TSR's 2024 D1 XC Top 25 Team Rankings (Men): Update #3

Admin (Garrett Zatlin)
Nov 4, 2024
14 min read

Updated: Nov 6, 2024

NOTE: These rankings are based on how a team fared throughout the entirety of a season, not just how they ran at a singular meet or (eventually) at the 2024 NCAA XC Championships. Click here to learn more about our ranking criteria (which was published in 2023).

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.

25. Portland Pilots (Unranked)

The final spot in our rankings came down between Portland and the Butler men. While the Pilots won the West Coast Conference XC Championships, Butler's runner-up effort over Georgetown at the BIG East XC Championships was arguably better.

However, as a whole, you could argue that Portland has been better throughout this fall campaign. We're specifically talking about their 14th place finish at the Nuttycombe Invite whereas Butler dropped to 16th place at Pre-Nationals.

At the end of the day, both teams are fairly similar to each other as far as talent is concerned, but we went with the Pilots on this one. That is because this the best that the Pilots have looked over the last few years at this point in the season. Matt Strangio is finally healthy and in top form while the overall depth of this group has been very effective.

A comfortable win at the West Coast Conference XC Championships (led by five men in the top-10) was enough for Portland to reenter our team rankings.

24. Wyoming Cowboys (-4 / 20)

We'll admit, Wyoming's 3rd place finish at the Mountain West XC Championships was a surprisingly poor result. We're not necessarily surprised that they lost to New Mexico, but losing to Colorado State by 10 points isn't ideal.

On Friday, the Cowboys didn't have anyone in the top-10. That includes Jacob White who finished 11th. Gus McIntyre, a key backend contributor, had a tough day and it seemed like the team as a whole just fell flat.

This was the first true "off" day of Wyoming's season, so we're willing to be a bit softer on their demotion in our rankings. For the most part, the Cowboys have proven that they are a top-25 team in the country, but Friday's race was not how they should have kicked off their postseason.

23. Texas Tech Red Raiders (Unranked)

The top-heavy Texas Tech men crack our rankings after taking 4th place at the BIG 12 XC Championships this past Friday. However, more importantly, they took down a fairly balanced (and very deep) Colorado team for that 4th place position.

The elite 1-2 punch of Solomon Kipchoge (2nd) and Ernest Cheruiyot (5th) was extremely lethal. However, it was Vincent Koech's 18th place finish which allowed Kipchoge and Cheruiyot to retain most of their low-stick value.

And although the backend portion of this lineup wasn't ideal (their final scorers placed 47th and 51st), the firepower on this team was enough to produce a competitive result.

The Red Raiders have enough talent through three runners to be a nationally competitive squad. It's also been great to see Koech's rise as someone who can offer some stability to this lineup. However, given the gaps at the backend of their scoring group, it would be a minor surprise if this team was able to crack the top-20 of our rankings when all is said and done.

22. Harvard Crimson (-4 / 18)

21. Princeton Tigers (Unranked)

The Harvard men lost to Princeton at the Ivy League XC Championships for the second year in a row despite entering the meet as the favorite. And truthfully, this one was more surprising than last year's outcome.

We felt that the Harvard men were simply better this fall than they were last year. Or at the very least, they were more stable and more experienced. Princeton, meanwhile, still had a good team with great depth and stability, but last year's group simply felt more talented.

And yet, despite all of that, depth and a complete scoring contingent reigned supreme once again on Saturday.

Sure, we could go through each scoring spot and highlight the matchup between these two teams. But the fact of the matter is that the Crimson had a HUGE drop-off to their fifth man (who placed 43rd) despite putting four runners in the top-12. That was a very big surprise, especially with Joe Ewing having an exceptionally tough day. It also didn't help that Harvard was without Ferenc Kovacs.

The fact of the matter is that if Harvard was at their very best, then they likely would have defeated Princeton. And in a larger field, there's a good chance that the Crimson will prevail victorious.

But so far this season, the Tigers have placed 9th at the Nuttycombe Invite and have defeated Harvard for the Ivy League title. For that reason, we're giving the nod to Princeton over Harvard in this week's rankings update.

20. Furman Paladins (+2 / 22)

At the Southern Conference XC Championships, Furman earned a score of 15 points, sweeping the top-six spots and putting seven men in the top-eight positions. There isn't much to discuss with this result, we can move on to the next team.

19. Utah State Aggies (0 / 19)

Yes, the Utah State men did place 6th at the Mountain West XC Championships this past Friday. However, the Aggies didn't field their top-six men from Pre-Nationals. There's no reason to drop them from our rankings. This group will likely be at full strength for their regional meet and (presumably) the national meet in the coming weeks.

