ISU Drops to 10th in 9/20 Regional Ranking

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XTreeXC said:
I don't get this. How did ISU beat Butler last Friday and drop from 6th to 10th in this week's ranking, yet Butler remains at 4th? Did Butler not run its best 7 guys?

http://www.ustfccca.org/featured/d-i-regional-cross-country-rankings-week-2-september-20
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Probably not - would make sense...

I wouldn't be to surprised by this... It would seem that someone else saw the results at the meet this past Friday troubling, wasn't only me. Maybe I am not so disconnected after all.

I agreed with the comments about us being flat out abused by IU last year at this meet and us coming back and doing the same thing to them last year in a meet that matter. But come on, that was a much older more experienced team - on paper that team was better than this years team. Thus the reason I found the results troubling, usually a young team like we have gets up to run a meet like this against the big schools early on in the season... And if they were to sick to preform up to expectations then don't run - take the week off and we will see you next meet.... That's all I got.
 
I looked at Butler's roster and it appears to me they ran their best guys except for the Roeder boys, and I don't know how good they are, just that one is better than the other.

Doesn't make sense, Butler should have fallen more than ISU. Anyway, just gotta prove it again that ISU is better than this. I guess some of the guys were sick Morgan at intercollegiates.
 
Sycamore Proud said:
Could the L to PU have hurt the cause?
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VERY much so... Especially since PU has been down the last several years, never had a real strong XC program - most would admit that.

I dono maybe Tony has a little more insight? What do you think Tony? Am I really reading to far into this? Love those guys, but man that was not much of a showing...
 

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XTreeXC said:
I'm sure the loss to Purdue factors into ISU's fall, but I still don't understand how Butler emerged unscathed in the rankings after losing to both ISU and Purdue.
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Haven't you heard?? They're BUTTLER!! The Duke of the Midwest...

Oops, wrong sport...

Take 2

They're BUTTLER!! The Oregon of the Midwest...
 
XTreeXC said:
I'm sure the loss to Purdue factors into ISU's fall, but I still don't understand how Butler emerged unscathed in the rankings after losing to both ISU and Purdue.
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If you sit out 3 of your varsity runners, you are exempt from losing a meet. Butler sat out 6 of their top 9, thus they did not go down.
 
Although I have been quite interested in the CC threads here, I sure do NOT understand why CC teams will "shelve" competitors, be exempt from losing a meet even though they attend a meet, and what appears to be several unusual rules pertaining to competition. It would seem if you compete, you compete to WIN. Maybe Morgan or XTreeXC can "enlighten" us on all the nuances of CC??
 
I would love to sound really educated on this topic, but I am far from educated on this particular topic. However I will give you a few things to consider.

1. Length of season - you have to figure that most of these kids have been training very hard over the summer putting in 100 plus mile weeks and their body is really not prepared to race in a meet, not that they wouldn't preform well. However Cross Country and track (also swimming) different than all other sports in the sense that you can manage your training load and actually set runners up to "peak" at the right time (Pre Nationals, Nationals and so on) it's much more difficult to do that if you are running in every meet during the season.

2. Injuries - I think they try and keep people out of race situations to manage injures a little better. Some might suggest that the majority of your injuries crop up during race situations, thus hold them out of the races and they have less of a chance to get hurt - also the reason they may be holding runners out in the first place is they are battling back from some minor injuries from all that training they did in the summer.

3. Unknown - It's become kind of a cat and mouse game in college cross country - we can lose meets early in the season, but it's ok because we didn't run our big dogs. Well everyone knows that these schools have big dogs and if the big dogs come to play and are ready to go then well they are probably going to be tough to beat. The rankings don't represent "how" you preform unless you are running your "A" team and even then you might have trouble moving up in the rankings if teams ahead of you didn't run their "A" team. So really their is no incentive to run your "A" teams early on in the season, because if they run and preform bad like we did this past Friday we move down in the rankings... So what if we hold out some of our guys (Disher, Al, Padget) for example and we still finish 3rd well they recognize that and go well if (Al, Padget, Disher) run then they would have (on paper) beat Purdue so no reason to drop them in the rankings... Make sense?

