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

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.

How could you possibly know that? Have you been part of his coaching program? Have you heard what he says to these athletes?

cava hoo wrote:

You would want to run at Arizons because Lagat was a good runner? How does being a great runner help his team get better? He isn’t running the race. If he is following anything close to what James Li did then they are screwed. I’m sure he will recruit better. Li didn’t recruit much. I just can’t see him developing 9:00 guys into 13:50 guys. They may go to AZ and enjoy their experience listening to Lagat talk about his brutal 50-60 mpw training and Diamond league wins but that won’t get them to be good in XC or 5-10k on track. I’m not sure the U of A athletic department cares. They’ve put up with that train wreck for many years.

You don't seem to like Lagat which is fine but some blue chip HS runners will be impressed by his accomplishments and want to run for him, especially if the kid likes his personality.

You don't know what Lagat is like as a coach. If a good recruit tells Lagat he wants to run 80 mpw, that's exactly what he will run at U.A. Lagat isn't going to say no and bring in another 10:00 guy instead.

Some of you guys place so much importance on coaching, but 100% of success is going to come from having talented runners.

yeah-the Pac-12 Championships for Track were there about 3 or 4 years ago...

100%??? So coaching has nothing to do with it at all? lol

15_50 wrote:

SDSU Aztec wrote:

You don't seem to like Lagat which is fine but some blue chip HS runners will be impressed by his accomplishments and want to run for him, especially if the kid likes his personality.

You don't know what Lagat is like as a coach. If a good recruit tells Lagat he wants to run 80 mpw, that's exactly what he will run at U.A. Lagat isn't going to say no and bring in another 10:00 guy instead.

Some of you guys place so much importance on coaching, but 100% of success is going to come from having talented runners.

100%??? So coaching has nothing to do with it at all? lol

You don't believe any coach would be successful with the talent that NAU has? How would Mike Smith do with the Arizona squad?

How exactly, could a college distance coach not be successful with NAU's talent?

Flagpole wrote:

The bigger question is why is the Assistant Cross Country coach a guy who played football in college and never ran cross country?

https://arizonawildcats.com/sports/cross-country/roster/coaches/ryan-ray/5532

Because no one with experience wanted to be set up for failure and fired in less than two years when Harvey retires.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

15_50 wrote:

100%??? So coaching has nothing to do with it at all? lol

You don't believe any coach would be successful with the talent that NAU has? How would Mike Smith do with the Arizona squad?

How exactly, could a college distance coach not be successful with NAU's talent?

What does NAU or Mike Smith have to do with Lagat and U of A?

Sorry you used hyperbole and I called you on it.

It's certainly not 100% about recruiting but, yes, recruiting plays a big part for sure.

15_50 wrote:

SDSU Aztec wrote:

You don't believe any coach would be successful with the talent that NAU has? How would Mike Smith do with the Arizona squad?

How exactly, could a college distance coach not be successful with NAU's talent?

What does NAU or Mike Smith have to do with Lagat and U of A?

Sorry you used hyperbole and I called you on it.

It's certainly not 100% about recruiting but, yes, recruiting plays a big part for sure.

Maybe I'm was reacting to the wrong poster, but the opinion of many posters is that based on the conference meet, Lagat is a crappy coach, but that is false. He was hired to hopefully recruit some good D-1 runners and not to improve some 26:00 guys. If Lagat is successful in his recruiting, I have no doubt the team will be competitive.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

15_50 wrote:

What does NAU or Mike Smith have to do with Lagat and U of A?

Sorry you used hyperbole and I called you on it.

It's certainly not 100% about recruiting but, yes, recruiting plays a big part for sure.

Maybe I'm was reacting to the wrong poster, but the opinion of many posters is that based on the conference meet, Lagat is a crappy coach, but that is false. He was hired to hopefully recruit some good D-1 runners and not to improve some 26:00 guys. If Lagat is successful in his recruiting, I have no doubt the team will be competitive.

True. But he’s had over a year now…hopefully this next recruiting cycle goes better/immigration authorities start letting Kenyans through.

Nissan Hardbody wrote:

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.

5 guys under 25 is much better than this performance. Recruiting guys to UTEP or Arizona? Please.

