BATON ROUGE – With the start of the championship season just three weeks away, the LSU Tigers are making a push for postseason honors following this weekend’s meets as they currently stand above the rest of the country with four national leaders across the 17 events contested at the NCAA Division I Indoor Track & Field Championships.
LSU’s four NCAA leaders are two more than Tennessee’s pair and three more 13 other programs who boast one national leader apiece in the latest NCAA Division I men’s event rankings for 2016.
Among the teams with one NCAA leader to their credit at this point in the season are Southeastern Conference rivals Arkansas, Georgia and Texas A&M, as well as NC State, Oklahoma State, Oral Roberts, Penn State, Portland, Purdue, South Florida, Southern California, Syracuse and Virginia.
Did you know the Tigers top the NCAA with 4 national leaders after this weekend’s meets?! #GeauxFaster #GeauxFarther pic.twitter.com/Lhh0Pmalhc
— LSUTrackField (@LSUTrackField) February 8, 2016
Juniors Jordan Moore and Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake were the first Tigers to top the NCAA rankings with their performance at the Conference Clash Power Five Invitational in Birmingham, Alabama, two weeks ago with Moore racing to an NCAA-leading 7.69 seconds in the 60-meter hurdles and Mitchell-Blake clocking an NCAA-leading and World-leading 20.57 in the 200-meter dash at the Birmingham Crossplex.
A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Moore is currently tied atop the national rankings in the men’s 60-meter hurdles with Oral Roberts freshman Israel Nelson as they compete in what is sure to be a tightly-contested final for the national title at the NCAA Championships in March. Moore continued that form this weekend when he clocked an altitude-adjusted 7.70 at the New Mexico Collegiate Classic.
Mitchell-Blake’s lifetime PR of 20.57 is currently a split-second ahead of the 20.58 run by Texas A&M’s Devin Jenkins in College Station this past weekend as the Tiger All-American has held the national lead now for the past two weeks. Mitchell-Blake, who competes internationally for the United Kingdom, has run the 200-meter dash in only one meet this season.
The Tigers followed their appearance at the Conference Clash Power Five Invitational by producing two more NCAA leaders at the Razorback Invitational held in Fayetteville, Arkansas, two weekends ago.
That’s where junior Michael Cherry ran an indoor personal best and national-leading time of 45.78 in his first 400-meter dash as an LSU Tiger to claim the title in the men’s invitational event at the Razorback Invitational. Cherry’s 45.78 remains the NCAA’s fastest 400 meters this season by more than six tenths of a second ahead of Southeastern Louisiana’s Dontrell Lyons in the No. 2 spot with a time of 46.43.
Cherry also ran a meet-leading 45.30-second split on LSU’s 4×400-meter relay team that clocked an NCAA-leading time of 3 minutes, 4.46 seconds in Razorback Invitational’s final event as he joined with LSU senior Cyril Grayson (47.23), junior LaMar Bruton (46.06) and senior Fitzroy Dunkley (45.90) for the fastest relay in the country in 2016.
The reigning NCAA Outdoor Champions in the 4×400-meter relay are poised to win their second NCAA Indoor crown in three seasons as they lead Florida’s 3:05.57 by more than one second in the national rankings.
The Tigers and Lady Tigers are now just a few weeks from the start of the championship season at the SEC Indoor Championships later this month as they continue their preparations this weekend with a trio of events by playing host to the LSU High Performance Meet on Saturday and traveling to the Tyson Invitational in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Iowa State Classic in Ames over two days on Friday and Saturday.