Our official Flo50 individual rankings dropped yesterday, and it should come as no surprise that the #1 Colorado men have five representatives in the top 25. On paper, that seems about par for the course for the two-time defending NCAA champions. 

 

Four of the Buffaloes on our list already have a top-25 NCAA XC finish on their resumes, while the other, senior Pierce Murphy, was 35th last fall and is coming off a 5th place finish in the NCAA 10K in June. Given his improvement on the track, and since 13 of the men who finished ahead of him in Terre Haute have graduated, it’s not unreasonable to think Murphy could join his Buffalo teammates in the top-25 this fall.

 

Basically, it’s totally plausible that all of Mark Wetmore’s scorers at NCAAs this November could find themselves amongst the top-25 in Louisville. However, rankings don’t always reveal the full story.  

 

The issue with ranking all five Buffaloes in the top-25 is that entire teams have rarely had that low of sticks throughout NCAA history. The last time that an NCAA champion put its entire top five within the first 25 finishers at NCAAs was 2005, when the Wisconsin Badgers completely torched the field with five in the top 17. Colorado had a damn near perfect day in Terre Haute last year, but even they could manage “just” five in the top 35. CU will have to be even closer to perfection in 2015 to match their pre-season individual rankings. 

 

Since the NCAA switched to the 10K distance for men’s championship cross country back in 1965, only eight teams have put all five of their scorers in the top-25 at nationals. It’s only happened twice since 2000, with the 2003 Stanford Cardinal, aka The Machine, being the only other team besides the ’05 Badgers to accomplish the feat in the 21st century. That Ryan Hall-led Stanford team put five in the top-12 en route to a 24-point demolition at NCAAs, but that sort of dominance is unheard of these days. Colorado put three in the top ten last fall, the first time even that many from one team have finished that low since 2010. 

 

In a era rife with parity, the Colorado Buffaloes are an outlier. Five returning All-Americans in 2015 give this team a shot to join NCAA XC immortality in November, but we almost hesitated to put all five Buffs on our list due to the long odds of accomplishing the feat. I’ll ask you the same question I asked the office. Who could we leave out?:

#4 Ben Saarel (8th NCAA XC ’13, 7th ’14)

#9 Ammar Moussa (5th NCAA XC ’14; PAC-12 10K Champion)

#14 Morgan Pearson (17th NCAA XC ’13; 13:36 5K in April)

#16 Pierce Murphy (35th NCAA XC ’14; 5th NCAA 10K ’15)

#25 Connor Winter (24th NCAA XC ’14; PAC-12 Steeple Champion)

 

Obviously, based on the order, senior Connor Winter was nearly left off the preseason Flo50. While it may seem like we’re just down on Winter’s stock heading into 2015, in reality he was nearly left off the list simply because he projects to be Colorado’s #5 man, and as you know, #5 guys are hard-pressed to finish top-25 these days. But given his resume, and since this Buffalo team should be the best Colorado team ever, exceptions were made and conventional wisdom was thrown out the window. 

 

While there is no award for living up to FloTrack’s preseason rankings, or for putting five in the top 25, Colorado has the rare opportunity to go crazy-low at NCAAs in Louisville. All Wetmore’s crew will be thinking about is securing their third straight title, but make no mistake, we’ll be scoreboard watching to see if the Buffaloes live up to the preseason hype. Nothing is guaranteed, not even the NCAA title, but the five guys listed above have a very good shot to put a little icing on top of their three-peat cake based on their depth in 2015.