It’s been a whirling of a cross country season thus far. I wrote last week that we are set for one of the greatest showdowns at the NCAA Cross Country National Championships.

For more information regarding, the process of how I come to decide these ratings, please check out last month’s introductory post. Below you’ll see my rankings for each of the 31 teams competing at nationals. These are the 31 teams that will compete at nationals. It’s not necessarily the best 31 teams in the country. Due to injuries or shortcomings at certain meets, sometimes we see cases of teams that are very good but don’t make it to the big dance. It happens.

In case you missed it, here’s a link to the pre-season rankings.

If you have any questions or complaints, tweet them at me: @Wood_Report

Here are the official Wood Report rankings after Pre-Nats and Wisconsin:

Place	Team	Points
1	Northern Arizona	100
2	BYU	102
3	Arkansas	157
4	Syracuse	162
5	Oregon	255
6	Colorado	259
7	Portland	266
8	Stanford	279
9	Furman	308
10	Virginia Tech	360
11	Southern Utah	361
12	Oklahoma State	377
13	Colorado State	400
14	Alabama	427
15	Michigan State	433
16	UCLA	447
17	Ole Miss	451
18	Iona	466
19	Washington	470
20	Texas	522
21	Michigan	547
22	Air Force	559
23	Iowa State	569
24	Washington State	570
25	Eastern Kentucky	575
26	Utah State	595
27	Virginia	597
28	Minnesota	637
29	North Carolina State	648
30	Princeton	651
31	Georgetown	758

That’s right. This time, we’ve included BYU in the rankings because there’s no denying that they will be a contender for the national title. How did we come about these scores? We will be releasing the individual projections tomorrow.

If we take a look at the previous rankings, here are a couple observations:

• Arkansas moved from No. 1 to No. 3 but we mentioned in last week’s column that the stars just haven’t aligned for the Razorbacks yet. The talent is there. They could just be bluffing until they get to the national championship.
• Syracuse moved from No. 2 to No. 4 but that may just have to do with realizing just how good NAU is and including BYU in the rankings. We initially omitted them because of my BYU ties.
• Wisconsin went from being ranked No. 7 to missing the top 31. That’s kind of what happens when a stud like Morgan McDonald redshirts.
• Portland makes a big jump from No. 18 to No. 7 and that has a lot to do with their breakout performance at the Wisconsin Invitational.
• Just five of my preseason teams are now out of the picture for NCAAs. We already mentioned Wisconsin. The other four teams are Boise State (previously no. 12), Indiana (I said I should not have included them in the first column), FSU (previously No. 21), Cal (previously No. 22) and Tulsa (previously No. 29). We’re not perfect.
• The team that took the biggest fall but stayed in the rankings was Virginia, which went from No. 14 to No. 27 after a bad say at Wisconsin.
• Sorry to my guys at Georgetown (including Spencer Brown), who read this. I’ve got Georgetown in last for Natty’s. For now. Keep grinding.

We will have a full column of insight and analysis into these rankings tomorrow so stay tuned to CitiusMag.com and fire away with questions or complaints to @Wood_Report on Twitter.