Good luck to the teams. Typically, these regional races are more work than glory, as teams just want to qualify for the NCAA championships while not having to work TOO hard so as to lose edge for the Championships 8 days later.
My VERY non-expert take on the races-
With the top 2 teams in each gender qualifying for the championships,
the #1 ranked women SHOULD (although anything can happen in any given competition) not have to extend too much, as after #6 (and defending champion) New Mexico, the next ranked team in the region is BYU at #18. Therefore, I assume the Buffs may (???) try and just make it a good hard training run, ideally running in a tight pack, as well as possibly using their great depth to rest any of their top runners who might either be a little dinged up or just fatigued (the latter of which especially can sometimes be the case late in the season with the younger runners). It could also be a case where the top runners like Clark and Benner may not go into the red zone to sprint for the win, even though they definitely could be in contention if they so wished.
In
last year's regionals, New Mexico, which ended up winning the Nationals Championships in one of the most dominating performances ever, ran in a pack with their top 5 finishing close together at 9th-13th places, actually leading to a NARROW one point Buff win at regionals, who were lead by 2nd and 3rd place finishes for Benner and Clark.
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It will also be interesting to see how
the #2 ranked men's race plays out. Unlike the women, the men will possibly have to run harder, as both unanimous #1 ranked Northern Arizona and #3 BYU are in the same region, and therefore, as noted above for the women, only 2 of the 3 top teams in the country will earn auto-berths to Nationals. HOWEVER, there are also 13 at-large teams selected for Nationals, with those selections based on how many other teams that qualify (in their regional races) the teams have beaten. With CU, NAU and BYU being as highly ranked as they are, all 3 are PROBABLY in pretty good shape to qualify for Nationals based on points, although they might not want to totally relax and finish 4th or worst in this race.
(The next highest ranked team in the race is #15 UTEP. Flotrack wrote an article (
http://www.flotrack.org/article/47985-there-s-a-chance-the-oregon-men-don-t-make-ncaas) that included near the bottom a list of
8 things that, if ALL occurred, the Buff men wouldn't make the championships. To put it in context, however, one of the commenters calculates that, if Flotrack estimated %'s of each of the 8 things happening is accurate, the chance that scenario happens is 0.00096%. With one of the 8 things being the Buffs finishing only 4th at regionals, IF Flotrack is accurate, the Buffs can hopefully take care of business themselves on Friday by not finishing worse than 3rd.)
Another element to consider for the men is that this will be their 1st race at the National Championship 10K distance. (Earlier races have been 8K or a little less.) With their race being quite a bit longer than the women's 6K, it can be even more important for the national championships IF the team doesn't have to extend itself too much, and can use depth if possible. Again, with the top 3 men's teams racing, it will be interesting to see how much the coaches of the 3 teams handle the goals of not embarrassing themselves at regionals (they ARE competitors/ racers after all), insuring they qualify for the championships, while staying as fresh as possible FOR those championships.
In
last year's race, the Buff men, who were the strong favorites for the National Championship but finished in 2nd there in an upset behind Syracuse, won the regional race by 10 points.