With the team's 1st Big 12 Championships in over a decade only a couple days away, thought I'd set this thread up now so we can provide links, previews and results for the upcoming post-regular season for the generally young men's and women's cross country teams.
As noted in the title, the post-season schedule is:
Big 12 Championships - Friday, November 1st (Hosted by Baylor in Waco, Texas),
NCAA (Mountain) regional - Friday, November 15th (In Reno, Nevada), and
NCAA Championships - Saturday, November 23rd (In Madison, Wisconsin)
With new Coach Carlson having to re-load the rosters for both the men and women, this is one of in not THE 1st rebuilding years I can ever remember the XC teams having:
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In addition to teams qualifying for the Championships at regionals, "The first four regional finishers not from an automatic qualifying or at-large team also secure an auto-bid to the championships.: (This is copied from https://www.ncaa.com/news/cross-cou...viduals will be,auto-bid to the championships.)
As noted in the title, the post-season schedule is:
Big 12 Championships - Friday, November 1st (Hosted by Baylor in Waco, Texas),
NCAA (Mountain) regional - Friday, November 15th (In Reno, Nevada), and
NCAA Championships - Saturday, November 23rd (In Madison, Wisconsin)
With new Coach Carlson having to re-load the rosters for both the men and women, this is one of in not THE 1st rebuilding years I can ever remember the XC teams having:
- The men did get solid results in their 1st major race (Nuttycombe Invite in Madison) so that, at least per one random (Kolas***) point calculator I found ( https://kolascalc.com/), they MIGHT qualify for the NCAA Championships IF they perform as they're rated at the Conference and NCAA Regional Championships. However, I'd assume they'd be one of the last teams in, so it could go either way.
- With only one serious team race, and that at a somewhat secondary level, the women's team would need GREAT races at the Conference and Regional races to even get in the conversation for being one of the 31 teams who qualify for the NCAA Championships. (It would be a MAJOR upset for them to qualify, but then I also could see where if some of their runners who have had injury issues some how got back to prime condition soon, they could surprise at least some teams.)
- As described below, even if the team(s) doesn't/ don't qualify, there are also opportunities for individuals to qualify for the Championships.
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- 9 regional races will determine which 31 teams for each gender get selected for the Championships.
- The top 2 finishing teams in each of the regions are the 18 auto-qualifiers.
- The remaining 13 teams are "At-large" selections. Unlike the team sport selection process most of us are familiar with (with their selection committees), the at-large teams in cross country are selected almost totally on a mathematical calculation based on how many wins the next highest regional finishers have accumulated over the 18 auto-qualifiers, and any other teams that have earned at-large berths earlier in the process (with a few exceptions). (The wins over other all ready selected teams are called "Kolas points".)
- The at-large calculation has quite a few rules. For those interested, here's what looks to me like a couple decent descriptions of the process and rules - https://www.thestridereport.com/understanding-kolas . (The link to the left was the most succinct and isolated explanation I could find. The full explanation can also be found starting on page #14 at https://ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/ch...crosscountry/2023-24D1XCC_PreChampsManual.pdf .)
In addition to teams qualifying for the Championships at regionals, "The first four regional finishers not from an automatic qualifying or at-large team also secure an auto-bid to the championships.: (This is copied from https://www.ncaa.com/news/cross-cou...viduals will be,auto-bid to the championships.)