Some observations ...
The photos of the men's and women's teams seem to capture the joy of winning the Big East titles. It really boils down to a battle between VU and G'town and I feel that somehow G'town has a recruiting advantage. So when VU wins, it is a validation of the the "little engine that could."
What happened to Denault in the mile? He is better than everyone except Williamsz, but finishes 9th. Did he pull?
Cannot find any videos so one can only surmise. One can get a better description of what transpired over at the Georgetown athletics site.
Murphy and Obadare DNF in 400. What happened? Murphy was second leading qualifier so one could have expected him to do well. Did they suffer some injury?
Reber is actually VU's best 400 other than Ellison, but he has not run this indoor season. I assume he must be injured.
Where was Tully? He could have scored in one of the individual events or on one of the relays. Is he hurt?
They seem to be working on Fitzsimons' "speed." Thus the 500, which is really out if his comfort zone. He might be the key to DMR at Penn.
Solis continues to impress: strong showings in DMR and 1000. There will be strong competition with Lampron for legs on 4xmile and 4x800 at Penn. Lampron is looking real good. And so is Tiernan. Is he a viable option on 4xmile?
Women are interesting. The running part of the team really consists of only five people: Lipari, Akande, Piccirillo, Margey & Schappert. And Schappert keeps getting better and better. Good genes. Walden is a hurdler. But a close scrutiny shows that VU accumulated 71.5 point from field events. G'town got nothing from field events. VU won by only 2.5 point. G'town was without Nadel. I believe Pierce is redshirting. Think about it. This poses more serious competition for DMR, 4xmile and 4x800 at Penn - in addition to Oregon and Stanford.
A scrutiny of the race results shows that G'town had competitive depth in almost every running event. For example, Lipari wins 1000, but G'town finishes 2nd, 3rd & 4th - 19 points to VU's 10. VU had no one in 400, 500, 3000 or 5000.
VU did not have its A team in the DMR or the 4x800. It beat G'town's best in 4x800 and came in second in DMR. What is disconcerting is that it appears that VU is again weak on 400 leg of DMR. I know some like to dismiss the 400 leg because it is the shortest, but when the other team is running almost 3 seconds faster, then you have to make-up those 3 seconds in the other legs. It does not appear that there is that much margin.
Interesting that Southerland beat Margey by about .5 sec in 800. This is a reverse of their finish in NY state championship when Margey was a senior. VU really missed-out on that one. Southerland wanted to be closer to her aunt in DC... Geez... She was closer to home at Villanova than DC by several hours. Margey's time suggests she might be in shape. Earlier, this indoor season, she appeared to be bottom-heavy. Again, since there is no video, one is not sure, but Margey has a tendency of running wide in the earlier parts of races. Was that a factor? Still this race and this meet show the need for VU to recruit some serious runners. Jaskot is nice, but not enough.
An interesting observation. The winner of the women's 500 was Claire Mooney of St. John's. She is a junior from Kildare, Ireland. Where was VU on that one? Others are benefiting from "Irish pipeliie." Yes, they try for stars like Mageean, Robinson and English, but the what about the ones that do not get attention and actually succeed elsewhere - e.g., Collins (IRL, Providence), Lucy Van Dalen (New Zealand, Stony Brook) ...??? And it is not about grades because Stony Brook is a fine school.
All-in-all though, it was a good showing by the VU teams
