Texas Tech rises to the occasion
Jones, Dean combine for three titles in come-from-behind victory over top-ranked Arkansas in NCAA Indoor Champs
No team wants to have a reputation for often underperforming in national title meets, but Texas Tech University had that dubious distinction entering the final day of the NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships at the TRACK at New Balance in Brighton, Massachusetts, on Saturday.
Then, within a span of less than 90 minutes, the Red Raiders went from being buried deep in the standings to defeating top-ranked and defending men’s champion Arkansas, 50½ to 41, for the championship.
Texas Tech had tallied its first 3½ points of the three-day meet when Omamuyovwi Erhire tied for fifth-place in the high jump by clearing 2.18 meters (7 feet 1¾ inches) earlier in the day, well before the track events started. But the Red Raiders launched a scoring binge when junior Terrence Jones won his second consecutive title in the 60-meter dash with a time of 6.54 seconds while leading Texas Tech to a 1-3-6 finish and a 19-point total in the event.
The Red Raiders scored three more points when sophomore Shaemar Uter finished sixth in the 400 in 45.94 and Texas Tech tallied another 10 points when senior Caleb Dean won the 60-meter high hurdles in 7.56 after having finished sixth in the 60 in 6.67.
When Jones followed Dean’s win in the high hurdles with a victorious time of 20.23 in the 200, Texas Tech had taken a 45½-40 lead over Arkansas.
The Razorbacks would tally one point for finishing eighth in the 1,600 relay, the final event of the men’s meet. But Texas Tech scored five more points when a quartet of Dean, Carl Hicks, Josh Bour, and Uter gave the squad its final five points when it finished fourth in 4 x 4 with a time of 3 minutes 3.37 seconds.
“What a day,” Texas Tech’s 25th-year coach Wes Kittley said to ESPN’s John Anderson after being presented with the team championship trophy. “We came roaring today and that trophy means everything to Lubbock and Red Raider nation. I can tell you… We’ve had this goal all year long. This group is a veteran group and they know how to win and we’re so thankful. We wanted to get that 50 points and we got it.”
Florida finished third in the team standings with 39 points after a Gator foursome ran 3:02.53 to finish second behind Arizona State’s winning performance of 3:02.35 in the 1,600 relay. Northern Arizona, paced by victories from Nico Young in the 3,000 on Saturday and the 5,000 on Friday, finished fourth with 31 points, followed by North Carolina with 26.
“Those guys are just so special for our program,” Kittley said when Anderson asked him about Jones and Dean. “They’re our culture builders and they’ve been doing this for a long time and they’ve just led this group.”
Jones had rarely run the 200 meters indoors for Texas Tech until this season, but his success in the one-lap event was not a shock as the Bahamian sprinter ran 19.87 in finishing third in the event in last year’s NCAA outdoor championships.
Nonetheless, he is still learning the intricacies about how to maximize his speed while sprinting on the banked 200-meter ovals and he was very pleased with his performance on Saturday.
“I thought everything went right,” he said to Anderson. “Right from the start. I got out really aggressive. I drove it out. I finished hard. I think for me that’s probably one of the best 200s I’ve run indoors.”
Texas Tech’s win gave the program its first NCAA indoor title to go with an outdoor crown from 2019. But there had been a few national championship meets in recent years in which the Red Raiders had not lived up to their high rankings in the United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) polls.
Although Kittley preferred to think of those meets as contests in which they came up a little short.
“We’ve been so close so many times and this is just a really special thing for this group to come back and to stay together and to work together like they have,” he said. “I gotta say, we’re bringing this thing home to Lubbock, Texas, and we’re very proud.”
While Texas Tech totaled 47 of its 50½ points in the sprints, hurdles, or relays on Saturday, Arkansas tallied 18 of its 23 points in field events after beginning the day in a first-place tie with Northern Arizona at 18 points.
Romaine Beckford accounted for 10 points when he won the high jump at 2.27 (7-5¼) and fellow senior Roje Stona scored eight points in the shot put when his personal best of 20.48 (67-2¼) placed him second behind Mississippi sophomore Tarik Robinson-O’Hagan’s personal best of 21.05 (69-0¾).
It was the second consecutive high jump title for Beckford, who had won last year while competing for South Florida.
Although Young had been the favorite in the 3,000 on Saturday, just as he was in the 5,000 on Friday, the manner in which the Lumberjack junior won differed as he took the lead with little more than three laps to go in the 3,000 after waiting until there was a just over a lap left in the 5,000 before he punched it.
