Season Preview: 2017 Michigan Men's Cross Country
8/29/2017 3:57:00 PM | Men's Cross Country
» Seniors Ben Flanagan, Aaron Baumgarten and Connor Mora will look to lead Michigan back to the top of the Big Ten and to NCAAs, as they did two years ago.
» The Wolverines will start the season ranked No. 4 in the Great Lakes Region, one spot better than where they finished at the regional meet a year ago.
» Michigan will look for continued growth from postseason scorers Billy Bund, Jordy Hewitt, and Micah Beller, as well as strong debut seasons from redshirt freshmen Isaac Harding and Jacob Branch.
Led by several veterans of both the trails and the track, the team is aiming for a return in 2017 to the championship-level form it showed in 2015.
Under the guidance of fourth-year head coach and former U-M standout Kevin Sullivan and with the leadership of such seniors as Ben Flanagan, Aaron Baumgarten and Connor Mora, the Wolverines will look to reclaim the Big Ten title they won two years ago and make a return trip to the NCAA Championships on Nov. 18 in Louisville, Kentucky.
First comes the regular season, with important regular-season meets at Notre Dame (Sep. 29) and Wisconsin (Oct. 13) before running the postseason gauntlet with the Big Ten Championships (Oct. 29) in Bloomington, Indiana, the NCAA Great Lakes Regional (Nov. 10) in Terre Haute, Indiana, and NCAAs.
The road to the postseason begins Friday (Sept. 1) with the Michigan Open, the team's lone home meet of the season. The Wolverines will be in action at 10:30 a.m. on the 5K course at Hudson Mills Metropark in Dexter, Michigan.
Wolverine Bites
• The Wolverines will kick off the regular season receiving votes in the National Coaches' Poll published Tuesday by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) and ranked fifth in the Great Lakes Regional Rankings published Monday -- a one-spot improvement from where the Maize and Blue finished at regionals a year ago. For reference, only two teams advanced to the NCAA Championships from the Great Lakes Region in each of the past two years, though four squads made it in 2014.
• Michigan will be looking to return to the form it showed in 2015 when it swept the Big Ten and Great Lakes Regional titles en route to a ninth-place finish at nationals, tying the program's best finish since 2003. Three members of that '15 squad who competed at nationals remain in seniors Flanagan, Baumgarten and Mora. Flanagan, a two-time top-100 finisher at NCAAs, returns after missing last fall and much of the spring with injury, while Baumgarten is coming back as the Wolverines' top runner from a year ago and Mora returns after a breakthrough season on the track.
• Also returning from last year's squad as postseason scorers are senior Billy Bund, who tallied points for Michigan at both the Big Ten and Regional meets, regional scorer sophomore Jordy Hewitt and Big Ten scorer senior Micah Beller.
• Bolstering the Wolverines' lineup will be the Michigan cross country debuts of redshirt freshmen Isaac Harding and Jacob Branch. Both performed well on the track in the spring, and Harding was a representative for Team USA at the IAAF World Junior Cross Country Championships in Kampala, Uganda, this past spring.
• The Wolverines have advanced to the NCAA Championships in seven of the last nine years, and have finished top-three in the Big Ten in five of the past six seasons with a title in 2015.
Breaking Down the Roster
• Baumgarten returns as the top runner from a year ago, leading the Wolverines in all five of his races with five top-10 finishes. The senior just missed qualifying for the NCAA Championships as an individual with a 10th-place showing at the Great Lakes Regional and took sixth at the Big Ten Championships. He excelled on the track in 2017, particularly indoors where he was a Big Ten scorer at both 3,000 (third) and 5,000 meters (sixth).
• Flanagan returns to the Michigan lineup after missing the 2016 campaign with an injury. He saw limited action on the track, but made it back for a postseason run that included an eighth-place finish at the Big Ten Outdoor Championships at 10,000 meters and a trip to the NCAA East Preliminary Rounds. He will look to recapture his fitness from two years ago, when he won the Big Ten 10,000-meter title on the track and was a second-team All-American at that distance. In cross country, he's a three-time top-100 finisher at NCAAs, taking 64h in 2014.
• Granted a fifth year of eligibility after an injury-shortened sophomore year in 2014, Mora is back for one final year with the Wolverines. He was Michigan's No. 2 runner at the Big Ten Championships with a 19th-place finish and took 129th at the NCAA Championships in 2015 as a member of the ninth-place squad. On the track this past year, He broke the magical sub-four-minute threshold in the mile and was a Big Ten Outdoor Championships scorer both in the steeplechase and at 5,000 meters. In the steeplechase, he advanced to the NCAA East Prelims where he finished 19th.
• Alongside Baumgarten and Mora, Bund also returns from a year ago after scoring both at the Big Ten Championships and the Great Lakes Regional, placing 11th in the latter just behind Baumgarten and 22nd in the former as Michigan's No. 3 runner.
• Michigan will be looking for Hewitt to show the same form as in his 23rd-place finish at the Great Lakes Regional a year ago as the Wolverines' No. 4 runner. The Australian has speed to burn, having finished seventh at 1,500 meters in the Big Ten Outdoor Championships final in 2016 as a freshman.
• Though 2017 will mark his Michigan cross country debut, Harding will take to the course with the confidence gained from international competition. The redshirt freshman was 61st at the 2017 IAAF World Junior Cross Country Championships in Uganda after finishing as the runner-up at the USATF Junior Cross Country Championships in Bend, Oregon. Fellow redshirt freshman Branch also logged some international experience, with both men running on Team USA's NACAC Junior Championships team.
• The Wolverines will also be looking for continued growth from Beller, who was the No. 5 man for Michigan at the Big Ten Championships a year ago in 49th place, and Austin Benoit, who was Michigan's No. 7 at Big Tens in 59th. Both men competed at the NCAA East Prelims on the track outdoors in the spring, with Beller taking 19th at 5,000 meters.
Players Mentioned
