The men's and women's teams have great chances to win conference at the Indoor Championships in Lincoln this weekend. The men's team has been slow to get going under Coach Henry but appear to have turned the corner. We will battle Texas for the title but we have better depth. I expect us to win but it is not a lock. We should finish absolutely no worse than second barring a total collapse.

The women will win period. I will consider anything less than a 25 point win a bit of a disappointment. The women's track team is one of the brightest spots in our athletic program and should finish top 3-5 at Nationals as well. This program has shown the biggest improvement this side of the basketball programs. Coach Marchikiwicz was terrible for this program and you can see the difference now that he is gone.

Good luck to both teams and bring back two trophies.

You don't think OU will challenge on the mens side? They are the 6th ranked team in the country, while t.u. is 7th, and we are 11th.

I don't think OU has the depth to win indoors. They are a better team outdoors. I think Texas and Nebraska present bigger challenges for the men although we should win.

Anyone know how the meet is going?

looking for an update as well

Women are in good shape. They have a 14 point lead on Kansas with about 5 events left as best I can tell.

Men are 5th with either 5 or 6 events left. I don't think they can win it and they have a tough time ahead even catching UT (who is currently 3rd) for the LSS point. We have some events left where we can score some big points, but so does Texas.

Women - Team Rankings - 14 Events Scored
================================================================================
1) Texas A&M 85.25 2) Kansas 71
3) Nebraska 69.50 4) Texas 57
5) Baylor 55.25 6) Oklahoma 47
7) Kansas State 46 8) Missouri 44
9) Texas Tech 37 10) Iowa State 20
11) Oklahoma St 9 12) Colorado 5

Men - Team Rankings - 15 Events Scored
================================================================================
1) Nebraska 99 2) Texas 91
3) Texas Tech 81 4) Missouri 64
5) Texas A&M 47 6) Oklahoma 39.50
7) Kansas State 38 8) Kansas 36.50
9) Colorado 34 10) Iowa State 31
11) Baylor 14 12) Oklahoma St 10
http://www.big12sports.com/livestats/c-track/022808/index.htm?SPID=32&SPSID=92&DB_OEM_ID=100

[This message has been edited by venzor (edited 3/1/2008 5:31p).]

Women are the champions. They finish 24.25 points ahead of Nebraska. We'll see whether that's close enough for Aggie2207!

Seriously, I am pretty impressed with his prediction of a 25 pt win.

Men will most likely finish 4th but need to run similar to their seeded time just to be sure. Mizzou and OU could catch us under a disaster scenario. They will finish behind UT, NU, and tech.

I know nothing about our track teams, but I do know the men failed to score any points in 7 of the 19 events...many of them field events.

Nebraska is 3 pts behind UT for the men's title with the 4x400 the only event left but they need to run faster than their seeded time and/or have UT run slower than theirs.

[This message has been edited by R-Dog (edited 3/1/2008 7:02p).]

Congratulations to the ladies. They are one of the bright spots in what has been a relatively down year for Aggie sports. It is amazing what coaches who care about a program can do. The women's team under Marchikiwicz was horrible. He should have been fired much sooner.

I am disappointed with the men's finish to say the least. I felt we had the best team although I knew Texas would be tough. Nebraska and especially Texas Tech beating us as badly as they did is unacceptable. To be in a battle with Missouri and Oklahoma shows that this team is still way behind where it should be. We really did not appreciate how good a coach Ted Nelson was. His teams performed better than this on far less support.

I am pleased with the win for the women but I believe that success was inevitable once we got rid of an inept head coach. It is much easier to build a dominant women's team. I am at a loss trying to figure out why we can't do better on the men's side. I know we have improved over the last couple of seasons. The problem is we have only improved back to the level the team was at before Coach Henry got here. When you are putting the amount of money in the program that we are you should get considerably better results. I know we don't have the indoor facility yet or an outdoor track that they will host meets on. That is a lame excuse. Nelson did not have an indoor track and hosted meets on the same track we have now. If my memory is right, the last two meets on that track were an NCAA regional and the USA Junior Championships. If we are going to spend multi-millions on track then we should win or at least be second. We are in year four and the men are still no better. People are complaining about our men's basketball team right now but the biggest disappointment this weekend is men's track.

I'm not buying that we were very good at Men's indoor track. Go back and look at the record. We did finish 2nd on two occasions but other than that we never finished as high as our 4th place this year. We improved from 9th last year to 4th. We still have work to do. We are very weak in the field events for some reason.

Aggie2207...

You obviously follow track somewhat closely, so let me ask you this.

If you seperate the recruiting aspect from the actual coaching, how much "coaching" can really be done?

It seems like you might be able to coax a few fractions of a second improvement with some coaching on form and technique, but to me, track is as big of a "you've either got the horses or you don't" sport as there is. But I admittedly am not a track guru.

It just seems odd that the same guy is coaching both teams and one team is doing great and the other is apparently underachieving. Obviously, the guy knows what he is doing so is it just needing to find a few guys in these events we are not scoring any points in?

Appreciate you guys giving us updates.