He ran his final 400 meters in 55.76 seconds and his last 600 in 1:24.11 on Saturday while setting a meet record of 7:41.01. Parker Wolfe of North Carolina followed his second-place finish in the 5,000 with a runner-up time of 7:42.38 in the 3,000, followed by Alex Maier of Oklahoma State in 7:44.68.
Young’s victorious performances in this year’s meet were quite a contrast to his sophomore year when he placed fourth in the 5,000 in the indoor championships and eighth in the 5,000 outdoors.
“I’m just at a point where, like I said in December, my fitness is lining up well with my ability to access it mechanically, as well as the training I’ve been doing,” he said to Anderson. “So it’s just another progression along the way, especially to having a rough year last year.”
While Young has been well known in U.S. distance running circles since the 2018-19 academic year when he was a junior at Newbury Park High School in California, sophomore Christopher Morales Williams of Georgia has exploded upon the collegiate scene this season.
After beginning the year with a best of 45.48 seconds in the 400 meters outdoors, the Canadian ran 45.39 in the Clemson Tiger Paw Invitational in early February before running a stunning 44.49 to win the SEC title two weeks ago.
Although the time was regarded as a world indoor record when Morales Williams ran it, the process to ratify it never got started because the starting blocks in use at the meet were not the kind that World Athletics requires for record purposes.
The USTFCCCA still counted the mark as a collegiate record and Morales Williams showed his performance was not a fluke on Saturday when he his 44.67 clocking was the fastest of the two-section final and the fifth-fastest collegiate time ever run.
Morales Williams was in first place when we came through the first 200 meters of the first section in 21.00 and though he was challenged by Auhmad Robinson of Texas A&M during the second lap, he finished more than two tenths of a second in front of the Aggie junior, who set a personal best of 44.91.
“I just thought coming out and winning the 200, just like at the SECs,” he said when Anderson asked him about his strategy. “I was just trying to do the same thing and I didn’t want to change anything. Just run the same way. So I kind of won the break and then from there I knew I had to finish strong. And then I just held it all the way to the end.”
In the other men’s finals on Saturday, Luke Houser of Washington won the mile in 4:01.72, Rivaldo Marshall of Iowa took the 800 in 1:46.96, and Russell Robinson of Miami won the triple jump with a personal best of 16.76 (55-0).
Houser won the mile after moving into the lead just before he came through the 809-meter mark in 2:08.30 and then successfully repelling the charge of anyone who tried to pass him for the remainder of the race.
He ran his last 200 meters in 26.82, the final 400 in 54.27, and his last 800 in 1:53.42.
Adam Spencer of Wisconsin placed second in 4:01.92, with Lucas Bons of BYU third in 4:02.12.
In the 800, Tarees Rhoden of Clemson led the field through the first 200 in 25.10 seconds and past 400 meters in 52.14.
Abdullahi Hassan of Wisconsin was in first place when he started the bell lap at 1:19.37, but Sean Dolan of Villanova surged past him shortly after that. Dolan held the lead for most of the backstretch, but Marshall overtook him heading into the curve and expanded his lead during the final 100 meters of the race.
Dolan finished second in 1:47.61, followed by Finley McLean of Iowa State in 1:47.68.
Robinson hit his 16.76 mark in the triple jump on the first jump of the competition and no one could surpass it, although Luke Brown of Kentucky came close in the second round when he leaped 16.73 (54-10¾).
Jeremiah Davis of Florida State finished third at 16.60 (54-5½) after placing second in the long jump on Friday.
Leo Neugebauer of Texas, the collegiate record-holder in the decathlon at 8,836 points, won the heptathlon on Saturday with a personal best of 6,347.
The senior from Germany began the day with a 116-point lead over second-place Heath Baldwin of Michigan State, but his advantage was reduced to 31 points after Baldwin ran 7.91 seconds in the 60-meter high hurdles and Neugebauer clocked 8.25.
However, Neugebauer increased his lead to 123 points after clearing 5.16 (16-11) to Baldwin’s 4.86 (15-11¼) in the pole vault.
Neugebauer then ran 2:46.42 to Baldwin’s 2:45.20 in the 1,000 meters to post the fifth-highest score in collegiate history. Baldwin finish second with 6,238 points, followed by Till Steinforth of Nebraska with 6,140.
Baldwin’s total moved him to fifth on the all-time collegiate performer list.