Florida edges Arkansas for NCAA men's title with 1-2 400 and collegiate record 4x4
Gators' unexpected 20-point total in one-lap sprint jump-starts come-from-behind victory over favored Razorbacks
After an unexpected 1-2 finish in the 400-meter dash, the University of Florida went on to clinch its second consecutive men’s team title in the NCAA Track & Field Championships on Friday night with a razor-thin victory in the 1,600-meter relay.
Florida totaled 57 points in the meet at Mike A. Myers Stadium at the University of Texas, followed by pre-meet favorite Arkansas with 53, Stanford with 44, LSU with 43, and Arizona State with 41.
Florida had 17 points to its credit entering the 400, which was the sixth of 11 track events to be contested. But the Gators more than doubled their team score in that event alone as Emmanuel Bamidele, Ryan Willie, and JeVaughn Powell placed first, second, and seventh to total 20 points in the meet in which the top eight finishers in each event were awarded points on a 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 basis.
Willie, a junior, had been many prognosticators’ pick to win the 400, but it was sophomore teammate Bamidele who really pushed the pace for the first 300 meters of the race and then withstood a late charge from his teammate to record a 44.24 to 44.25 victory.
Both times were personal bests for the Gator duo, with Nigerian Bamidele’s effort smashing his previous best of 44.67 that he had run in a semifinal on Wednesday. Powell clocked 45.32 in seventh.
Shortly after that, the triple jump concluded.
Freshman phenom Jaydon Hibbert of Arkansas won the event as expected, bounding a facility record of 17.56 meters (57 feet 7½ inches). But the other two Razorback finalists did not account for any points in the event as they finished 11th and 12th.
Meanwhile, Florida picked up another five points when junior Sean Dixon-Bodie placed fourth at 16.61 (54-6).
Florida racked up five more points in the 200 when sophomore Robert Gregory ran a personal best of 19.89 to finish fourth behind Udodi Onwuzurike of Stanford (19.84) and the Texas Tech duo of Courtney Lindsey (19.86) and Terrence Jones (19.87).
It was the first time in the history of the NCAA meet that four men had broken 20 seconds in the 200.
Following the men’s 5,000 — in which Stanford’s Ky Robinson completed a 5,000-10,000 double with a winning time of 14:04.77 — Florida entered the 1,600 relay with 47 points. That left them five points behind Arkansas. The Gators were favored to win the race for the second year in a row and accumulate another 10 points, but nothing is a given in a relay race.
The question was could Arkansas finish no lower than fourth place to score at least five points and win a share of the title—or place third or higher for an outright win? The problem was Arkansas had posted the slowest season best of any of the nine teams in the final.
The Florida foursome of Bamidele, Jacory Patterson, Powell, and Willie took care of their end of the deal by winning the race in a collegiate record of 2 minutes 57.74 seconds to finish four hundredths ahead of second-place Arizona State. And when Arkansas finished eighth in 3:03.66, Florida had its four-point victory.
“We had been training all year for this,” Bamidele told John Anderson of ESPN2 shortly after Florida had cut two hundredths of a second off the collegiate record of 2:57.76 it had set in the Southeastern Conference meet in May. “It was about believing in a training program… and putting my faith in my teammates and getting them out front.”
When Anderson pointed out to Coach Mike Holloway of Florida that some things outside his team’s control had broken the Gators’ way and given them a chance to win, Holloway said that “any championship that’s won, there is always some good fortune along the way. But I’m a guy that thinks that preparation creates opportunity. And no matter what other people did here today, and Wednesday, was just like, man… I’m just so proud of everyone involved.”
Arkansas’ title hopes took a hit on the first day of the men’s meet on Wednesday when Ayden Owens-Delerme failed to advance to the final of the 400-meter intermediate hurdles after entering the meet with the fastest collegiate time in the nation this year at 48.26.
Then Florida caught a break in the first track event of the meet Friday when the Gators originally finished third in 38.26 in the 400 relay, but moved up to second place behind LSU (38.05) when first-place Texas Tech was disqualified because it had passed the baton outside of the exchange zone on its first exchange.
