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TSR's 2024 Preseason D1 XC Top 25 Team Rankings (Men): #3 Arkansas Razorbacks
- Gavin Struve
- Aug 31, 2024
- 9 min read
Written by Gavin Struve, edits & additional commentary via Garrett Zatlin
NOTE: Earlier this summer, The Stride Report reached out to nearly every team that was considered for a possible ranking this summer. While we did receive numerous responses and great clarity, we did not get a 100% response rate. On certain occasions, we are referencing TFFRS in order to talk about returners and athletes who are out of eligibility.
Entering this fall, Arkansas has finished on the podium in three of the past four cross country seasons. And as this ranking suggests, we don't expect that to change at the 2024 NCAA XC Championships.
Based on our preseason individual rankings (including "Just Missed" and "Honorable Mention" names), Arkansas has five top-50 runners nationally, five of the SEC's top-10 individuals and six of the conference's top-12.
Don't worry, you read that right.
We anticipate Arkansas fielding roughly half of SEC's first and second-team all-conference finishers. And yes, we think that's the case even as the SEC has added another top-25 team in Texas.
We'd call it an embarrassment of riches, but Coach Chris Buckham seems to have been very intentional in his decision to load up for an all-out run in 2024.
The Razorbacks have an exceptionally deep, experienced and veteran-laden team that feels like a heavy favorite for another top-four finish. In fact, there's a chance that Arkansas could finish this fall as a top-half podium team; although they'd need seemingly everything to go right in order to win their 12th NCAA title (and first since 2000).
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The men of Fayetteville, Arkansas admittedly didn't have the most headline-grabbing regular season last fall. As such, our perception of our then-TSR #14 preseason team didn't really transform until about a month before the 2023 NCAA XC Championships.
The Razorbacks raced a large portion of their varsity lineup (essentially everyone, but their two low-sticks) at the Cowboy Preview in early September, toppling Tulsa as well as Oklahoma State's "B" team before taking to their own meet, the Chile Pepper XC Festival.
There, Arkansas fielded all but their top runner, taking five of the top-six spots and easily winning the team race over Division Two power, Western Colorado.
Arkansas' season truly began, however, on the national meet course at Pre-Nationals. No, the meet wasn't as competitive as the Virginia Invitational was in the same setting three weeks earlier, but this mid-October event gave us a strong enough sense of the Razorbacks' viability to boost them into the top-10 of our team rankings at the time.
Ben Shearer produced a head-turning result, shockingly winning the meet over Tennessee star Yaseen Abdalla while teammates Kirami Yego (3rd), Patrick Kiprop (5th) and Jacob McLeod (6th) offered more firepower in support scoring roles.
While a gap formed back to trusty veteran Myles Richter -- who closed out the scoring in 20th place -- the 'Hogs had done more than enough to win their third meet in as many tries, this time over strong squads like Tennessee, Virginia and Montana State.
The SEC XC Championships marked another step up in competition as the season progressed. After falling short of a three-peat in 2022 (dropping to 3rd place by way of a tie-breaker), Arkansas got back on track to win its third conference title in four seasons.
In just his second race of the season, Kiprop earned a runner-up result. Shearer and Yego complemented his front-end scoring potency by placing 5th and 6th, respectively. This time, the Razorbacks' backend was even closer to the rest of their top-five as Elias Schreml (12th) and Reuben Reina (13th) stepped up to close out the scoring within the top-15 places.
Oh, and Arkansas placed three other men within the top-25 of their conference meet for good measure.
Arkansas finished runner-up at the South Central Regional XC Championships against rival Texas, but it was clear that their focus lay beyond that meet.
At the cross country national meet, the 'Hogs enjoyed optimal races from all of their eventual scorers. First and foremost, Kiprop delivered his most impressive performance on the national stage to date. He placed 7th overall and emerged as the first SEC runner to cross the line in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Yego was arguably even more impressive relative to expectations, placing 13th to give Arkansas a lethal 1-2 punch. Those two Kenyans were the Razorbacks' "only" All-Americans, but Ben Shearer still provided excellent middle lineup juice by finishing in 42nd.
