A&M-tu Dual Meet
http://www.aggieathletics.com/sports/c-xctrack/spec-rel/012110aaa.html

To win, the Ags need 80 points.
Rough estimates - WOMEN finish with 79 and the MEN with 85.

These track dual meets are awesome from a fans perspective...gives you that heightened level of excitement and a good feel for team depth.

Wayne Davis is already running a 7.99 in the sprint hurdles...would've won this meet last year...WOW.

Excellent competition - Excellent meet
MEN: A&M 92 -- tu 64
WOMEN: A&M 78.5 -- tu 80.5

Men excelled - they earned max points in 8 events - 200m, 400m, 800m, 5000m, 60H, TJ, and both relays.

Women earned max points in only 3 events - 60m, 200m, & 60H. We earned minimum points in 4 events - 800m, mile, and both relays. Very surprising that we lost the 4x400 - we are better than them.

I don't think JB ran in the 4x4.That would make a big difference.

That was our best 4x4 relay team. Texas just was better today.

How did our #1 women lose to Texas?

I'm a NOOB at this track and field stuff:

I'm guessing the scoring is different for this compared to the national title meets. Our Women have a good chance at a National title, correct? What about the guys?

What differs from the indoor and outdoor meets(aside from the obvious in/outside). It seems like both of our teams are much better outdoors.

I stand corrected.JB did run the4x4.

In a dual meet, every team's weaknesses are multiplied. If you don't have a good 200 meter runner, the other team can take all the top points in that event.

In a conference or national meet, those points that aren't going to your team will be spread out among several other teams. The dual meet can let you look at your top performances, and get an idea of where your team is, but it won't give you an accurate score against another team.

Think of it like an election. In the popular vote, one candidate can have far more supporters nationwide (a stronger team), but in the electoral college, each state counts as its own contest (event). The popular candidate can dominate some states with 60-70% of the vote, while the less-popular candidate can squeak out weak victories with 51-52% to win the electoral vote.

It's definitely not something to worry about right now.

In addition, only the top two finishers from each school counts, so in an event like the 60 meter dash, we had 5 finishers before the other team had 1. However, that's the same scoring result (8-3) as if we had finished 1-2 and they finished 3-4. So the dual meet scoring takes out a lot of the depth advantage.

The team ran extremely well. The womens 4X4 is still in progress. Ponder this. The 4X4 team ran a 4:35.90 ..... Provisional National qualifying time. However, new comer A.S. did not run. Her split time is expected to be about a 53.50.... Add her time to this team and they just ran 2 seconds faster. Indoor is a bit different that outdoor. This team rocks and should win nationals in the outdoor and probably the indoor as well. BTW the men’s 4x4 A-team and B-team both ran qualifying times. Think national champs “BACK to BACK”

The women will have a better chance of winning the Outdoor National Championship than Indoor d/t more emphasis on sprint events/points in the Outdoor competition.

The women were handily beaten by tu in the 800m, mile, 5000m, and distance relay. We earned the minimum points in all these events except the 5000m. Christina Munoz's 2nd place finish in the 5000m earned us one more point than the minimum (4 points instead of 3). We earned only 13 points in these four "distance" events. The absolute minimum points in these events were 12. However, losing the 4x400 summed up the entire meet for the women.

Although the women have some excellent recruits, the brightest spots this year may center on the men. Curtis Mitchell, Demetrius Pinder, Tabarie Henry, and Wayne Davis should earn a bevy of points in the Big 12 meet and hopefully, enough at the NCAA meet to give us a chance to win a NCAA Championship.

The men, also not known to be strong in the distance races, finished 1-2-4-5-6 in the 800m, 2-3-4 in the mile, 1-2 in the 5000m, and first in the distance relay. Great effort!!

quote:

---

It's definitely not something to worry about right now.

---

When you are the #1 team (by far!!) and you lose to the #15 team on your home turf - even though these are preseason rankings - there has to be plenty of concern, plenty of worry.

Fortunately, there is a month to go before the Big 12 Meet.

The women's 4x400 put out great effort but they did not run smart. Trying to pass on three curves on the anchor leg was not good strategy. Our lady had the ability but she should have held back until down the last back stretch. The tu runner held her off which cause her to burn up too soon. BTDT

hated listening to the sips celebrate

quote:

---

In a dual meet, every team's weaknesses are multiplied.

---

I am not sure if this is accurate. For instance, if a team is very weak in a dual event, it will still earn 3 points. The opponent may finish 1-2-3-4-5 but will earn only 8 points (5 points in relay events). In a regular meet, the first team would certainly earn zero points in its weak event.

MidTnAg,

The dual meet has nothing close to what the conference or national meets will look like. There really is not anything to worry about. We had good performances in the 60, 60H, 200, 400, TJ, LJ. Those events are essentially what we will win conference and a possible national championship on.

Meanwhile, the areas where Texas won, they probably will not point tremendously high since those are areas where they are not competitive with conference/nationals.

Neither Texas team will be near us at the conference meet.

"there has to be plenty of concern, plenty of worry."

It doesn't matter because several of the people from both teams who competed here won't factor into the conference scoring, and most won't factor into the national scoring.

A dual meet is not representative of a multi-team meet score.

At last year's NCAA Meet, we won the womens title with 50 points coming from 7 girls. We had more girls there, they just didn't score. Those 50 points come from a total of 663 points. Put A&M in a dual meet with a lot of the schools who finished in the top 10, maybe even top 20, and it would be close, if not a loss. A&M won because they had enough girls at or near the top of the nation in their event.

When Coach Henry was at LSU, he won 22 national titles and only 14 conference titles. Why? Because conference meets are a much bigger test of depth rather than top-level talent, even if it's a talented conference. A walk-on scrub can score the same number of points as a nationally ranked runner simply by virtue of one event being deeper than the other. At the national meet, only the best in the nation score, and if you have enough of those athletes on your team, you can do well.

I'm not saying Coach Henry was happy or was fine with losing to them, especially on our home turf; I'm saying he's not worried about its reflection on our outlook for conference or nationals, and that you shouldn't worry either.

If you really want a better look at how this meet predicts our performance against Texas at the NCAA meet, look at the competitors who achieved national qualifying times, and see how these individuals from the two schools would score against each other. Not accurate, but a better indicator than the overall score.

I wonder if they've talked about adding the dual to the LSS, if they're going to run it every year? From a fan standpoint, it's certainly exciting.

Also, given what the NCAA did in golf, wouldn't it be interesting if they decided to turn the NC into some sort of dual-meet tournament? I realize it wouldn't work out as well in track as it did in golf, but it certainly reinvigorated and brought a lot of new excitement and fans to the golf NC!

So, for those of you who know the world of T&F better (purely hypothetical): If T&F were to switch to a dual meet format, with say 2 or 3 scorers for each team in each event, who would be the favorites to win?

Dual meet format will never happen. Impractical to pull off.

also, why would we want to give the horns a chance to win another point in a dual meet, whereas in conference/ncaa i have full faith we will get 2 full points (m/f)

I see what you guys are saying. However, even if the women win the Big 12 and the NCAA meets, when it came down to just one on one - us against them - we lost. I can't stand losing to a sip team, especially a much inferior sip team.

So far, based only on best performances this season, the point totals would be:

Big 12
MEN: A&M - 135; tu - 147
WOMEN: A&M - 147; tu - 113

NCAA
MEN: A&M - 67; tu - 15
WOMEN: A&M - 63; tu - 24

We can all agree that the losing sucks. However, it may have been the best kick-in-the-butt that Coach Henry could have asked for to motivate a team trying to defend a national title.