18. Oregon Ducks (Unranked)

After a relatively unexciting regular season, the Oregon men finally showed all of their cards at the BIG 10 XC Championships. And for the first time in the Jerry Schumacher era, this team actually looked like a nationally competitive group.

Simeon Birnbaum (4th) is evolving into a true low-stick and Elliott Cook's (5th) raw talent, paired with his extensive experience, has made him a great lead scorer as well.

However, the rise of both Aiden Smith (9th) and Tayson Echohawk (17th) is arguably the biggest development from this past weekend. Those two still-young distance talents offered high-impact results for a team that needed more help behind their top-two -- and that was huge.

With Evan Dorenkamp (23rd) closing out the scoring just like he was recruited to do, the Ducks tied with Washington for runner-up honors, although they lost to the Huskies on the tie-breaker.

It feels like Oregon finally has an identity. They are still young with plenty of time to grow and they'll almost certainly get better as they add more names. Of course, we still need to see how they fare when they make the move up to 10k in the coming weeks.

17. California Baptist Lancers (0 / 17)

The California Baptist men went 3-4-5-6-11 at the WAC XC Championships to score 29 points and win the title. However, we have to give credit to Southern Utah, a team that was just nine points behind them.

Truthfully, we don't know how the Lancers let SUU get so close to them in the final results. And yet, we also didn't feel that it would be appropriate to drop them in our rankings given the resumes of the teams listed behind CBU.

16. Washington Huskies (0 / 16)

The Washington men had a "good" race at the BIG 10 XC Championships, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a "great" race for the Huskies given that they tied with Oregon for 2nd place (and won the tie-breaker).

Nathan Green (3rd) produced a strong low-stick result on the conference stage for the second year in a row. Behind him, Evan Jenkins (6th) looked like he was slowly returning to the low-stick form that we expected to see from him at the beginning of the season.

Jamar Distel (14th) had a sneaky-good race while Tyrone Gorze (16th) and Leo Daschbach (19th) had decent enough efforts. Overall, that was enough to fend off a better-than-expected Oregon squad, but we know that both Gorze and Daschbach are capable of more.

They were, after all, top-30 finishers at the Nuttycombe Invite earlier this season.

15. Syracuse Orange (0 / 15)

A 5th place finish at the ACC XC Championships may not seem great, but that was roughly the spot where we were projecting the Syracuse men to finish on Friday. And when you consider that they beat Notre Dame, it feels like the Orange left their first postseason meet of the season with some positives.

Sam Lawler (10th) is beginning to look like the low-stick that he was last year while Assaf Harari (13th) is becoming more and more reliable as a lead scorer. It was also great to see Alex Comerford (20th) have the best cross country race of his career, giving Syracuse excellent value at their third scoring spot.

However, the youth and inexperience of redshirt freshmen Benne Anderson (34th) and Connor Ackley (47th) is what ultimately allowed other teams to jump ahead of Syracuse.

The natural volatility of both Anderson and Ackley will more or less determine how much success the Syracuse men have throughout the remainder of the postseason. The good news is that the veterans on this team are seemingly peaking at the right time.

Yes, the Orange did beat Notre Dame on Friday, but the Fighting Irish still have a much stronger resume this season than Syracuse does. That is ultimately why the men from upstate New York remain at TSR #15 in our rankings.

14. Notre Dame Fighting Irish (-4 / 10)

The Fighting Irish were flat-out bad at the ACC XC Championships.

The men from South Bend, Indiana dropped to 6th place on Friday despite entering the meet as one of the favorites to potentially win gold. Sure, Notre Dame had all five of their scorers inside of the top-30, but their top scorer was Ethan Coleman who settled for an underwhelming 18th place finish.

This team is undeniably better than what they showed us on Friday. We know for a fact that guys like Carter Solomon, Daelen Ackley, Izaiah Steury and a few others can be better in the future. Even so, falling out of the top-five of a meet that you were favored to win (or at least, among those who could win) is not how you want to kick-off your postseason.

Truthfully, it feels like we should be dropping the Irish in our rankings more than we are. But given how strong Notre Dame was in their lead up to this past weekend, we felt that keeping them inside of our top-15 was an appropriate middle ground.

13. Villanova Wildcats (+1 / 14)

It wasn't necessarily a surprise that the Villanova men won the BIG East title and it wasn't a surprise that Liam Murphy and Marco Langon went 1-2 in the overall results.