Arkansas' backend support wasn't quite as elite at the national meet, perhaps because two of their runners recorded "DNF" efforts. But Richter and McLeod placing 87th and 100th, respectively was more than enough to get their team back on the podium after a one-year absence (placing 4th as they had done at the national meets in both the winter and the fall of 2021).
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Given that Arkansas appears to be returning all but two of their men from their 2023 national meet lineup, you probably have an idea as to why we think this team should improve from an already-lofty perch.
Losing Jacob McLeod and Myles Richter isn't necessarily ideal after they were stable scoring factors for multiple years. Even so, the Razorbacks have reinforcements coming in who are frankly even more exciting.
Let's start with their newest signee, an intra-conference addition who we already mentioned in this article. Among the fallout of Coach Sean Carlson leaving Knoxville, Tennessee to take over Colorado University's distance program was Tennessee's focal star, Yaseen Abdalla, entering the transfer portal prior to the madness unfolding.
He ultimately landed with the team that his Volunteers had gone back and forth with at the previous few SEC XC Championships.
It's hard to overstate the luxury of adding a proven NCAA star like Abdalla as a fortifying middle lineup piece. He effectively slots into the spot that was expected to be filled by freshman sensation Peter Maru before Maru was handed a three-year ban for alleged doping.
Now on his third SEC program after starting off at the University of Texas (which was then a BIG 12 team), Abdalla is a fifth-year senior and a two-time cross country All-American. He didn't earn either of those honors during the 2023-24 academic year (and he truthfully struggled at the 2023 NCAA XC Championships), but he made all three national meets as an individual over the past year and finished 4th at the 2023 SEC XC Championships.
It should also be mentioned that Abdalla competed in the marathon at the Paris Olympics earlier this month and ran a surprisingly strong time of 2:11:41 to set a national record for Sudan.
His 5k (13:33) and 10k (28:33) PRs fall short of truly elite, but Abdalla is quietly one of the more versatile distance stars in the NCAA, holding marks of 3:57 (mile) and 7:42 (3k) along with that aforementioned marathon mark. There's a reason why he's situated at TSR #28 in our preseason individual rankings.
If you wanted to call Abdalla, Kiprop and Yego a "Big Three", we wouldn't argue with you.
But what if we told you that the former 'Vol may not even end up being the Razorbacks' best transfer addition this year?
Timothy Chesondin was a 2023 cross country All-American for the University of Akron last fall and (by placing 36th) he would have been Arkansas' third scorer in that setting! That's by far the most impressive result on his collegiate resume and we'd like to see him further validate it after a shrug-inducing outdoor track campaign.
That being said, an environment in which he's able to train and race alongside men who are just as talented as him should help Chesondin replicate that kind of effort on the national stage.
It should also help that his running mate and countryman, Brian Masai, is also leaving Akron for Arkansas. Masai is a fascinating yin to Chesondin's yang, holding a far faster 5000-meter personal best (13:34), but with no national meet experience on the grass.
If that latter bit makes you skeptical of Masai's cross country pedigree, it should make you feel better to know that he was essentially just as good as his Zips teammate up until the Great Lakes regional meet. And with a mark like that aforementioned 5k effort, the talent is clearly there to be an All-American this fall.
Arkansas brought in another handful of additions earlier this summer. The last one who we'll touch on is Camren Fischer, however, as the rest are more middle distance focused. Fischer is somewhere between a curiosity and a known commodity at this point in his NCAA career.
This 3:58 miler has raced just once on the grass since 2019, but he was borderline excellent that season as he placed 5th at the Ivy League XC Championships and won the Mid-Atlantic Regional XC Championships. We're making an educated guess that he's fit and ready to race this fall considering that he has preserved his eligibility and is returning home to join a national cross country power.