I can't say how much is coaching and how much is recruiting. I agree with your assessment that obviously they are doing things right on the women's side. I do know they have more scholarship money and you can get more quality individuals. It is obvious they have done very well at this. It was a major shortcoming of the old coach.

As for the men, I am disappointed that we are not doing better. Certainly our teams in the past were always better outdoors rather than indoors. I think with building the new facility, etc. that we are putting much greater emphasis on indoor track. Even so, we are still middle of the pack after four years. You have to get depth from local kids walking on and it seems we are coming up a little short there. My feeling is that if Texas, Nebraska, Texas Tech and Oklahoma can win conference then so can we. At the very least we should be better than we are. If I am not mistaken Oklahoma brought their coach in a year later than when we brought in Coach Henry and to a much worse situation. He already has an outdoor championship.

The thing with our men as that they were pretty good when he got here, at least outdoors. We were a top twenty team more often than not and were generally in the top third of the conference. We had a decent national reputation and then went and hired one of the top five coaches in the country and invested a great deal more money in the program. It just seems to me we should be getting more for our investment on the men's side. These athletes are virtually all his and a number of them are 4-year transfers, jucos and international students who come in older and ready to go right away. Track isn't like developing offensive linemen in that regard. It shouldn't take that long.

I don't know what is wrong with the men's team. The same coaches are getting done on the women's side. As I have said before, I have greater respect now for what Coach Nelson did. I know he had nowhere near the support as Coach Henry and at least to this point, produced better results on the men's side. Hopefully things will change for the better but it is taking a long time. I am not saying we should get rid of anyone but we have to expect better results from a program in which the coaches are getting paid way above market.

I have every confidence that Coach Henry will get our program on solid ground in both mens and womens track. Nice win for the ladies.

AGgie207 you talk a lot of talk but you actually know little about the programs. Time to be quiet. That is all

I don't pretend to know everything about the program but I do know that the men have disappointed up to this point and we are in the middle of the fourth year of the new program. It is time the men stepped up. If we treated track like most schools then their performance might be acceptable. We spend much more than most schools and got rid of an Aggie legend to hire a coach to win championships. Coach Henry is getting the job done on the women's side and I have given him credit but there is absolutely no denying that the men have not gotten it done to this point under his watch. As for attempts to quiet me, come up with a decent argument and I will recognize it. Otherwise, crawl back in your hole. That is all.

I agree with the guys not living up to expectations. Earlier in the year they were doing awesome. I think I saw somewhere that we were ranked in the top 5 in the nation and then to not even be in contention for the big 12 title is disappointing.

ok here is why.
1) rankings are crap. the men started unranked, then went 21st, 3rd, 11th and 10th in the space of a month. So do not get excited over those they mean nothing. Especially when expecting a good conference result because of a high ranking, these are purely based on national times.

2) The ladies have 18 scholarships and the men have 12.5. That is about 1/3 more for women obviously. The women only just started winning last season. You can not expect the mens program to run on the same championship "clock."

3) mens running on maybe 10 scholarships from my observations. 400m runner Bryant Mcombs member of that mile relay national runner up team must be on a big money and if you read around you would know his did his achillies recently. Last year signing class included 2 Australians and Kenyan of whom only one Australian is still here the other left, not sure why but he did not stay long. The other Kenyan runs for Alabama, a noted Kenyan school so they tell me we had another Kenyan signed up (per letsrun.com use search function thread long gone) but Tech pulled some dodgy actions and he was ruled ineligible in early January. Well to late to sign anyone in replacement.

The men's team probably could have won on the weekend if everything went perfect. Anyone who knows track, especially indoor track that this never happens. Nebraska at home are incredible, watch they will suck it up at nationals, they pull everything they can to twist things in their favor.

3rd200 - You make some very astute points and sound like you know what you're saying from an insiders angle. Are you on the team? What does the 3rd 200 mean?

High school track fanatic. Tried out for the team this year but no luck. Used to run the 800/mile/2 mile in HS and always kick in the 3rd 200!

On the subject of Coach Marcinkiewicz, right before he was demoted after the hiring of Coach Henry, the women's team finished 3rd at Big 12 outdoors, and 13th at NCAAs. That's not a bad job.

yezh well texas wins, and this link apparently means bubba thornton won coach of the year. This is not good news.
http://www.texassports.com/index.php?s=&url_channel_id=22&url_article_id=8371&url_subchannel_id=&change_well_id=2

I don't think Thornton deserved coach of the year. I felt like Texas Tech was the surprise of the meet along with Missouri. Texas and Nebraska should be powers and neither had spectacular meets. A coach I am impressed with is Martin Smith at Oklahoma. They were genuinely bad when he got there and they have become very competitive.

Henry needed to keep Dave Hartman as the distance coach. Our distance results have been a joke since he left.

I thought Nelson, Hartman and de la Garza were good. The others not as much. As I have said earlier the women's head coach was especially bad and should have been fired sooner. He was dead weight and I think the other two coaches could have been better. I hope the men's program will eventually get it together. I can't understand why it has taken so long. I am glad that the women are getting it done now.

2207 - you feeling better now? The difference in the men's track team is some really good freshmen. Phiri, Reid, Miller, and Stewart. You recruit like that and your coaching starts to look a lot better.