much.

In that scenario, Wisconsin would have finished 11th place instead of 10th place at Nuttycombe, 4th place instead of 2nd at the BIG XC Championships and 14th place instead of 12th place at the NCAA XC Championships.

That theoretical national meet result isn't entirely why we put Wisconsin at this spot, but it does solidify our ranking.

Simply put, the loss of Niggemann, while not ideal, isn't going to crush this program. As we already highlighted, this team is deep enough to keep their scoring gaps at a minimum, and that makes the departure of a key name not nearly as damaging as one might think.

But when it comes to the rest of this lineup, there is one glaring question that we simply can't get past...who will be Wisconsin's low-stick(s) this fall?

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Let's start with Victoria Heiligenthal, Wisconsin's top returner from the national meet where she placed 83rd overall. She also placed 61st at Nuttycombe and 18th at the BIG 10 XC Championships.

Despite holding sophomore eligibility last fall, Heiligenthal has been in the NCAA since 2018 and is plenty experienced. That racing maturity began to translate last fall and she even ran 4:40 in the mile, 4:18 for 1500 meters and 9:21 for 3000 meters earlier this year.

Heiligenthal's racing savvy has improved a lot over the last year and she was often a key sleeper name who many of our TSR writers liked to utilize in our pre-meet predictions.

While her scoring role with Wisconsin's lineup did fluctuate at times last year, it seems fair to say that Heiligenthal still has untapped potential. Her growth as a runner has been encouraging and we really like the progress she's making.

Is Heiligenthal going to be an All-American this fall? Maybe not, but she could absolutely be the low-stick that Niggemann was in 2021. In fact, she was listed as an "Honorable Mention" in our women's preseason individual rankings.

We then come to Alexa Westley, another top-100 finisher from last year's national meet, placing 98th overall.

First introduced to the NCAA back in 2019, Westley made immediate contributions for the Wisconsin women in her first collegiate season. Since then, she has slowly and steadily improved her overall fitness, simply getting better as she's gotten older.

Finishing 111th at Nuttycombe and 24th at the BIG 10 XC Championships are fine results, but it's clear that Westley's best performance came at the national meet. She'll need to reproduce that kind of result throughout the entirety of this season to show off her true scoring value.

And after running 9:20 for 3000 meters this past winter, we think she will.

How about Lucinda Crouch? This long-time veteran has been super reliable and very underrated throughout her college career.

Finishing 96th at Nuttycombe, 23rd at the BIG 10 XC Championships and 107th place at last year's national meet are fine results, but they don't necessarily jump off the page.

But if you look at prior cross country seasons on Crouch's resume, we can see that she holds far greater scoring value than what her 2021 fall campaign may have suggested.

During the 2019 cross country season, Crouch was 43rd at Nuttycombe, 13th at her conference meet and 96th on the national stage.

And the good news? She might be inching closer to those 2019 performances after a huge track season. This past winter and spring, Crouch recorded strong marks of 4:44 (mile), 9:18 (3k) and 10:05 (steeple), all of which were personal bests.

If we see the same Lucinda Crouch that we saw in 2019, then our TSR #14 ranking might be a conservative estimate for the Wisconsin women.

Danielle Orie is a really interesting name. The graduate student from Penn showed plenty of promise last fall, emerging as an increasingly stronger scorer as the postseason progressed. After placing 25th at the BIG 10 XC Championships, Orie was 22nd at the Great Lakes regional meet and then 112th at the national meet.

Much like the rest of her teammates, those were solid results, but her performances on the track suggest that she might be noticeably better this fall. Posting new personal bests of 9:19 (3k), 16:06 (5k) and 33:57 (10k) is no joke, especially that latter PR.

If Orie can translate, sustain and build upon her track performances from this past spring, then she could be just as good as Heiligenthal -- and maybe even better.

We also need to talk about Samantha Stieve, the woman who was probably the closest to being a true low-stick for Wisconsin last fall, but also the one who saw the greatest fluctuation in her seasonal resume.

Stieve, for instance, was 23rd at Louisville and 98th at Nuttycombe, but then 11th at the BIG 10 XC Championships and then 12th in the Great Lakes region before placing 129th at the national meet.

To be clear, none of those finishes are bad. However, it's fairly obvious that Stieve was a better runner at her conference and regional meets. She was anywhere from the team's second scorer to their seventh runner throughout last fall, making it difficult to know exactly what we're going to get from her in 2022.

But with a plethora of lineup options and so many interchangeable names in this varsity group, Stieve may not have to be more consistent as long as her best performances are delivered at the right time.

And if you thought that our analysis would end there, then you would be mistaken.

We've still got two more names to go: Stella Gillman and Shea Ruhly.

Much like Stieve, the performances that we saw from both Gillman and Ruhly last fall were up and down, but their greatest finishes of the season certainly catch your attention.

At the Louisville XC Classic, for instance, Ruhly earned a stunning 6th place finish to emerge as the team's top scorer while Gillman secured a clutch 13th place finish of her own. Those two results are better than some people may realize.

However, Ruhly would go on to place 85th at Nuttycombe, 29th at the BIG 10 XC Championships and then not even toe the line for the national meet.

Gillman, meanwhile, would go on to place 63rd at Nuttycombe and 16th at the BIG 10 XC Championships before faltering at the national meet and placing 177th at the national meet.

Both Ruhly and Gillman have proven that they can be high-octane scorers on the grass. Their potential upside this fall is very exciting to think about, especially for Ruhly who posted excellent times of 9:21 (3k), 16:01 (5k) and 33:30 (10k) earlier this year.

* * *

We'll admit, some of the women we just mentioned will need to be a bit more consistent in order for Wisconsin to capitalize on their full potential. While the Badgers did have one of the deepest rosters in the country last fall, having everyone run their best on the same day didn't always happen.

Not only that, but this team is lacking proven firepower. While women like Heiligenthal and Ruhly could certainly reach that status this fall, it's hard to see where the Wisconsin women are going to get a true scoring edge.

But...does any of that really matter?

Honestly, it might not.

The overall depth of this team can make up for one or two women have a poor race. The Badgers run well as a team which effectively minimizes any scoring gap. And for the most part, a lot of these returners have a good chance to improve in 2022.

With a proven coach in Lindsay Crevoiserat now joining the Badgers as the team's newest leader, this BIG 10 powerhouse might have someone who can get the absolute best out of this army of a distance roster over the next few months.