Strong running by Huskies falls short of expecations

With Mark Mandi leading the way for the men and Tori Tyler first for the women, the Husky men and women both placed fourth at the Pac-10 Cross Country Championships in Tucson, Ariz., Saturday.

With expectations to place in the top three, the fourth place finish was a bit disappointing for the team.

"We are better than we showed," said Mandi, whose fourth place finish tied the record for best-ever finish by a Washington men's runner. "We didn't accomplish any of our team goals."

It was Stanford that took home the team titles on both the men and women's sides -- the sixth-straight sweep for the Cardinal at the Pac-10s. The Arizona men finished second, with Cal placing third. Behind the Cardinal women was Arizona State, followed by Oregon.

Arizona's Robert Cheseret captured the individual title, completing the course in 23:57, a mere 23 seconds ahead of Mandi.

"Mark ran a tremendous race today," third-year head coach Greg Metcalf told gohuskies.com. "Unfortunately, for whatever reason, we couldn't get anybody else up there with him, which has been one of real strengths this season. It was a great individual performance on Mark's part, but we're going to have to run better as a team (at the NCAA Regional meet) in two weeks."

Small gaps, which had been strengths of the Dawgs all season, were the problem Saturday. The gap between the first and fifth runner was nearly a minute for the men.

"The gaps were larger than usual," said Mandi. "We will definitely have to make the gap from one to five a lot smaller."

For the women, it comes as no shock that a freshman stepped up and ran hard. Freshman Tori Tyler led the women with an eighth place finish, running the 6,000-meter course in 21:05.

"Tori ran great all day, just like she has all season," Metcalf said to gohuskies.com.

The Washington cross-country team heads next to Palo Alto, Calif., in two weeks for the NCAA West Regional Championships. They will look to improve from the Pac-10s and try to earn enough points to qualify for the NCAA Championships.

"We just have to first recover from this weekend, then we'll do some fine-tuning during our training to get us ready for Regionals," said Mandi. "This was a wake-up call for us because we thought we could just go out, race and expect to finish somewhere in the top three."