Razorbacks among deep field contending for SEC Championship
FAYETTEVILLE – Arkansas enters the SEC Cross Country Championships as defending team champion with Tennessee serving as host on Friday, Oct. 31, over an 8,000m race on the Cherokee Farm course.
Coverage of the meet will air live on SEC Network at 9 a.m. (CT) with the men’s race starting at 9:08 a.m. (CT). Live results are available at this link.
“It’s going to be a tough row for us to hoe, I think,” stated Razorback men’s head coach Chris Bucknam. “Defending our title is going to take a great, great effort if we’re going to challenge for that championship.
“The league has gotten exponentially better just in a year it looks like. It’s a lot deeper. So, we have our work cut out for us. We could finish first or sixth place, that’s just how deep it is.”
Between two national polls, eight SEC schools are among the top 32 teams ranked heading into the conference weekend. Alabama leads the field at No.6 (FloTrack) and =No. 8 (USTFCCCA).
Additional programs in the USTFCCCA national poll include No. 20 Georgia, No. 22 Missouri, No. 26 Ole Miss, No. 29 Oklahoma while Texas A&M and Texas are receiving votes.
The FloTrack rankings include No. 17 Georgia, No. 19 Arkansas, No. 28 Missouri, No. 30 Texas, No. 31 Ole Miss, and No. 32 Texas A&M.
Arkansas has claimed a conference record 29 SEC titles in cross country and 80 SEC championships overall (29 cross country, 27 indoor, 24 outdoor). The Razorbacks won the past two SEC cross country titles with 38 points each year over Alabama along with 12 of the past 15 conference titles.
Graduate Patrick Kiprop led Arkansas a year ago as the individual champion, becoming the first Razorback winner since Gilbert Boit in 2018. Kiprop was the 13th Arkansas distance runner to win a SEC cross country title as the Razorbacks have totaled 16 individual titles since UA joined the league in 1991.
“The only true look we really got of our full team was at the beginning of the month at Chile Pepper,” noted Bucknam. “We go to Pre-Nationals and take one athlete out of the top five and we drop from maybe a second-place finish to an eighth-place finish. That’s how quickly things can deteriorate if you don’t have everybody running well and dialed in.
“We’ll have everybody running on Friday, and we’ll just have to see what happens. We’re going to compete to win, we always do that. But I haven’t really seen the full team since Chile Pepper.”
The top Arkansas returners from last year’s conference title are Ben Shearer and Timothy Chesondin, who placed 16th and 17th, and were the fifth and sixth Razorbacks to finish. Brian Masai finished 22nd and was eighth among the Arkansas crew.
Shearer also placed fifth as the second Razorback in the 2023 SEC meet and finished 21st as a freshman in 2022.
Razorback newcomers include a pair of Kenyans in James Sankei, who finished fourth at Chile Pepper as the third Arkansas runner, and Owan Logorodi. Also scheduled to race in the SEC Championships are Donovan Bitticks, Eli Seavey, and Jack Williams.
“All we can do is hope that I’ve prepared them well enough physically and from a psychological standpoint they’re ready to go to the well,” said Bucknam. “Because it’s going to take a go to the well effort for us to challenge for that top spot.
National Rankings | USTFCCCA
=8. Alabama
- Georgia
- Missouri
- Ole Miss
- Oklahoma
Receiving votes: Texas A&M, Texas
National Rankings | FloTrack
- Alabama
- Georgia
- Arkansas
- Missouri
- Texas
- Ole Miss
- Texas A&M
