Actually, ha, you're probably more wrong than right. d3 is different from d1 in one important respect. In d3, cross is more important than track. The athletes aren't paid to run, and a lot of them emphasize cross over track. Some very good d3 runners either do not run track, or they skip track seasons (study abroad) or they just don't put a lot of effort into track. So it isn't terribly helpful to look at track times for d3 guys.
This whole conversation started because several people put up fairly ridiculous posts about Henry Reich, not to mention the baby nationals threads. Ghost posted what must have been high school times for Reich, implying that even the top d3 runners are slower than most decent hs kids. The truth is that Reich came through 5k yesterday in 15:40. I'm pretty sure he can go sub 15:30, even though you may not be able to find a sub 15:30 track time for him (I haven't looked).
I run for an average d3 team in an average d3 region. I've run this year against almost half of the national teams. My 5k track pr is 15:24, but I would have run 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th for most of those teams, just looking at who beat me over the course of the year.
Our team ran a 5k time trial on the track one week before regionals. Top 5 went 15:26, 15:36 (me), 15:57, 16:11 and 16:26. We did not come close to making it out of our region, and, even though I ran well at regionals, I did not make it as an individual qualifier. My best guess (looking at comparative times against guys I have run against this year) is that I would have finished well in the bottom half of the field at nationals.