Women’s Soccer advances in NCAA Tournament while Tennis and Cross Country prepare for NCAA Championships
A very busy Saturday in Spartan Sports saw the football team fall at Illinois , Men’s Basketball rallying past Bowling Green at home, and Hockey sweeping their third straight series while picking up their seventh straight win. Let’s see what happened elsewhere in the athletic department.
Women’s Soccer defeated Western Michigan 3-1 on Saturday to advance to the second round of the NCAA tournament. MSU will face 4th seeded and 21st ranked Texas on Friday at 4 PM in Durham, NC.
Women’s Basketball continued their dominant start to the season, downing Eastern Kentucky 96-54 on Thursday and picking up a 79-42 win at Western Michigan on Sunday. MSU improved to 5-0 and will host Detroit Mercy on Wednesday November 20. Tip off is at 6:30 PM on Big Ten +.
O will have a piece out this week on Women’s Soccer and Basketball so be sure to keep an eye out for that.
In Cross Country, the MSU Women earned an at-large team bid to the NCAA Championships while Riley Hough was selected individually for the men.
On the women’s side, the Spartans finished in fourth place behind regional champion Notre Dame who was followed by Wisconsin and Toledo. The Spartans finished ahead of Big Ten rivals Ohio State (5th) and Michigan (6th). The Spartan Women averaged a 5:25 per mile pace over the 6 kilometer course while champion Notre Dame went 5:19 and challengers OSU and UM were 5:27 and 5:30, respectively.
Top individual finishers for the Spartans were Rachel Forsyth (2nd, 19:31.7), Kaitlyn Hynes (7th, 19:46.3), Taylor Ewert (32nd, 20:27.4), and Olivia Millen (33rd, 20:28.2).
This is the women’s 24th straight NCAA championship appearance. They won the national title in 2014 and finished in the top 10 in 2020.
Hough placed seventh in the men’s 10K race with a time of 29:26.9, which was over 3 minutes faster than his 2023 Regionals time.
The MSU Men also finished fourth as a team, behind champion Notre Dame, who was followed by Wisconsin and Butler. The Spartans averaged a 4:47 mile over the 10K course, just one second off of Notre Dame and second place Wisconsin. MSU also finished ahead of rival Michigan, who came in at 6th place with a 4:49 mile average.
In both the men’s and women’s championship, standings are determined not by times though, but by the placement of a team’s top 5 finishers. So the better placement of a team’s top 5 finishers added together, the lower the score, which results in a better team standing. For example, the top 5 finishers for the Notre Dame Women were 3-5-9-14-20th place, which adds to 51 and produced the team championships. MSU’s top 5 finishers added to 111.
The 2024 NCAA Cross Country Championships will take place in Madison, WI on Saturday November 23 with the women’s 6K race beginning at 10:20 and men’s 10K at 11:10.
In Men’s Tennis, Ozan Baris and Aristotelis Thanos are competing at the NCAA Individual Championships, which begin today in Waco, TX. Baris will face Samir Bannerjee from Stanford while Thanos draws Alex Kotzen from Tennessee.
Wrestling won on the road at #25 Ohio, 22-19 on Sunday. This was MSU’s 24th consecutive non-conference dual win and improved the Spartans to 2-0 on the season. MSU scored wins in the 125, 133, 141, 165, and 197 pound weight classes against the Bobcats. The Spartans travel to Army this weekend for the Black Knight Invitational.
Nick King/Lansing State Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK
Finally, Volleyball has found some momentum with wins against Michigan and Iowa over the weekend. MSU took down UM 3-1 on Friday before traveling to Iowa on Sunday to shut out the Hawkeyes 3-0. The Spartans have now won three in a row and have a couple of home matches this weekend, beginning with Oregon at 6 PM on Thursday and followed by Maryland at 1 PM on Saturday. Both games will be streamed on Big Ten +.