The Gators got some more help in the men’s discus when Turner Washington of Arizona State passed first-place Roje Stona of Arkansas in the sixth round when he threw 66.22 (217-3) to top Stona’s best of 65.55 (215-10). In a big upset, both of them finished ahead of Mykolas Alekna of UC Berkeley, who had raised his own collegiate record to 71.00 (232-11) earlier this season. The defending European champion, Alekna never found his groove on Friday and placed third at 63.25 (207-6).
“It’s always a different experience,” Holloway said when Anderson asked him about Florida winning its sixth men’s title in 11 seasons with him at the helm. “You can win in different ways. I’m almost speechless. This is a special group of young men. I’m just so proud of them.”
In all, finals were contested in 14 men’s events on Friday night.
Two of the most noteworthy victories were turned in by Courtney Lindsey of Texas Tech in the 100 and by Will Sumner of Georgia in the 800.
Lindsey ran 9.89 to win a tight contest in which Godson Oghenebrume of LSU placed second in 9.90 and Shawn Maswanganyi of Houston finished third in 9.91.
Lindsey’s time moved him into a three-way tie for fourth on the all-time collegiate performer list, with Oghenebrume moving into a three-way tie for seventh. The top four finishers ran personal bests in a race in which seven sprinters broke 10 seconds, including sixth-place Onwuzurike (9.98), who would later win the 200.
Sumner dominated the men’s 800 while rolling to a personal best time of 1:44.26 that smashed his previous best of 1:46.00 and moved him to fifth on the all-time collegiate performer list. It was doubly impressive because the Bulldog freshman ran a 51.14 second lap after leading the field through the first 400 meters in 53.12.
Yusuf Bizimana of Texas finished second in a personal best of 1:45.74, but Sumner simply ran way from him in the final 140 meters of the race.
Chris Robinson and Corde Long of Alabama placed first and second in the men’s 400-meter intermediate hurdles with personal bests of 48.12 and 48.53.
Washington also produced a 1-2 finish in the 1,500 as Nathan Green defeated teammate and defending champion Joe Waskom for the title, 3:42.78 to 3:42.93. Green ran his final lap in a sizzling 51.88 to Waskom’s 52.16.
Phillip Lemonious of Arkansas won the 110-meter high hurdles in 13.24 to edge second-place De’Vion Wilson of Houston (13.26) and third-place Jaheem Hayles of Syracuse (13.28) in a race in which the top five finishers ran personal bests.
Kenneth Brooks of BYU won the 3,000-meter steeplechase in 8:26.17 after pulling away from favored Duncan Hamilton of Montana State (8:32.18) on the final lap of the race.
Romaine Beckford of South Florida placed first in the men’s high jump by clearing a personal best height of 2.27 (7-5¾).
Vernon Turner of Oklahoma cleared the same height as Beckford and like Beckford, he did so on his first attempt. But NCAA indoor champion Beckford was declared the winner because he had cleared the previous height of 2.24 (7-4¼) on his second attempt while Turner needed three tries.
In the only women’s competition on Friday, Janelle Rogers of Louisville was in first place in the heptathlon after totaling 3,840 points in the first four events. She was followed by Beatrice Juskeviciute of Vanderbilt with 3,675 points, Allie Jones of USC with 3,665, and Jadin O’Brien of Notre Dame with 3,600.
Rogers ran a wind-aided 13.55 in the 100-meter hurdles in the first event of the competition and followed that by clearing 1.72 (5-7¾) in the high jump. She then had the best effort of the day in the shot put at 15.55 (51-0¼) and the third-best mark in the 200 at 23.59.
The final day of the four-day meet will begin at 4 p.m., Central Daylight Time, this afternoon with the long jump portion of the heptathlon.
The women’s high jump will begin at 7:30, with the first track event, the women’s 400 relay, scheduled to start at 8:02.
