Knight gets it done for Syracuse; NAU repeats as team champ

By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor

LOUISVILLE -- From the tailgating fans to the cheerleading squad to Otto the Orange, the Syracuse mascot, there was big expectations and bigger belief that Justyn Knight was going to do something special at the NCAA Division 1 Cross Country Championships. (Yes, it helped that the Syracuse football played at Louisville later).

Knight delivered, learning from the accumulated experiences of three previous national finals, and won the individual title on the 10-kilometer course in 29 minutes, 00.1 seconds. 

Knight helped bring Syracuse its first national team championship in 64 years on the E.P. "Tom" Sawyer State Park course two years ago. This time, he became Syracuse's first individual winner. 

"It's amazing," Knight said. "This is something I've been trying to do since I first made it to Syracuse."

Knight's maturity and growth over the years accelerated even further when he reached the IAAF World Outdoor Championships final in the 5,000 meters in London over the summer. 

But Saturday's victory wasn't a stroll through the fallen leaves. 

First, Alabama's Gilbert Kigen staked out to a big early lead. And then, the Northern Arizona duo of Matthew Baxter and Tyler Day pressed the issue over the final 5K. 

Knight used his kick over the final 200 meters to overcome the Lumberjacks, who soon had something else important to celebrate. 

"I knew NAU, those guys were strong. I really respect that whole team," Knight said. "They are very hard workers.

"(Day and Baxter) looked phenomenal. They looked really strong from where I was running and I just tried to keep that gap as close as possible."

Behind Day and Baxter, NAU got contributions from Peter Lomong (eighth), Andy Trouard (35th overall) and Geordie Beamish (40th overall). 

The Lumberjacks repeated as NCAA champions with 74 points and dominated what was expected to be a much closer team competition. 

Portland coach Rob Conner pulled an extra ace from his sleeve, inserting fifth-year transfer Matt Welch into the lineup for the first time, and the Pilots scored 127 points for a program-best second-place finish. 

BYU, which swamped big invitationals early in the season with its tight pack and team depth, had trouble staying together Saturday and finished third with 165 points.

Stanford, the Pac-12 champion, finished fourth with 221 points and leader Grant Fisher, one of the pre-meet favorites, ralled from well back to take fifth.

Day said that before the race coach Michael Smith told the team to just think "Gas, gas, gas, gas, gas..." 

"Justyn has a great kick. We all know that," Day said. "But as a team we felt like if we had two people pushing up front and rest still coming up hard in the back, we'll get it."

Smith explained Friday that the workout metrics of this year's team were equal or better to the data collected last year on the 2016 champions. 

Employing the science of live low/train high, the NAU program takes full advantage of its 7,000-foot elevation. The Lumberjacks sometimes go into the surrounding mountains for training runs at 8,000 feet, or bus down to Sedona at 4,000 feet to achieve the desired speed and intensity.

The athletes have bought in and, much like women's championship team in New Mexico, get an extra layer of physiological benefits from training at altitude.

Day, who prepped at Mesquite High in Arizona, never won a state title in cross country and barely made it into Nike Cross Nationals his senior year. He got 43rd at the national meet. 

Three years later he was third at the NCAA Championships and has two rings. 

"The way he trains is just a really good match for 7,000 feet," Smith said. 

Baxter and Day, who went 2-3, improved from 11th and 23rd in last year's meet, respectively. 

Portland, which had never finished higher than third, worked to maintain a veil of secrecy around Welch, a fifth-year transfer from Minnesota. An inured Achilles' tendon kept him on the sidelines early in the season and Conner deemed him not yet ready to run at the West Coast Conference meet. 

Then, Welch sat out the NCAA West Region meet, too. Teammate Jeff Thies cropped Welch out of photos from the team banquet before posting them on Instagram, all to keep a lid on Conner's plan.

"He had three weeks off in the middle of the season," Conner said. "That was right before Wisconsin, so I'm like, 'OK, here's the thing. You're running nationals. So get going.' He worked hard, and uh...

"We didn't want to tell anybody, man. We didn't want any pressure on this guy. He came here for his fifth year of eligibility from another school and really came through for us, huge."

NCAA West winner Emmanuel Roudolff-Levisse was 11th for Portland. Thies was 14th and Nick Hauger was 26th. Welch, in his one and only appearance in a Portland cross country singlet, was 46th. And Caleb Webb was 54th. 

BYU, eager to bring coach Ed Eyestone his first national championship, was led by freshman Casey Clinger, who was making his 10K debut. Clinger was 24th, the highest finishing freshman. Clinger leaves in January on a two-year LDS church mission to Japan.

"We said all year that we were trying to win," said Rory Linkletter, who was 39th overall and BYU's third man. "It's a little discouraging but I'm proud of the effort and proud of my boys."

Arkansas placed fifth with 259 points and Oregon was sixth with with 274. Iowa State was seventh with 279.