NCAA Regional Women's 10k Analysis

I forgot one quick tid bit for the men's race. A quick look at who qualified for the finals

In the Finals~ (MEN)  East - Despite an injury after Payton, Sammy took the win by a big margin and took the fastest time of the day. I would say he is going to be the favorite by a long shot. Auburn is the only school to put 2 or more runners through and given their top 4 strength in XC this came as no surprise. West - Big names not to make it include Peacock Wisco, J. Schmidt UW, Smith UCSB, and a nice DNF by Halie. UO almost has 0 into the final but Puskedra grabs the #12 spot to at least give the Ducks a chance at getting some points here. Most of the other top runners (times list) make it through, as do 3 freshman! Now the women.

Table of STATS!

Item	East	West
# of finishers	43	43
1st place	34:29.86	34:23.65
Last place	38:00.09	38:55.74
DNF	5	5
DNS	0	0
Last NCAA Q	35:25.97	34:44.63
top 12 average	34:57.81	34:32.81
Margin of V	00:12.97	00:02.20

And now, here is a histogram showing the distribution of these races with bin sizes of 30 seconds.

Its number of finishers (y-axis) vs. finishing time bin (x-axis).

 

Interesting to Note ~ If you compare the back end of the races you see a very similar trend. The west's 40-42 matches up almost directly with the east's 41-43. Simply put an extra DNF on the west side makes the "back of pack" look the same. However as an overall trend more runners fell off the faster pace of the west then the east. IE 6 runners over 37 minutes in the West while only 4 in the East. However its really hard to ignore the fact that off time alone, the only the top 4 runners from the East would move one in the West race. The East's 5th place finisher was 34:49 would have been 14th place in the West. The West had 28 runners under 36 minutes compared to only 18 in the East. Though all that really matters are the runners who qualified for NCAA finals so...

In the Finals~ Cross Country powerhouses UW and Oregon qualify 1 and 2 runners respectively; however given that XC for woman is only 6k, this isn't the best proxy, the 5k will be better indicator of their distance skills. Iowa State walks away with 1-2 and 3 total qualifiers. And UCSB grabs a spot with a great run from Danielle Domenichelli.  On the East side, well I didn't really care. I don't know who any of the 10k woman are and XC champs Villanova were without rep in this race, plus given the slower times it will probably be a blowout for the West come Eugene.