Michigan Men Set to Challenge for Big Ten Indoor Title

THIS WEEK
Fri-Sat., Feb. 25-26 -- Big Ten Indoor Championships (Geneva, Ohio / SPIRE Institute)
TV: B1G+ | Meet Central | Live Results

Friday, Feb. 25 -- 11 a.m. ET | Live Streams: Track / Field
Saturday, Feb. 26 -- 11 a.m. ET | Live Streams: Track / Field

• When to Watch the Wolverines (PDF)

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ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- With a well-balanced squad of title contenders and potential point scorers across the spectrum of event disciplines, the University of Michigan men's track and field team is preparing to challenge for the team title at the 2022 Big Ten Indoor Championships to be held Friday and Saturday (Feb. 25-26) at the SPIRE Institute in Geneva, Ohio.

The Wolverines will be looking for their first conference team title indoors since 1994 on the strength of a roster that features student-athletes ranked top-five in 11 and top-10 in 14 of the 18 events set to be contested on and around the oversized 300-meter oval inside the confines of SPIRE.

Final entries are not due until Wednesday afternoon and specific event assignments will not be made public until after the deadline has passed, but the Wolverines are expected to be led by now three-time school record-holder Miles Brown; 60-meter hurdles title contender Joshua Zeller; multiple-time Big Ten medalist Nick Foster; All-Americans Tom Brady and Devin Meyrer; and 2022 standouts Dubem Amene, Cole Johnson, Oli Raimond and Mason Mahacek, among others.

Michigan, tabbed third in the pre-meet Track and Field Rating Index from the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) behind Iowa and Nebraska, will put that balance to the test beginning Friday at 11 a.m. ET with the start of the seven-event heptathlon.

Day one action on the track, featuring mostly preliminary qualifying races until the evening, will begin just after noon. Field event action for the Wolverines will take place at 3:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. with the pole vault and shot put respectively. The evening will cap off with finals on the oval in the 3,000-meter and distance medley relay races at 6:10 p.m. and 6:50 p.m., respectively.

The second and final day is scheduled for an 11 a.m. start as the heptathlon begins its final three events. Men's field events get underway at 1 p.m. with the triple jump, followed by the weight throw and high jump at 1:45 p.m. and 2 p.m., respectively.

Finals in the remaining track events begin for the men at 1:30 p.m. Michigan will look to score points in the mile, 400 meters, 800 meters, 60-meter hurdles, 600 meters, 200 meters, 5,000 meters and the meet-finale 4x400 relay. The competition is expected to conclude by 4:45 p.m. with the team trophy to be presented as early as 4:50 p.m.

The team champion will be determined based on which school accumulates the most points from the results of each event on the track and in the field. Event champions will garner 10 points for their teams, with diminishing point values awarded to each successive finisher through eighth place. Runners-up will earn eight points, third-place finishers earn six, with one less point awarded for each place through eighth (10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1).

The subscription B1G+ streaming services will carry two feeds of the championships on each of the two days, with one dedicated to track events and the other to field events. Live results will be available through Delta Timing, and updates will be posted throughout the day on the official social media channels of Michigan track and field.

News and Notes

• Now under the guidance of Kevin Sullivan in his first year as the Director of Track and Field / Cross Country for the University of Michigan, the Wolverine men are coming off of a seventh-place finish at the 2021 edition of the Big Ten Indoor Championships. The Wolverines do not return any conference champions, but do have a returning indoor medalist in Nick Foster as well as multiple All-Americans. In total, Michigan returns student-athletes who combined to score 36 of its 52 points.

• Returning All-Americans: Tom Brady (indoor 3,000 meters), Tom Dodd (indoor mile); Christian Hubaker (outdoor steeplechase); Devin Meyrer (cross country, indoor 5,000 meters)

• Returning Individual Big Ten Indoor Championships scorers: Brady (5,000 meters), Dodd (mile), Foster (mile, 3,000 meters), Meyrer (5,000 meters), Mason Mahacek (heptathlon x2), Joshua Zeller (60-meter hurdles x2), Cassidy Henshaw (high jump), Job Mayhue (2019 60-meter hurdles), Will Landowne (2019 3,000 meters)

• Current school record-holders: Meyrer (indoor 5,000 meters), Miles Brown (indoor 600 meters), Distance medley relay (Cole Johnson, Dubem Amene, Brown, Foster)

• The Wolverines closed the regular season on a historic high note this past Saturday as the quartet of Johnson, Amene, Brown and Foster blazed around the 322-meter track at Notre Dame in 9:23.78 to break the school record in the distance medley relay by nearly four full seconds. The performance was second only to Indiana in Big Ten history, as the Hoosiers ran a second faster in the same race, and it ranks Michigan No. 10 on the all-time, all-conditions collegiate performers list in the event. All four men were impressive in their individual legs, as Johnson covered 1,200 meters in 2:52.5 (3:50 mile pace for three-quarters of a mile), Amene raced 400 meters in 46.2 seconds, Brown carried the stick 800 meters in 1:48.7 and Foster went 3:56.3 on the anchor 1,600-meter leg.

• The DMR record marked Brown's third entry on the all-time U-M record board in just his first season as a Wolverine, having previously established Michigan records at the 600- and 800-meter distances. January saw him break the 600 mark with a time of 1:16.98, and he followed that a month later with a blistering 1:47.37 run at 800 meters that saw him overtake Olympian Nate Brannen for the top spot on the list. In the latter, he also ranks No. 2 on both the all-time Big Ten list for freshmen and on the American U20 list.

• Running just off Brown's shoulder has been Cole Johnson, who has posted nearly equal performances of 1:17.98 for 600 meters and 1:47.60 at 800 meters. He ranks No. 4 and No. 3 in those events in school history, respectively.

• Combined with sub-four miles from Foster (3:58.49) and Oli Raimond (3:59.47); sub-8:00 performances over 3,000 meters from Brady (7:55.49), Landowne (7:59.12) and Raimond (7:59.43); and sub-14:00 runs from Meyrer (13:50.72) and Brady (13:52.08), the Wolverines are enjoying arguably their deepest season in school history. Never before have the Wolverines had sub-1:18 600-meter runners, sub-1:48 800-meter runners, sub-four milers, sub-8:00 3,000-meter runners and sub-14:00 5,000-meter runners in the same indoor campaign. Nationally this winter, Michigan is the only school with multiple men under each of those thresholds.

• The school record next-closest to being toppled this winter is the decade-and-a-half-old 7.64 standard in the 60-meter hurdles held by NCAA champion and two-time Olympian Jeff Porter, with Zeller coming closer each week. Zeller blasted a 7.68 run in his regular-season finale at the Silverston Invitational last Friday, moving to within 0.04 of Porter's record in a race he won by a quarter of a second. He will be pushed considerably harder at Big Tens with Nebraska's Darius Luff seeded just 0.01 of a second ahead of him and nine other men behind him having broken eight seconds this winter. Currently, he ranks No. 16 in all of Big Ten history with his 7.68, which also ranks him No. 16 in British history in the event.

• Another DMR member who could join Brown as a multiple-time school record holder this weekend is Amene, who sits just 0.04 of a second behind the six-year-old 46.42 school record at 400 meters held by multiple-time All-American Taylor McLaughlin. In addition to 46.46 and 46.62 performances in the open 400 meters, he has also split well under that time in multiple relay legs this year. He is also near the top of the all-time U-M lists at 200 meters and 600 meters.