However, Aussie rookie Bailey Habler has been awesome this season, slowly improving with each race. His 4th place effort gave the Wildcats a third low-stick result which more or less locked up the win for Villanova before their fifth scorer even crossed the line.

Devon Comber (10th) had a sneaky-good race as well. He is another reason why this team ran as well as they did on Friday. And with CJ Sullivan (18th) holding his own, the Wildcats were able to take down two teams (Butler and Georgetown) who have been in and out of our rankings this fall.

The rise of Habler paired with a passable backend scoring group has made this Villanova team slightly better than we were expecting them to be during the summer months.

12. Virginia Cavaliers (+1 / 13)

Gary Martin's individual victory at the ACC XC Championships was a massive performance. Of course, he was already expected to give the Virginia men a true low-stick result. The same could be said for Will Anthony who finished in 5th place.

Even so, those two efforts were probably the best possible results that UVA could have asked for. And when you pair them with a sneaky-good run from Nathan Mountain (19th), the Cavaliers looked exceptionally strong through three runners.

Of course, having their final two scorers fade to 31st and 38th place wasn't exactly ideal for a team that was trying to crack the top-three.

Virginia's top-three men are seemingly peaking at just the right time. They'll ensure that this team remains nationally competitive in the coming weeks. However, at the same time, the ceiling of this group is very limited given how far back their latter two scorers have been. That area continues to be a point of emphasis, but the low-sticks on this team are doing a very nice job of squeezing out as much value as they can.

11. North Carolina Tar Heels (+1 / 12)

A rumored injury to Parker Wolfe (which I first mentioned to our listeners via the Blue Oval Podcast) was recently validated by LetsRun's Jonathan Gault. That would explain why Wolfe faded to 3rd place at the ACC XC Championships, one spot behind teammate Ethan Strand.

Even so, the Tar Heels' 1-2 punch was still insanely potent. And with Colton Sands (12th) continuing to be a fringe low-stick in his own right, the firepower on this team felt borderline overwhelming. Not only that, but Will Coogan (21st) had an excellent race! He provided far better scoring value at the fourth spot of this lineup than we were expecting.

However, with UNC's final scorer fading to 44th place, the Tar Heels were unable to keep pace with Wake Forest and Stanford.

Yes, North Carolina did have a large gap at the backend of their lineup, but Coogan's performance erased what could have been an even larger gap. UNC still needs more help from their depth. And yet, despite that and Wolfe's recently injury, I still though Coach Chris Miltenberg and his crew showed growth on Friday.

10. Alabama Crimson Tide (-2 / 8)

The Alabama men had a small chance of beating Arkansas at the SEC XC Championships this past Friday. However, in order for that to happen, a large handful of things needed to break their way.

And unfortunately for the Crimson Tide, that did not happen.

The trio of Victor Kiprop, Dennis Kipruto and Dismus Lokira offered potent low-stick results by going 2-4-6 in the overall results. However, each of those men were behind the respective first, second and third scorers for Arkansas. Not only that, but Hillary Cheruiyot's return to racing ended with an underwhelming 19th place finish.

Thankfully, fifth man Hudson Hurst had a sneaky-good race by finishing in 21st.

If Alabama wants to be a podium team in 2024, then Cheruiyot needs to be better and likely an All-American. However, it's unclear if his recent outing was just a fluke or a sign of him not being at full strength after a long racing hiatus.

For that reason, we dropped the Crimson Tide two spots in our rankings.

9. Wisconsin Badgers (0 / 9)

We very much wanted to move up the Wisconsin men in our rankings, but we didn't feel comfortable moving Northern Arizona and/or New Mexico down any further than we are right now.

The Wisconsin men won their seventh-straight BIG 10 XC Championship team title with Bob Liking winning his fourth individual cross country conference title. But what really impressed us was seeing Christian de Vaal (7th) and Matan Ivri (10th) make highly encouraging progress. With Johnny Livingstone (13th) and Rowen Ellenberg (15th) quickly closing out the scoring, the Badgers were simply the more complete team in the field on Friday.

The wildest part is that we know that Adam Spencer, Liam Newhart, Josh Truchon and Micah Wilson are all capable of producing better results! On paper, I'm struggling to see how this team is going to have a poor race moving forward.

8. Northern Arizona Lumberjacks (-1 / 7)

Despite a few Montana State men and Weber State's Peter Visser breaking up Northern Arizona's pack, the Lumberjacks still won the BIG Sky XC Championships with relative ease. And truthfully, there isn't much to discuss here from an analysis perspective.

