Few college teams are so good that a fifth place finish in the NCAA would be a down year, but for the men's cross country team, Monday's nationals meet marked the Badgers' first finish outside of the top-two since 2001.
Josh McDougal of Liberty won the individual title after breaking away from Oregon's Galen Rupp in the final 200 meters to win by one second, covering the 10,000 meter course in 29 minutes 22 seconds. They were over 20 seconds ahead of the third place finisher.
Led by Rupp, a member of the U.S. team at the World Track Championships last summer, Oregon captured the team title with 85 points, comfortably ahead of second place Iona, who scored 113. UW scored 239 for fifth.
Junior Matt Withrow took 17th overall and was named an All-American for the third consecutive year. He stayed in the lead pack for the first half of the race, hitting 15:09 for the 5k-halfway point.
The top-20 all negative split the race, and Withrow ran the second 5k in 15:00 for an overall time of 30:09.
In his second race of the year, junior Stu Eagon capped off the season running 30:36 for 40th overall.
Redshirt freshman Landon Peacock moved up to third for UW, running 30:56 which was good for 74th. Sophomore Andrew Lacy placed 80th for his 31 minutes flat effort.
The final Badger scorer was junior Christian Wagner who ran 31:03 for 89th. Sophomore Brandon Bethke was three seconds behind Wagner and finished 98th.
Eagon, Peacock, Lacy, Wagner and Bethke stayed together during the beginning of the race and were all within four seconds of each other at the 5k.
Redshirt freshman Jack Bolas was UW's seventh, and ran 31:42 for 176th out of the 250 competing.
It was the first NCAA Championship for the four underclassmen, and the team will lose none of the seven that competed. Since head coach Jerry Schumacher took over, his squad has never placed worse than sixth at the NCAAs.
Women's recap
With only two runners who had competed at nationals before, the women's team took 20th in the NCAA in a field of 31 teams Monday in Terra Haute, Ind.
Sally Kipyego of Texas Tech repeated as individual champion and dominated the race from start to finish, running 19:30 for 6,000 meters, a course record. Jenny Barringer of Colorado took second in 19:47.
Stanford scored 145 points for their third consecutive team championship. Runner-up Oregon was close behind with 177 points. Wisconsin scored 458 points to edge out conference rival Michigan by four points.
Sophomore Hanna Grinaker earned All-American honors for her second year after taking 25th overall in 20:51. She stayed with the pack that trailed the lead individuals for the first 2k.
Also cracking the top-100 was junior Gwen Jorgensen who ran 21:26 for 83rd.
Sophomore Alicia Pabich ran with senior Ann Detmer through the first 4k, and they went 21:55 and 22:00 for 152nd and 161st, respectively.
Senior Amanda Ganser was UW's final scorer, and placed 173rd overall in 22:08. Right behind Ganser and working with her throughout the race was freshman Leah Coyle who ran 22:09 for 175th.
Junior Sarah Hurley rounded out Wisconsin's squad, running 22:23 for 197th.
Redshirt freshman Cassie Hintz, who was on par with Grinaker all season, ended up not competing due to mononucleosis.
The pre-meet rankings proved accurate for Wisconsin, as the men hit their No. 5 ranking and the women did one better than their 21st.
- uwbadgers.com contributed to this report.
