I have just started following cross country and don't fully understand the strategy. I did watch the race. Given the way scoring works (as I understand it) wouldn't the team have been better off if Nuguse had not dropped back to the other 3 ND runners in the pack, but rather had finished as high as he was capable of?

against Northern Arizona, who had 4 top 10 finishers (#4, #6, #7, & #9) all ahead of our best runner who was #10. Since the FSU player wasn't on a team those 4 gave them 22 points with one more runner needed to score. ND's 5 finishers were 87 total (9+19 through 21). The 5th NAU runner would have needed to be worse than 66th in team scoring to have ND win it all. He ended up 44 overall and 38 in team scoring so they got 60. NAU has won 4 of the last 5 championships with BYU winning the last one and NAU second. BYU women won it all this year. Those altitide schools do well in running.

ND's result was spectacular and I agree Nuguse was the true team leader. It was good call vs defending their DMR indoor NC which Oregon won with meet record. Nice to see my two alma maters do so well in track. I hoep to go to the NCAA outdoor championship in Eugene this year if Covid let's us. Nuguse and ND will put up a challenge against the Oregon men. Should be fun.

It would be different if they added up finishing times. However, a runner falling off 5 seconds could easily add 15 points (negative) to team placement. Using a stronger runner to pull the pack of Irish runners undoubtedly helped our score (although there was a substantial difference to the 3rd place team.

It was a really good race and the Irish looked fantastic