Men's XC places #2 at Nationals!!! Highest finish ever

Check it out!



The USTFCCCA website is down at the moment (must be all the crazed Pilot fans trying to see the poll), but the full poll should be at this link: https://t.co/52NRiL503n

Crazy that two WCC teams are in the top three. Has this ever happened in any other sport? Women's soccer seems like the only other possibility.

That is pretty impressive. Not a bad jump after the solid weekend showing.

Do you guys know if they will be doing a "race watch" for the NCAA championships at Chiles like they did in 2014? I think I'll be in PDX that weekend.

The threshold for UPXC rankings has always seemed to be 4th in the past. Nice to finally break on through. The 1993 and 1996 Pilot teams were ranked very high at one point or another during the season. I don't think the USTFCCCA records go back that far.

1996 finished 10th and 1993 finished 12th

Both teams were pretty damn good.

Woodless 2.0 wrote:Do you guys know if they will be doing a "race watch" for the NCAA championships at Chiles like they did in 2014? I think I'll be in PDX that weekend.

I would imagine the athletic department will probably organize something. And if they don't have plans, I'm sure if we asked them they would do it.

This is awesome news! Does anyone know how this team stacks up to the third place finish squad from a few years ago?

SouthCarolinaPilot wrote:This is awesome news! Does anyone know how this team stacks up to the third place finish squad from a few years ago?

The 2014 team was ranked 6th at the end of September and 5th by this time in the season after the Wisconsin meet.

Here’s hoping the team does well Friday at Regionals. My brother ran against Jeff Thies in high school. He said Jeff was gutty and a cool guy. Go Pilots!

In the meantime... Pilots XC just signed a quite a recruit: Justin Hazell, who has the 3rd-fastest 3200 time in the country among his class!

http://portlandpilots.com/news/2017/11/9/pilots-sign-nationally-ranked-3200m-junior.aspx

Gotta love this quote from Coach Conner:

"Mile for mile, Justin might be the top prospect in the nation," said head coach Rob Conner. "His upside is through the roof. What we love about Justin is that in addition to his athletic ability he is a humble and modest young man who wants to contribute to our team goal of winning a national championship."

Something tells me Coach Conner won’t retire until he has climbed the mountain. I love that attitude. We are so lucky to have him. I am definitely excited to see where this team finishes at Regionals and Nationals. We seem to be trending ever upward.

Haven't seen anything yet, but I understand our Pilots Men X-C team is the West Region Champion after the meet in Seattle today.

They placed five runners in the Top-30, including Roudolff-Levisse finishing first and Thies finishing second.

Thies, Hauger, and Roudolff-Levisse win all All-Region honors.

USF won the women's title by edging out Stanford.  I don't know where the UP women finished, but Taryn Rawlings earned all-region honors with a 14th place finish.

http://www.ustfccca.org/2017/11/featured/list-of-automatic-qualifiers-to-ncaa-di-cross-country-championships

That site confirms UP men are the West Region champs, topping UW.  Emmanuel Roudolff-Levisse (1st), Jeff Thies (2nd) and Nick Hauger (4th) were the top finishers.

The team finish order was:
1 Portland 63
2 Washington 65
3 Stanford 85
4 Oregon 149
5 UCLA 164

Pilots finished 1, 2, 4, 27, 29, 36 and 45.  https://xc.tfrrs.org/results/xc/13415.html

The women finished 10th.

FYI, BYU finished 3rd in the Mountain Region, behind Colorado and New Mexico.

up7587 wrote:FYI, BYU finished 3rd in the Mountain Region, behind Colorado and New Mexico.

That was their women. Their men's team finished 2nd to Northern Arizona.

NoPoNeighbor wrote:

up7587 wrote:FYI, BYU finished 3rd in the Mountain Region, behind Colorado and New Mexico.

That was their women. Their men's team finished 2nd to Northern Arizona.

Thanks for the correction.

The Pilots just moved back into the Top-5 at #4 in the nation, the highest spot they've held this late in the season since 2009.

