Thursday, August 16, 2007

Mmmm ... Delicious Cross Country Mind-Candy

When I put together DtB's recent poll about who deserved the #1 ranking in Boys Class AA cross country, I did the usual things one does to identify the best teams in the state at the start of a season. I checked State Meet and Section results from 2006 for top teams with lots of returning scorers. Simple enough, if you just want eight squads worthy of consideration for #1.

The coaches who voted on the pre-season Class AA poll -- which you can find HERE -- probably did much the same thing. They needed to put a finer point on things, of course, sorting teams from #1 to #12. Perhaps a little math was actually enlisted into the cause.

And then there's "KenA55."

Ken is a frequent, knowledgeable poster on Dyestat's Minnesota Track Talk Forum. This week, he posted mocked-up Section Meet results for each and every Class AA and Class A boys section in Minnesota, plus offered state-wide and State Meet projections for the 2007 season. Ken based his work on normalized Section and State results from 2006.

That's a lot of work; that's a lot of tasty mind candy for the cross country fan!

You can find Ken's Class AA product in THIS thread on Dyestat.

You can find his Class A stuff HERE.

The bottom line -- if that's a fitting term to use with polls and projections done in August for a season that climaxes in November -- is that pretty much everyone thinks Rosemount is the best boys team in Class AA.

DtB readers thought so, Coaches' Association voters thought so, and KenA55 thinks so.

Ken has Rosemount edging Wayzata 85-108 at State, in fact.

I can't wait to see what the bottom bottom line proves to be on the hills of St. Olaf - which I can see from my window as I type these words -- in November when the order of finish is final.

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