Arkansas may not need Fischer as a scorer or even a top-seven runner this season in order to reach all of their goals. Even so, it hardly hurts to have another infusion of experience and talent.
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We don't feel like we need to belabor the value that Patrick Kiprop and Kirami Yego provide as this team's focal stars. After all, both men are featured in the top-10 of our preseason individual rankings.
Kiprop has finished as an All-American at five of the past six national meets that he has contested between all three seasons. Yego, meanwhile, is a back-to-back cross country All-American who has improved at each of the last three cross country national meets. We expect that trend to continue this fall even as his rise has lent him less room for upward mobility.
Simply put, we know what we'll get from these two seniors at this point in their collegiate lifespan -- elite-caliber firepower.
We then come to Ben Shearer who emerged as an invaluable breakout third star on this team last year. He was probably an All-American favorite leading up to his final race of last fall, but he ultimately finished just two spots away from that coveted top-40 status.
Shearer's new 13:32 (5k) PR is plenty competitive with his more heralded teammates and, along with a slew of other PRs from earlier this year, it suggests that he's in line to improve in the months ahead.
We've already discussed seven men, but the rest of the roster is so robust that we feel the need to outline some other contenders for the backend lineup spots.
Elias Schreml has found himself in that top-seven position early in his NCAA career, notching back-to-back top-12 finishes at the SEC XC Championships in 2022 and 2023. That being said, he's more of a middle distance talent and didn't finish a 10k race last fall given that he was absent from the regional meet and was a "DNF" at the national meet.
If nothing else, Schreml gives the 'Hogs another viable veteran option as a "break glass in case of emergency" scorer.
And what about Reuben Reina? After a couple of developmental years, he emerged as a top-15 finisher and scorer at the 2023 SEC XC Championships. The in-state talent and legacy Razorback ran several personal bests on the oval this year, breaking the 4:00 (mile), 8:00 (3k) and 14:00 (5k) barriers. He also raced at the national meet last fall, albeit recording a "DNF".
Then there's Tommy Romanow, someone who made several varsity appearances last fall before the national meet and posted respectable finishes of 22nd at the SEC XC Championships and 20th at the South Central Regional XC Championships. A new 5000-meter PR of 13:51 hardly hurts his case to rejoin the top-seven.
Lastly, we'll touch on Lexington Hilton, a former Arkansas State transfer who appears to still have eligibility as a sixth-year senior after sitting out the fall of 2022.
Hilton has raced sporadically over the past year or so, but a 14th-place finish at 2023 South Central Regional XC Championships was a good omen for this sub-4:00 miler, as was a 13:54 (5k) PR last December shortly before he wrapped up his indoor track season.
I'd posit that the odds are more likely than not that one of Hilton, Romanow, Reina or Schreml will compete at the 2024 NCAA XC Championships, probably alongside this team's returning top-three and its three national-caliber transfers.
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Arkansas has continued to de-emphasize high school recruiting in recent years which lends credence to the notion that the 'Hogs intend to go all in on 2024. There were no true freshmen on the Razorbacks' roster last fall and their lone distance addition in the 2024 recruiting class is a middle distance specialist.
Could this team field a full scoring lineup of All-Americans in a few months? It's certainly conceivable and it may take such an effort in order for the Razorbacks to end the season with this ranking and improve on the placement of 4th that they've earned at three of the past four cross country national meets.
With virtually every piece of note back from a 2023 podium squad, paired with arguably the best transfer class in the country coming in, it's hard not to see the 'Hogs improving in 2024. They're the clear favorite in one of the nation's best distance running conferences and have seemingly no weaknesses between their firepower, depth, lineup structure and experience.
It'll be hard to improve much from where they were last year and even harder to crack the top-two at the national meet for the first time since 2005. But so long as the Razorbacks can get their new pieces to jell quickly, a national title or a runner-up finish would be less surprising than another podium placement seemed at the outset of last season.
