Montana State University
Nuttycombe Wisconsin Invitational
No. 25 Bobcats Travel to Wisconsin for Nuttycombe Invitational
9/26/2024 8:00:00 AM | Men's Cross Country
Stacked field features 17 ranked teams, giving MSU prime opportunity to make hay towards a bid to third straight NCAA Championships appearance
BOZEMAN, Mont. -- The biggest meet on the regular season calendar awaits the No. 25 Montana State men's cross country team on Friday, as the Bobcats head to Madison, Wisconsin, for the Wisconsin Nuttycombe Invitational.
An astounding 17 ranked men's teams in the latest USTFCCCA National Coaches' Poll will toe the line at Zimmer Championship Course, also the site of the 2024 NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships on November 23.
The men's eight-kilometer race gets underway at 12 p.m. MT/1 p.m. CT and will be streamed on both Big Ten Network Plus and RunnerSpace. Live results can be found here.
The meet will be the first opportunity for the Bobcats to race since they kicked off their season in Bozeman back on August 30 at the MSU Bobcat Twilight, going 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 to dominate a smaller field.
Montana State received their invite to Nuttycombe, the premier meet on collegiate cross country's regular season calendar, thanks to back-to-back at-large bids to the NCAA Championships in each of the last two years.
Montana State's men placed 26th at the national meet in Oklahoma in 2022 and 13th in Virginia in 2023, the second-best finish in school history.
With the way that at-large bids to the NCAA's are earned, the Bobcats' opportunity to compete against so many other ranked teams marks an important opportunity for the men try to get back to the big stage for a third straight year.
"It's exciting to be in this situation because once you get into a meet like this, the road to getting a team to NCAAs is so much clearer," head coach Lyle Weese said. "It means a lot to be in the mix and be recognized as a solid collegiate cross country team, but probably more than anything, it just makes the road to nationals so much easier. The qualifying system is so dependent on running well at meets like this. If we can go there and run well, it makes the road so much clearer and easier for us."
Other teams competing in Wisconsin on Friday include: No. 2 BYU, No. 5 Iowa State, No. 6 North Carolina, No. 13 Wisconsin, No. 14 Eastern Kentucky, No. 15 Virginia, No. 16 Portland, No. 17 Villanova, No. 18 Princeton, No. 19 Syracuse, No. 20 Wake Forest, No. 21 Colorado, No. 23 Iona, No. 27 Washington, No. 29 Tulsa, and No. 30 Air Force.
"It's a meet where we're up against elite competition really from the top to the bottom," Weese said. "Everyone in the meet is going to be really strong."
Due to a few injuries to runners in their top seven, the 25th-ranked Bobcats will be shorthanded. However, Weese feels confident the depth of the team will allow them to still perform at a high level.
"We are going to be without a few of our key contributors in this meet, but we do have really good team depth and I think we have the people to go and still place really well as a team," Weese said. "We still have a really solid core group and then some people coming along, so I think we can do really well."
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