New coach Bernard Lagat goes home DEVASTATED as Arizona men DNF and women rack up 343 points at PAC12s

Once again people think you are a great runner you will succeed as a coach.....sorry it doesn't work like that.

So almost as good as... Paul Ereng. Lagat's job description at UA is to keep that Kenyan pipeline open and "develop" those Kenyan runners he recruits. Anything else is just gravy.

Would you be a good distance coach? Please point out what Lagat is doing wrong and what you would do instead. If Mike Smith was there, and with the same runners, would Arizona have won the conference?

This site is so critical of everyone it's comical.

There are so many variables that go into how strong a team is, many are under the control of a coach but certainly not all.

A decent portion of it is recruiting, which has its own set of variables some under the control of the coach and some not (for reference, $$ available for distance scholarships or overall school reputation...).

It's simple to sit back and criticize but it's not as simple as many of you think.

(btw, they did run this race at altitude which probably didn't help the sea level schools much)

cava hoo wrote:

Lagat is a more motivated but equally as clueless in coaching above average talent and creating a culture of success. Obviously a great athlete. That’s it.

What is a culture of success? Guys that choose to run competitively in college are self-motivated, the coaches need to structure the workouts and its not that difficult.

No judgement yet. Let’s wait for the B sample to come back first.

misunderstood infallibility wrote:

No judgement yet. Let’s wait for the B sample to come back first.

That's hilarious. By chance, did you read the third post on the thread?

aguy wrote:

SDSU Aztec wrote:

Can you name one? I think it's 100% recruiting and Arizona wasn't good last year either.

It's all about the recruiting. A D1 school having anyone in their top 5 who runs slower than 26:00 just sucks at recruiting.

There are more D1 schools than there are runners who can run sub 26:00.

There are 358 D1 schools. Lots of mid-major and lower schools. For a Power 5 Conference though......

Alan

Paul Ereng just coached an NCAA champ to Olympic Gold at 800, so no don’t mention them in the same sentence yet. We will see if Lagat can coach and recruit, but his low-mileage system (I agree with others) is not going to maximize a lot of his athletes.

THOUGHTSLEADER wrote:

Paul Ereng just coached an NCAA champ to Olympic Gold at 800, so no don’t mention them in the same sentence yet. We will see if Lagat can coach and recruit, but his low-mileage system (I agree with others) is not going to maximize a lot of his athletes.

Which means exactly what in terms of how UTEP's teams have fared in XC, the thrust of the context here? Non-Kenyan recruits aren't exactly lining up at Ereng's door yet, either. Cruz Culpepper wants to be a miler and his old man is in-house and that wasn't enough to bring him under Ereng's tutelage.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

[quote]misunderstood infallibility wrote:

No judgement yet. Let’s wait for the B sample to come back first.

That's hilarious. By chance, did you read the third post on the thread?[/quote

I didn’t. Have your tender sensibilities been damaged? You’re not crying, are you?

misunderstood infallibility wrote:

SDSU Aztec wrote:

[quote]misunderstood infallibility wrote:

No judgement yet. Let’s wait for the B sample to come back first.

That's hilarious. By chance, did you read the third post on the thread?[/quote

I didn’t. Have your tender sensibilities been damaged? You’re not crying, are you?

Yet another weird response on LR. I was saying, indirectly, that it was stupid joke the first time and even stupider the second.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

misunderstood infallibility wrote:

That's hilarious. By chance, did you read the third post on the thread?[/quote

I didn’t. Have your tender sensibilities been damaged? You’re not crying, are you?

Yet another weird response on LR. I was saying, indirectly, that it was stupid joke the first time and even stupider the second.

Well I think both jokes were funny....

oh wait a moment it's USTAF on the phone..."yes...I see...certainly...if you put it that way sir".

Yes, sorry for the misunderstanding, appears my mind was tampered with the first time.

It's come back clean now. The jokes were stupid all along. No disputing that.

15_50 wrote:

This site is so critical of everyone it's comical.

There are so many variables that go into how strong a team is, many are under the control of a coach but certainly not all.

A decent portion of it is recruiting, which has its own set of variables some under the control of the coach and some not (for reference, $$ available for distance scholarships or overall school reputation...).

It's simple to sit back and criticize but it's not as simple as many of you think.

(btw, they did run this race at altitude which probably didn't help the sea level schools much)

hard not to criticize when you are battling USC for 2nd last in the women's 6k--for a D1 program not to much to ask for a couple women to run under 23 minutes for a relatively fast XC 6k.....

It's not that hard to recruit if the school is bringing in scholarship-based athletes. D1 schools have trimmed the scholarship $ for men and put it into the women thanks to Title IX. Most of these schools spend a heck of a lot more on men's football scholarships than they do for men's XC and track.

Let's not forget reputation. U of A XC/T&F has been in the news for horrendous reasons. It's a failed program with questionable coaching. If I'm a high school athlete, I just don't want the noise. And if I'm good, I can choose many other places to run.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

misunderstood infallibility wrote:

That's hilarious. By chance, did you read the third post on the thread?[/quote

I didn’t. Have your tender sensibilities been damaged? You’re not crying, are you?

Yet another weird response on LR. I was saying, indirectly, that it was stupid joke the first time and even stupider the second.

I knew it, you really are crying.

sbeefyk2 wrote:

Relatively speaking UCLA men were worse. UA is expected to be the basement dweller. UCLA’s performance was embarrassing and honestly any athlete considering going there to run should not go. If you want to go for the degree and run on the XC and track team as a hobby, that’s fine. It has to be the worst conference meet performance in school history, by a wide margin.

Agreed. Not sure why any decent distance recruit would ever go to UA or ASU. I mean who wants to run at 5am just so it can be a "cool" 80 degrees. Now UCLA OTH has it's pick of the top CA distance recruits and routinely pulls in a class that has 4.0x-4.1x and 9.0x-9.1x guys in it. Yet they never do anything. Great degree, but good/great HS runners go there to die.

I don't know how much power he had to assemble his rosters but let's say for the sake of argument that he started by underworking his athletes and having them run 6 days a week, like himself. Well, he did that off of altitude and enormous talent. It may be that in the next year, they improve quite a bit from the consistency that being healthy brings. Give him time. It's not as if Heins at Louisville or Vin at VA had good results at all in the men's ACC xc meet either. Coaches often take years at a new program to produce good results.

zxvczcxv wrote:

I don't know how much power he had to assemble his rosters but let's say for the sake of argument that he started by underworking his athletes and having them run 6 days a week, like himself. Well, he did that off of altitude and enormous talent. It may be that in the next year, they improve quite a bit from the consistency that being healthy brings. Give him time. It's not as if Heins at Louisville or Vin at VA had good results at all in the men's ACC xc meet either. Coaches often take years at a new program to produce good results.

Where is it written in stone that he's going to train them the same way he did himself? I doubt if Salazar had all his runners put in 160mpw like he did. It's likely Lagat grasps that as an athlete he doesn't have much in common with a 26:00 guy. If he doesn't giggle when he watches them run, he's doing a great job.