Got lazy, so haven't updated this thread with the women's pre-season look and rankings as I said I was going to do in my prior post, so am doing some now. Also, there have been some miscellaneous individual and team rankings later I'll also note below.
(Of course, pre-season rankings in
all sports are HIGHLY suspect, so should be used for "entertainment purposes" and "taken with a grain of salt" and "worth the paper they're printed on" (and any other phrases anyone wants to add).)
Re the Women's team overall:
1) Runnerspace's preview paragraph about the Buffs. (From
http://ncaaxcchampionships.runnerspace.com/eprofile.php?event_id=509&do=news&news_id=433636 . Their general tone is that the Buffs are favorites to be fighting it out with defending champion New Mexico)-
"
here are two very strong teams coming into this year. New Mexico and Colorado seem to be prepared for a tremendous battle at the NCAA meet. Both teams run very well at big meets and under coach Franklin (New Mexico) and coach Wetmore (Colorado) strategically control their energy expenditure during the season in order to peak for the biggest meets, conference and NCAA championships. Unless there are big changes in their line-ups, health issues, or unforeseen transfers that other top teams could benefit from we will likely see a procession and build-up to a great match-up at the NCAA meet between these two top teams. As we have seen in the past though health has played a big part.
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The Buffaloes came into this season as a favorite with the bulk of their top runners returning. Senior Erin Clark was 11th last year (31st in 2014), junior Kaitlyn Benner was 16th, sophomore Dani Jones was 49th and junior Melanie Nun was 65th as Colorado returned four of their top five. Sophomore Val Constien was 136th and senior Carrie Verdon was 146th. Vernon had been dealing with injuries and had made her comeback last season and continued her development through the track season. If Colorado can make big improvements are keep a tight pack they can catch New Mexico which is possible with Mark Wetmore as their head coach. Annie Kelly redshirted last year after running 28th at Pre-Nationals, 19th and Pac-12s and 16th at regionals in 2014. Maddie Boreman is a freshman from Texas that was fourth at Nike XC Nationals. Makena Morley may be a sophomore this year or have to sit out after transfering from Montana where she was Big Sky champion, 8th in the Mountain region and 97th at the NCAA meet. Coach Wetmore has a large group of other transfers, redshirt freshmenn and true freshmen that could develop into contributors this season.
...
"
2) Flotrack.com has the Buffs ranked #1 in their estimates. The full article describing them can be found at
http://www.flotrack.org/article/45642-saucony-flo50-xc-countdown-1-colorado-women . (Interestingly, they only had New Mexico ranked at #5, which seems low to my (admittedly VERY uneducated) eye.)
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Re some other miscellaneous rankings-
Flotrack also, published
pre-season Top 25 individual rankings for NCAA Division 1 men's (
http://www.flotrack.org/ranking/135...for-history-begins-this-fall/2016-08-29/div-i ) and women's (
http://www.flotrack.org/ranking/135...y-favorite-heading-into-2016/2016-08-29/div-i ) rankings. In those rankings, Buffs Ben Saarel is ranked #7 and John Dressel #19 for the men, and Erin Clark #10 and Kaitlyn Benner #14 for the women.
They also, for the men, did a
Top 17 list of top potential red-shirt freshmen who could help this year looking to be mainly based on their track times (
http://www.flotrack.org/ranking/1415-2016-redshirt-freshmen-xc-rankings ), and Buff Joe Klecker is #1 on that list.
There has only been
one official Coaches' (USTFCCCA) Poll issued so far, and it looks to be a
pre-season (8/30) one. In that, the Buff men are ranked #5 (
http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/cross-country-men/d1 , behind, in order, defending champ Syracuse, Oregon, Northern Arizona and Stanford) and women #2 (
http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/cross-country-women/d1 , behind only New Mexico).
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Finally, A little scheduling trivia (in case anyone else has (like me) no life and has wondered). I was curious why the Buffs (and most if not all other programs), participated in their 1st races around September 2nd, but then aren't formally racing again until early October. I now have read somewhere the reason for those early races is that NCAA (???) rules require a team race a formal race within (I believe it was) ~28 days after they start their formal training, so need to race in early September to be compliant. (The Buffs at least raced most of their top runners in Fort Collins in the races on September 2nd, albeit in what was probably just a hard team training pace for them. Many other of the top teams didn't race
any of their top runners in their races around the country.)