They don't rank you on what you have done - they rank based on what they think you will do at the Regional meet and they can't really know for sure if you don't run your "A" team until the Regional meet. Indiana State usually falls to around 7th to 10th this time a year and gradually moves up.

REASON BEING:

Other teams ahead of us have not ran their full team and who knows may never even run their full (best) team because of injuries or what have you. Coach doesn't believe in the system and totally disagrees with the theory that many other coaches use - thus he races his team and get's them race ready. In turn I think it hurts our Regional ranking.

That's my theory - others that actually competed in Cross Country (unlike me, I just trained with XC runners to get ready for Track) might have a totally different theory. My guess is they will give a similar representation of what I just gave...
 
Morg, I am truly "enlightened". Most of it makes sense, but of course, when "officials" start "interpreting" anything late in the season, it would seem to open up a can of worms. (kind of a theme here with the cat and mouse and dog references in your thread). It would seem there were some hard feelings when the Tree runners were NOT qualifying for the Nationals, or maybe I am just reading too much into it.

I've told you, Morg that one of my best friends is a high school coach in Indy (and was a Notre Dame track captain in the 70's) and this will keep the conversation full of track and CC the next time we go out for a few brewskis. Thanks for taking the time to fill us in on all of that. It still sounds AWFULLY complicated, however.
 
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Bally #44 said:
I've told you, Morg that one of my best friends is a high school coach in Indy (and was a Notre Dame track captain in the 70's) and this will keep the conversation full of track and CC the next time we go out for a few brewskis. Thanks for taking the time to fill us in on all of that. It still sounds AWFULLY complicated, however.
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Well I think anytime you have a system that rewards losing it's awfully complicated... I mean basically that's what cross country has turned into - track is not as bad, their are "pay for performance" standards if you will in place to assure that you run most of the track season. What I mean is, if you meet the NCAA standard qualifying time you can qualify for the National meet - but track is more of an individual sport than CC. Thus when you step on the track you are competing as an individual for your school, unless you are on a relay or something.

I am sure Jeff Martin or Geoff Wayton who frequent this forum will have a little better insight than I do... Glad I could help though!
 
So do we have a good shot at the NCAA's in November or are we going to end up on the fence as we apparently did last year?
 
1:
The rankings are very subjective.: the Coach at Ohio State, Rob Gary, receives a document explaining the ramifications of results from the weekend from Don Kopriva, the Men's Poll Coordinator. Coach Gary then compiles the Men's rankings. Apparently, after this weekend, he felt that Butler was still worthy of a 4th place ranking. That's it, one guys subjective opinion, albeit armed with objective ammo, form a subjective source. Hahaha
The former Xavier Coach used to take care of the poll- he had a love affair with Oakland, Dayton, and surprisingly, Xavier.
2:
The at-large point process BEGINS THIS WEEKEND. Intercollegiates will not factor in good or bad. Basically, you hope to beat teams that will eventually AUTOMATICALLY qualify for Nationals. This is why Pre-Nats has grown so large. Teams from strong regions want to find a meet where they can beat eventual auto-qualifiers not only from their region, but from weaker regions as well. Not many meets provide that chance, examples are Pre-Nats, Notre Dame, and Roy Griak.
It’s always nice to qualify missionary style- Automatically, but it sure helps to have points on your side. Traditionally, Pre-Nats and Notre Dame have not helped the cause. And rarely would a MVC team auto, so the conf. meet doesnt help. The emphasis on scoring points has changed the way in which coaches write their training- you have to almost “peak” twice.

Is that clear?
 
I get it, but I sure wouldn't want to administer it. As I said yesterday, when interpretation gets involved, it certainly complicates the process but I can see how the strategies overlap with the timing of the training of the runners for optimum performance. I can't wait to discuss this with my buddy that coaches. I am sure he will have many opinions about all of it as well.
 
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