BATON ROUGE – Just one week after Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake earned SEC Men’s Runner of the Week honors for his NCAA-leading 200-meter dash in Birmingham, fellow junior Michael Cherry made it two-straight weeks for the Tigers as he was recognized Tuesday for his performance at the Razorback Team Invitational last weekend.
The Tigers have now featured the SEC Men’s Runner of the Week in each of the last two weeks after Cherry clocked an NCAA-leading indoor personal best of 45.78 seconds to win the invitational 400 meters before he paced the team to a collegiate-leading 3 minutes, 4.46 seconds in the 4×400-meter relay on Saturday at the Randal Tyson Track Center.
Cherry lined up in his first 400-meter race as an LSU Tiger emerged as an NCAA-title contender in the event with his run of 45.78 to finish seventh tenths of a second clear of the field in the event.
His time was seven tenths of a second faster than Texas A&M’s Fred Kerley (46.48) in the race and more than sixth tenths of a second faster than the No. 2-ranked performer in the country in Southeastern Louisiana’s Dontrell Lyons (46.43) this season. Cherry became the No. 6-ranked 400-meter sprinter indoors in school history with his season-opening performance in the event.
Cherry later followed with a meet-leading 45.30-second split for the third leg of LSU’s 4×400-meter relay that clocked another collegiate-best performance this year as he teamed with senior Cyril Grayson, junior LaMar Bruton and senior Fitzroy Dunkley to run 3:04.46 and finish nearly four seconds ahead of Florida (3:08.44) for the Razorback Invitational title.
LSU’s seasonal-best time of 3:04.46 in Saturday’s meet finale is also more than one second faster than Florida’s No. 2-ranked time of 3:05.57 in the NCAA rankings for the 2016 indoor season after the weekend.
LSU’S SEC ATHLETES OF THE WEEK FOR 2016
SEC Men’s Runner of the Week
Jan. 26 – Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake
Feb. 2 – Michael Cherry