1. Northern Arizona
2. BYU
3. Syracuse
4. UP
5. Colorado

The NCAA Division I Cross-Country Championships are in Louisville this coming Saturday....women at 7:30 and men at 8:30 in the morning!!  You'll be able to watch live video streaming on the UP Athletics website, I think.

http://www.ustfccca.org/2017/11/featured/2017-ncaa-di-mens-cross-country-national-coaches-poll-week-7

Official Watch Party for XC Nationals
Saturday, Nov. 18
7:30 a.m.
Pilot House
Free breakfast and coffee!

2nd place! Best ever program finish!

Amazing...all the experts were touting this as a shoot-out between NAU and BYU.

Top Team Finishes:
1. Northern Arizona, 74
2. Portland, 127
3. BYU, 165
4. Stanford, 221
5. Arkansas, 259
6. Oregon, 274
7. Iowa State, 279
8. Colorado, 294
9. Colorado State, 318
10. Michigan, 328

.....an excellent showing for the WCC as the USF women also finished second to the winner, New Mexico.

I’m super proud of what the team did today. But, I maintain that I think RC wants it all and won’t quit until he does. There have been some sour grapes in the Track/XC community about us “tanking” the WCC meet in favor of the NCAAs.

SouthCarolinaPilot wrote:I’m super proud of what the team did today. But, I maintain that I think RC wants it all and won’t quit until he does. There have been some sour grapes in the Track/XC community about us “tanking” the WCC meet in favor of the NCAAs.

The couple of runners I spoke with this past week freely admitted that the WCC and West Region meets were not their focus, but the National Meet was the prize they were after...

I haven't heard any sour grapes about "tanking" from anyone in the UP running community!

I just spoke to someone who was at the meet, apparently it was quite gusty (at least 20 mph) and the meet was started early due to the forecast of thunderstorms and associated lightning and even more gusty winds.

SouthCarolinaPilot wrote:There have been some sour grapes in the Track/XC community about us “tanking” the WCC meet in favor of the NCAAs.

The "sour grapes" have all come from two guys at LetsRun... here they are interviewing Rob after the race today, and I think RC does a pretty good job of shutting down their BS:



As if finishing 2nd at the WCC meet to the #2 team in the country (while beating another nationally ranked team) is "tanking."

Not only has Portland XC had a long tradition of giving other guys an opportunity at the WCC meet, this year was a unique situation in which BYU was practically unbeatable in a dual-meet situation and UP had a few guys who were on a restricted training regiment (in order to help optimize their performance at regionals and nationals).

Those LetsRun guys are just being complete jerks. Just read their Nationals recap from today and see how many times they mention that BYU beat Portland at WCCs. It's ridiculous: http://www.letsrun.com/news/2017/11/favorites-justyn-knight-northern-arizona-deliver-win-2017-ncaa-cross-country-titles/

It's ok to change the thread title now, Stoney

I don't recall UP ever running all it's top men in a WCC meet. Until BYU came in, we won conference anyway.

If its sneaky or something, maybe BYU should be asking themselves why they don't do it.

They got WCC championship. Its what they focussed on. They should be happy.

Just got around to posting, I was too busy trolling letsrun. So stoked to see the Pilots dominate at nationals!

Geezaldinho wrote:It's ok to change the thread title now, Stoney

Done!

Pretty amazing that the men's XC team hasn't finished lower than 13th at nationals over the past 10 (!!!) years, with the exception of 2015 when they didn't qualify after graduating all their best runners.

And our average placement over that time is 8th. Think about that... this team has consistently been a top ten program nationally for a decade. That's pretty darn incredible.

2008 7th
2009 13th
2010 13th
2011 8th
2012 12th
2013 7th
2014 3rd
2016 13th
2017 2nd

http://portlandpilots.com/news/2017/11/18/mens-cross-country-pilots-hit-podium-with-runner-up-finish-at-ncaa-championships.aspx

The threads that seems to run through this team are their love for each other and for Coach Conner, and  their appreciation for Rob's giving ALL of them the opportunity to compete.

I think all of us who know Rob can totally understand why he's admired by his runners.

Apparently there's going to be a welcoming reception for the runners and coaches at the Chiles Center Plaza tomorrow (Sunday) at approximately 2:45 (hard to guess the probability of a connecting flight to PDX on a Sunday being on time). For those of us who cannot make it to the plaza at that time, I hope all the runners will be introduced at halftime of the MBB game vs OIT tomorrow evening.