Projections for the Texas Tech men’s track and field team this week at the NCAA championships were modest for a program with two recent national championships.
The top eight in event finals score, and the Red Raiders went into the meet in Eugene, Oregon, with only three entries ranked in the top eight. If each of those entries matched their ranking, they’d score a total of eight points. With some strong individual performances, the Red Raiders doubled that.
Ernest Cheruiyot took third place in the 10,000 meters on Wednesday, June 11. Two nights later, Desean Boyce placed fourth in the 400 meters and Oskar Edlund took fourth in the 400-meter hurdles. Cheruiyot’s place was good for 6 points, Boyce’s and Edlund’s for 5 points each, adding up to Tech’s team total of 16 points.
The Red Raiders showed up at Hayward Field with a No. 14 national ranking and tied for 17th place, 4 points out of cracking the top 10.
“I was pleased today with what we had,” Texas Tech coach Wes Kittley said. “I’d have liked to have had more bullets, but we knew that coming into the meet. … We’ve got a really young crew. We don’t have many seniors on this team, so it was good experience for us.”
Edlund, a senior from Sweden, overtook Southeastern Conference champion Saad Hinti at the finish line and clocked 49.02 seconds, two one-hundredths off his season best.
“It’s one of the best (races) he’s run all year,” Kittley said. “… He didn’t have a bad hurdle at all. He had one hurdle that wasn’t perfect, but I thought he ran a really good race.”
Boyce way outperformed his No. 24 ranking in the 400 meters. Even though the junior from Barbados didn’t break his season best, his 45.78 gave the Red Raiders a fistful of points.
“I actually thought he could do better,” Kittley said. “He went out a little too slow, and that’s what hurt him. He was about seventh coming off the curve, and he really was mowing people down, but he just got a little bit too far behind, and I think that’s a little bit a lack of experience.”
Cheruiyot ran 29 minutes, 10.37 seconds for his bronze medal on Wednesday. The sophomore from Kenya ran the 5,000 on Friday, June 13, in 13:38.09, which was 16th.
“Just really proud of him,” Kittley said. “He’s come here two years in a row and been all-American, top three and four, so I can’t ask much more from him.”
The four-day meet ends Saturday, June 14. The eighth-ranked Texas Tech women expect to fare better than the men. They got eight points Thursday, June 12, with a second-place finish from Shelby Frank in the hammer throw and have five highly ranked entrants remaining: Temitope Adeshina in the high jump, Victoria Gorlova and Tamiah Washington in the triple jump and Zoe Burleson and Frank in the discus.
“I think we can have a really good meet if they’re on fire,” Kittley said. “They’re all really ranked high, so if we’ll go have a good meet, we can score 30, 35 points and give yourself a chance to finish pretty high.”
The top eight finishers at the NCAA championships achieve first-team all-America status, and the next eight are second-team all-Americans. Frank has been a first-team all-American seven times, Cheruiyot and Edlund twice each.
Boyce, a first-year transfer from Western Texas College, achieved first-team all-America status for the second time. The first was at the NCAA indoor championships as part of the Red Raiders’ 1,600-meter relay team that finished second.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: How Texas Tech has fared at NCAA track and field championships
Reporting by Don Williams, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal / Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
