{"id":498,"date":"2011-06-09T06:50:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-09T13:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/?p=498"},"modified":"2011-06-09T06:50:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-09T13:50:00","slug":"demps-tarmoh-henrie-out-at-ncaas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/?p=498","title":{"rendered":"Demps, Tarmoh, Henrie Out at NCAA\u2019s"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Usually there isn\u2019t much to say after the first day of the NCAA Championships. After all, the bulk of the finals are on Friday and Saturday. But Wednesday may have already started shaping those finals as three big names didn\u2019t move through.<\/p>\n

The semifinals started blazing hot with the 4×1\u2019s. In the women\u2019s semis first Texas A&M (42.99), then LSU (42.94 SB) laid down marks that set the stage for what should be a fast final. The men followed suit with four teams under 39.00 \u2013 Texas A&M (38.38), Florida (38.49), Illinois (38.72) and Florida St (38.75). <\/p>\n

The track produced more fireworks in the men\u2019s 800 as Charles Jock (UC Irvine, 1:45.77) and Willie Brown (Akron, 1:45.91) lead a sizzling set of races where the final qualifier was UCLA\u2019s Cory Primm in 1:47.43! With the 400\u2019s and 100\u2019s still to come it looked like it was going to be a hot day on the track in spite of the winds that I could hear through the speakers of my computer on the internet feed \u2013 EXCELLENT feed by the way. <\/p>\n

With favorites Jessica Beard (Tx A&M, 51.24), Diamond Dixon (Kansas, 51.64) and Joanna Atkins (Auburn, 51.69) leading the way in the women\u2019s 400, things stayed on track. Then some weird things started to happen. Florida\u2019s Tony McQuay looked to finally be recovered from early injury as he finished strong and blitzed a 44.86 to set the pace in the first heat of the 400. The next 5 qualifiers to the final were all bunched between 45.22 & 45.29. But the final two spots went to Texas A&M\u2019s Demetriius Pinder (45.35, SB of 44.87) and Alabama\u2019s Kirani James (45.51, SB of 44.86). James only made it as he finished 2 in his heat (auto qualifier) as three others ran faster than he did! Not so lucky was A&M\u2019s Tabarie Henry whose 45.60 left him in 6th behind McQuay\u2019s blistering pace in heat one, and out of the final \u2013 the first major loss of points for any of the major team title contenders. <\/p>\n

The bad mojo stayed on the track for the 100 meters as the the women and men\u2019s heats dropped two more. In the women\u2019s heats Jeneba Tarmoh (Tx A&M) never ran as she was tossed out due to a false start \u2013 leaving A&M with no one in the 100 final while LSU moved two through! I can\u2019t stand the false start rule as I\u2019ve stated<\/a> many times before<\/a>. all I will say here is that Tarmoh\u2019s false start was not blatant and she clearly wasn\u2019t trying to gain any unfair advantage. It\u2019s sad that she isn\u2019t in the final.<\/p>\n

The men\u2019s race saw defending champion and favorite Jeff Demps (Florida) just eliminated. Demps didn\u2019t run his best race by any means, but the discrepancy in wind readings \u2013 Heat 1 (-1.0), Heat 2 (-2.4), (-1.1) \u2013 certainly didn\u2019t help as Demps was in the dreaded heat 2 where 1st & 2nd place had the events two slowest qualifiers and Demps, a close third, was left out of the final. While I understand the idea of moving everyone along based on time, in events where the wind plays a factor I sometimes think it was better when we simply moved every along based on placing in your heat \u2013 balance the heats and the first 3 or 4 (depending on the round and # of heats) move on. Both have their good points and bad points, I just hate that potentially the wind may affect this race without everyone having the same conditions. <\/p>\n

Either way, two big favorites are out of the 100\u2019s and the team races are already starting to shift. Texas A&M will have no representation in the women\u2019s 100. Interestingly enough while Demps did not make the final, teammate Terrell Wilks did. Same scenario that occurred in the SEC meet where Demps false started in the 100 and Wilks made the final \u2013 and won the event! Let\u2019s see if we get a repeat here. A bit tougher with sprinters like Makusha (FlSt), Miitchell (FlSt) and Salaam (OK) in the field. But hey, it\u2019s starting to look like this meet isn\u2019t going to follow the script! <\/p>\n

More prelims today \u2013 including 200\u2019s, 1500\u2019s, men\u2019s LJ, 100\/110 hurdles and 1600 relays. So we should get more clarity on who the team contenders will have in the finals the next two days. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Usually there isn\u2019t much to say after the first day of the NCAA Championships. After all, the bulk of the finals are on Friday and Saturday. But Wednesday may have already started shaping those finals as three big names didn\u2019t move through. The semifinals started blazing hot with the 4×1\u2019s. In the women\u2019s semis first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa3DCY-82","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}