Five Wolverines Set for NCAA Championships

» Big Ten champions Taylor McLaughlin (400m hurdles) and Ben Flanagan (10,000m) lead the way to Eugene, Oregon, for the NCAA Championships, joined by Andrew Liskowitz (shot put), Grant Cartwright (shot put) and Brandon Piwinski (high jump).
» All but Piwinski will compete Wednesday (June 6) with Piwinski set to compete Friday (June 8) along with McLaughlin, should he advance from the semifinals.

THIS WEEK
Wed. & Fri., June 6 & 8 -- NCAA Outdoor Championships (Eugene, Ore.), 6:30 p.m. PST (Wed.) / 5 p.m. PST (Fri.)
Meet Homepage | Live Results

Watch Live on ESPN Networks | Full Broadcast Schedule
Wednesday Track Events -- ESPN2 national broadcast (4:30 p.m. PST)
Wednesday Shot Put -- ESPN3 live stream (6:30 p.m. PST)
Friday High Jump -- ESPN3 live stream (4:50 p.m. PST)
Friday Track Events -- ESPN national broadcast (5:30 p.m. PST)

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ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Five men will represent the University of Michigan on collegiate track and field's biggest stage against the nation's best this week at the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Oregon, on Wednesday (June 6) and Friday (June 8).

Two-time outdoor All-American Taylor McLaughlin leads the way for the Wolverines, joined by fellow outdoor All-American Ben Flanagan, returning qualifiers Andrew Liskowitz and Grant Cartwright, and first-time NCAA competitor Brandon Piwinski.

McLaughlin qualified in his signature outdoor 400-meter hurdles event, Flanagan returns to nationals in the 10,000 meters for the first time since 2016, both Liskowitz and Cartwright advanced in the shot put for the second year in a row and Piwinski became Michigan's first high jump qualifier since 1994.

They will compete during the Wednesday and Friday sessions at Historic Hayward Field, with women's competition -- including three Michigan qualifiers -- scheduled for Thursday and Saturday. Action on the track on four days will be nationally televised on ESPN2 (Wednesday and Thursday) and ESPN (Friday and Saturday) with live field event streams available at ESPN.com.

The full schedule of competition for the quintet can be found below.

Wolverines Competing This Weekend
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 6
Name	Event	Round	Time (ET)
Taylor McLaughlin	400 meter hurdles	Semifinals (Heat 3)	9:30 PM
Grant Cartwright	Shot Put	Final	9:40 PM
Andrew Liskowitz	Shot Put	Final	9:40 PM
Ben Flanagan	10,000 meter run	Final	10:08 PM

FRIDAY, JUNE 8
Name	Event	Round	Time (ET)
Brandon Piwinski	High Jump	Final	8:00 PM
Taylor McLaughlin *	400 meter hurdles	Final	9:57 PM

* = Pending advancement from the first round

All five Wolverines advanced to Eugene by way of finishing among the 12 qualifiers in their respective events at the NCAA East Prelims two weekends ago. Michigan has had five or more qualifiers to the national meet in each of the past three seasons, and has advanced at least one to NCAAs every year dating back to 2002.

Michigan's five representatives will be going for both team and individual accolades. Should they finish top-eight in their events, they will have the opportunity to score as many as 10 points toward Michigan's team total (10 for first, down through 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 for the top eight) and earn first team All-America honors.

Second-Team All-America honors will be bestowed upon those placing ninth through 16th, with the remainder of the field earning Honorable Mention awards.

In addition to the wall-to-wall coverage on the ESPN family of networks, live results are available from Flash Results. Stay tuned to the official social media platforms of the program for the most up-to-date information throughout the weekend.

EVENT-BY-EVENT BREAKDOWN

400-Meter Hurdles
Three semifinal heats of eight competitors each. The top two finishers in each heat will qualify for the eight-man final, which will be rounded out with the two fastest semifinalists who were not top-two in their heats.

This weekend marks the final competition at Historic Hayward Field in its current iteration before it undergoes a multi-year renovation process ahead of the 2021 IAAF World Championships, and perhaps no current Wolverine will be sadder to see it go than McLaughlin. Just in the last three years alone, the confines of Hayward have seen McLaughlin earn first and second team All-America honors, a USATF Junior title and an IAAF World Junior Championships silver medal, and the stadium was the site of his career-best 49.45 at World Juniors.

In what will be his final collegiate appearance at Hayward -- Austin, Texas, will host nationals for the next two years -- McLaughlin is once again a favorite for All-America honors. With a Big Ten title and a season's best of 49.62, his best-ever in college competition, McLaughlin is ranked seventh in the country and projected by FloTrack, Dyestat and Track and Field News to take top-eight.