7. New Mexico Lobos (-1 / 6)

We were fairly confident that the New Mexico men would win the Mountain West team title, but we didn't expect them to sweep the top-five spots and post a perfect score. That is what the very best version of the Lobos looks like when everyone is firing on all cylinders.

After a result like that, it feels like New Mexico deserves to move up in our rankings. Or at the very least, it feels like they shouldn't be dropping in our rankings. That, of course, is to no fault of their own. It is, after all, hard to put them ahead of a Stanford team who straight-up beat the Lobos at Pre-Nationals earlier this season.

6. Stanford Cardinal (-1 / 5)

After a huge run at Pre-Nationals, we were curious if the Stanford men would be able to validate their latest effort at the ACC XC Championships. And sure enough, they did, snagging a runner-up finish that was just six points behind the title-winning Wake Forest men.

Cole Sprout (5th) looks like he has returned to his All-American-caliber form, Thomas Boyden (9th) continues to be quietly outstanding and Lex Young (11th) has solidified himself as a reliable lead scorer. Robert DiDonato (22nd) came through in the clutch with a valuable performance while Leo Young (23rd) has quietly evolved into one of the better backend scorers in the country this fall.

At the end of the day, the Wake Forest men were simply better at the backend portion of their scoring group than Stanford was. That, however, shouldn't take away from the great race that the Cardinal men had.

5. Wake Forest Demon Deacons (+6 / 11)

We weren't exactly shocked to see the Wake Forest men win the ACC team title on Friday. We were, however, surprised to see them win ACC gold without Rocky Hansen emerging as a scorer.

Hansen (32nd) had a clear "off" day, leaving Luke Tewalt (7th) to headline the Demon Deacons' scoring. Of course, the bigger development was freshman JoJo Jourdon posting a monster low-stick result of 8th place almost out of nowhere! With Charlie Sprott, Aidan Ross and Joseph O'Brien going 14-15-16, respectively, the Wake Forest men had a nearly flawless lineup even without their lead ace.

It's admittedly not great to see Hansen struggle on Friday after he was absent for the Panorama Farms XC Invite. Even so, knowing what his peak talent brings to the table puts Wake Forest in the mix for a podium spot.

4. Iowa State Cyclones (0 / 4)

Seeing Iowa State earn a 3rd place finish at the BIG 12 XC Championships was probably the least surprising result of the weekend. We know that the Cyclones have a loaded team, but we also knew that Oklahoma State and BYU were simply better.

Both Robin Kwemoi Bera (4th) and Said Mechaal (10th) were as good as one could expect while Joash Ruto (13th) showed promise in his NCAA debut. Sanele Masondo (14th) likely could have been better while a four-man group of Cyclones went 21-22-23-24 to quickly close out the scoring.

Despite the introduction of Ruto, we don't see Iowa State being better than Arkansas, at least not yet. The Cyclones feel like they are big-time favorites to make the podium given their depth, but it would truthfully be surprising if they placed higher than 4th at the national meet.

3. Arkansas Razorbacks (0 / 3)

The Arkansas men took care of business at the SEC XC Championships as the three-man combination of Patrick Kiprop, Kirami Yego and Yaseen Abdalla went 1-3-5, respectively, in the overall results.

The Crimson Tide weren't too far behind through three runners, but Reuben Reina (13th) was ultimately the reason why the Razorbacks were able to pull away. Ben Shearer (16th) didn't have his best day, but it largely didn't matter given that Alabama was unable to match the scoring value that Reina gave Arkansas.

2. Oklahoma State Cowboys (-1 / 1)

1. BYU Cougars (+1 / 2)

Going into the BIG 12 XC Championships, there was certainly a chance for BYU to beat Oklahoma State. That chance, however, was very low...at least in our eyes.

But on Friday, the Cougars put together a fantastic performance, pulling away from the Cowboys by a strong 11-point margin to win the BIG 12 team title.

Casey Clinger (3rd) continued to be elite, James Corrigan (7th) and Joey Nokes (8th) delivered on the higher end of expectations, Creed Thompson (11th) provided good scoring value and Lucas Bons (13th) had a performance which put him in our discussions to be ranked, individually.

BYU was flat-out incredible on Friday, but it should also be noted that Oklahoma State had a handful of men who struggled.

Musau (1st), Kipngetich (6th) and Shitsama (9th) were great, but Laban Kipkemboi (19th) underwhelmed and so did Fouad Messaoudi (32nd). This team is by no means out of the national title conversation. However, the Cowboys do have more company in the battle for NCAA gold than we initially suspected.