INSIDE
MEN'S CROSS COUNTRY
BY AJ HARRISON
@BADGER_TRACK
SCHEDULE
COMING UP
Sunday
Big Ten
9:45 a.m.
Championship
Nov. 15
NCAA Great
Lakes Regional
Nov. 23
NCAA
Championship
Badgers prepare for a
Big Ten battle at Purdue
No. 7 Wisconsin looks for 15th-straight title
fter an impressive
fourth-place showing
against tough competition at the Wisconsin adidas
Invitational on Oct. 19, Mick
Byrne plans on using the same
plan as his team prepares for
the 2013 Big Ten Championship, set for Sunday on the
Boilermaker Cross Country
Course in West Lafayette,
Ind.
A
"We're not changing anything up," said Byrne, UW's
sixth-year head coach. "I know
there's been talk a couple of
weeks about running freshmen. We're not going to do
that. We're going with the
same lineup for adidas and
we're confident that these
guys have a lot of confidence
coming off of the adidas meet."
The UW harriers thrived
Noon
11 a.m.
at their home meet, as the Badgers had
three runners place in the top 50 en route
to their fourth-place showing against a
field that featured 19 ranked teams.
The finish catapulted Wisconsin from
No. 20 in the U.S. Track & Field and Cross
Country Coaches Association poll up to
No. 7, matching its preseason ranking.
"We feel we got over the hump," Byrne
said. "It brightened a lot of people and
we're excited that this group has gone
forward and they're going there with one
thing on their mind, and that's to defend
their Big Ten championship."
Wisconsin enters the meet winners
of the past 14 Big Ten championships,
which is the third-longest active conference winning streak in the nation. Wisconsin has won 46 of the first 96 Big Ten
championships, including 30 of the past
35 championship meets.
"They know they're Badgers andwhen
they put on that uniform they've got a
target on their back," Byrne said. "They
love it. They love the pressure. They
showed just a couple of weeks ago at
adidas they can handle it. And it's exciting moving with this group through that
transformation.
"You have to have a bit of swagger
about you going into a meet like this, because certainly Michigan and Indiana are
coming after us and they want to win just
as much as we do."