With three sub-50-second performances and nothing slower than 51 seconds this season, he is having by far the most consistently fast season of his career. Nationally, only three other men have run sub-50 more frequently than McLaughlin, and two weekends ago he was the fifth-fastest of only seven men to break 50 seconds at the Prelims in either the East or West.

In the history of Michigan track and field, only national champion Neil Gardner (1996, 1997) and Dick Cephas (1960, 1961) have earned multiple national top-eight finishes in the 400-meter or 440-yard hurdles. McLaughlin could join that list this week.

Also potentially in danger this weekend is Gardner's collegiate-season record of 49.18 from the 1997 NCAA Championships. Gardner's overall school record of 48.30 is from the 1996 Olympics.

Shot Put
Two simultaneous flights of 12 throwers in the trials. Each thrower gets three preliminary throws in the trials to qualify for the final, which will consist of the nine individuals with the best marks. The final will take place directly after the trials.

Liskowitz and Cartwright are coming off the best combined effort by a pair of shot put teammates in Michigan history at the NCAA East Prelims, making Michigan one of only three schools (California and Kentucky being the others) to advance multiple shot putters to nationals.

Liskowitz went 19.92m (65 feet, 4.25 inches) for third place in Tampa, Florida, while Cartwright launched a career-best 19.53m (64-1) on his final throw to clinch his berth. Based on performances from the East and West Prelims, Liskowitz's mark was the sixth-best of the weekend, while Cartwright was No. 12.

Liskowitz was not far off his school-record heave of 20.28m (66-6.5) earlier in the season, which ranks him No. 8 in the field -- including all regular-season marks -- heading into the Championships. If all goes according to plan and he once more approaches or exceeds that mark, Liskowitz will be in good position to become the first Michigan man to secure first team All-America honors (or top-eight) since Dave Owen won the national title in 1957. No man who has thrown at least 20 meters has ever finished lower than fifth at NCAAs, though nine men in the field will bring 20-meter credentials to Eugene.

Never have two Michigan shot putters finished top-eight at the same Championships, though Cartwright is on a recent trajectory to compete with the nation's best after career-best throws in each of his last two meets.

10,000 Meters
One final featuring 24 competitors.

Though interrupted by a 2017 season that was mostly lost to injury, Ben Flanagan is hoping to pick up in 2018 where left off in 2016. Already a cross country All-American and a Big Ten Outdoor champion at 10,000 meters this year, the redshirt senior looks to improve on the 14th-place finish he logged in the NCAA Championships 10,000 meters final in 2016.

At 29:17.24, the time that delivered him from the East Prelims to Eugene, his season's best may not line up with some of the marks posted by his rival finalists -- 16 of whom have broken 29 minutes. Few in the country, however, have shown the tactical prowess that won him the Big Ten title and pushed him to third overall in the East Prelims.

He was seeded fourth in the conference before dropping the Big Ten field for the title with a powerful final mile, and he once more used that approach at the prelims to go from 26th in the field to third, nearly outkicking All-Americans Vincent Kiprop of Alabama and Lawrence Kipkoech of Campbell.

If recent history is any indicator, a lightning quick time may not be necessary to be in the hunt at the front. In each of the past three seasons, the winning time at nationals has been just above or just below 29 minutes.

A top-eight finish -- not out of the question as Dyestat currently projects him at ninth -- would put Flanagan in rarified air as the first Wolverine to place that high since Brad Barquist was third at the 1991 NCAA meet.

High Jump
All 24 competitors will compete on a single high jump pit.

Much like Flanagan, high jumper Brandon Piwinski lost the entirety of his 2017 campaign to injury, but has bounced back in a big way in 2018 to become Michigan's first NCAA high jump competitor since Jon Royce in 1994.

Conditions during the NCAA East Prelims high jump could not have been much worse -- wind and sideways torrential rain as tropical storm Alberto moved nearby the Tampa area -- but Piwinski could not have performed much better. Showing poise well beyond his underclassman status, he landed successful first-attempt makes at each of his first two heights to secure his berth to Eugene.

The performance was a verification of his breakthrough effort at the Big Ten Championships, where he finished fifth with a career-best 2.14m (7-0.25) clearance to become Michigan's first seven-foot high jumper since 2014, and, before that, his high jump victory at the National Relay Championships at 2.11m (6-11).

He will now perform on the biggest stage of his career in front of thousands of spectators at Hayward Field, looking to follow in his father Paul's steps at the national level. The elder Piwinski was a two-time All-American for Michigan State in the early 1980s.

Jumping for Piwinski will start at 2.08m (6-9.75) as one of the first jumpers in the order before raising sequentially to 2.13m (6-11.75), 2.18m (7-1.75), 2.21m (7-3) and then three additional centimeters from there on.