Running results aside, considering that there have been zero scandals or lawsuits since Lagat started coaching, I’d say it’s an improvement over the old coaches

BigRed01 wrote:

Drachman is:

a) way, way off-campus in a neighborhood I wouldn't run in after dark.

b) about what you'd expect from a decent high school track and field facility, not a flourishing D1 program.

In fact, U of A is only one of two schools that doesn't have an on-campus track, in the PAC-12.

It's only 1.5 miles from the very center of their campus. If some of the runners don't have cars/mopeds then they could just run their warmup/cooldown to the track.

I mapped out a few other P5 schools and their tracks were all ~1-2 miles from the middle of campus. Since track is low priority it is inevitable at large schools that the School of X will claim they need the location to build a new building. And then the track gets shunted off with some of the other boring sports to some far off location.

At my school, football, baseball, basketball, volleyball all have good locations. Golf, track, softball, soccer, etc are all another mile or so away from campus (still part of campus but undeveloped)

SDSU Aztec wrote:

15_50 wrote:

100%??? So coaching has nothing to do with it at all? lol

You don't believe any coach would be successful with the talent that NAU has? How would Mike Smith do with the Arizona squad?

How exactly, could a college distance coach not be successful with NAU's talent?

Are you saying that Colorado had better recruits than every single other school in the p12?

THOUGHTSLEADER wrote:

Nissan Hardbody wrote:

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.

5 guys under 25 is much better than this performance.

Ooh, look out NAU!

fire on the mountain wrote:

SDSU Aztec wrote:

You don't believe any coach would be successful with the talent that NAU has? How would Mike Smith do with the Arizona squad?

How exactly, could a college distance coach not be successful with NAU's talent?

Are you saying that Colorado had better recruits than every single other school in the p12?

Could you please provide some information with your post? It shouldn't be up to the reader to dig through HS PRs to figure out what level of talent was recruited. I did look up info for one runner and he ran 9:08 at 5500' which is worth sub-9 at sea level.

RossiCheated wrote:

How in the hell does any college team, let alone a Power Five team, get a DNF in a conference meet?

(Yes, I know... by having fewer than five finishers). But how can they be in the position that this is even possible?

The Oregon women did it last year. If they can do it, then anyone can do it.

We at the time argued they should have run athletes from the club team.

Everyone is talking about recruiting or scholarships or AD support, but this team is so unfathomably bad, it is inexcusable

Look at the results from NIRCA Running Club Nationals. These are RUNNING CLUB. No coach, no recruiting, they train for fun. No financial support from the school, they split gas money to get there. Half them are there for the post race parties.

15 schools running clubs averaged 5 guys faster than ASU first runner.

https://clubrunning.org/races/race_results.php?race=844

You are telling me Arizona, a school of 36,000, can't get 5 dudes from the student population to just show up and run faster than 27 minutes?

Inexcusable and embarassing.

I don't think your point makes much sense. UTEP is an up-and-down program that recruits a lot of Africans. They turn around some NCAA champions and All-Americans like Korir, Saruni and Amusan et al. It's not a very desirable place to recruit as Conference USA school in El Paso. They seem to be solid considering the situation. Meanwhile Arizona is in the Pac-12 with a reputation as one of the most fun schools in the US. They have one of the worst XC teams we've ever seen. So why are we comparing Lagat and Ereng? It's too early to write off Lagat, but it's also completely random to act like Ereng isn't doing a fine job.

shootpost wrote:

Everyone is talking about recruiting or scholarships or AD support, but this team is so unfathomably bad, it is inexcusable

Look at the results from NIRCA Running Club Nationals. These are RUNNING CLUB. No coach, no recruiting, they train for fun. No financial support from the school, they split gas money to get there. Half them are there for the post race parties.

15 schools running clubs averaged 5 guys faster than ASU first runner.

https://clubrunning.org/races/race_results.php?race=844

You are telling me Arizona, a school of 36,000, can't get 5 dudes from the student population to just show up and run faster than 27 minutes?

Inexcusable and embarassing.

Are we discussing UofA or ASU here?

Also what does some club nationals race have to do with Pac 12s? Did the club teams run in the same race as the P12 ? My guess is they didn't so the comparison is even close to being legit.

And the reason everyone is talking about recruiting or scholarships or AD support is because that is exactly what it's about. It's not like Lagat can run around the campus grabbing guys out of class to say ' hey bro, why don't you come out for XC and run 80+ miles a week and be a star runner. This isn't high school athletics.