KENOSHA, Wis.—With its full lineup available for the first time this season, Villanova placed five runners in the top-20 overall and won the men's team title at the BIG EAST Cross Country Championships presented by Jeep on Saturday morning.  In a close race at the top of the team standings, the Wildcats defeated Georgetown and the rest of the nine-team field by a margin of six points at Wayne E. Dannehl National Cross Country Course.  Head coach Marcus O'Sullivan and the rest of his staff were named the BIG EAST Coaching Staff of the Year,   
 
It was the depth throughout the lineup that made the difference for Villanova, which won its seventh team title in men's cross country and first in five years.  Graduate student Nathan Rodriguez (Tempe, Ariz.) was the individual runner-up with a time of 25:38.7 on the 8,000 meter course, while three other Wildcats were among the top eight finishers.  Senior veterans Andrew Marston (Wayne, Pa.) and Casey Comber (Maple Glen, Pa.) came in third (25:41.1) and sixth (25:47.3), respectively, while redshirt freshman Haftu Strintzos (Victoria, Australia) was eighth (25:51.1).   
 
Each of the top four Villanova runners garnered first team All-BIG EAST accolades for their top-10 finishes, while sophomore Josh Phillips (Belrose, Australia) came in 18^th overall (26:29.6) to earn second team all-conference honors.  Phillips was the Wildcats fifth scoring runner, while the entire second half of the Villanova lineup crossed the finish line within 10 seconds of each other in 21^st through 26^th places in the field of 88 runners. 
 
This is the third time that the Wildcats have accounted for four of the top eight finishers at the conference meet, with this year's group matching the feat previously accomplished by the 2001 and 2014 teams.  Marston and Comber were first team All-BIG EAST performers for the fourth straight year, with each finishing in the top-10 individually all four years of their career.  Villanova has now had a total of 110 All-BIG EAST honors.    
 
As for the team race, Villanova matched its second-lowest winning score at the BIG EAST Championships with 36 points.  Georgetown finished second with 42 points and Butler (58) was third while also having the individual conference champion in Euan Makepeace (25:03.9).  The win by the Wildcats snapped a string of three straight Hoyas championships.
 
Juniors Martin Barr (Skokie, Ill.) and Rob Morro (Media, Pa.) came in 21^st (26:40.6) and 22^nd (26:40.7) overall to lead the second half of the team's lineup.  They were closely followed by redshirt freshman Patrick Spychalski (Mount Pleasant, S.C.) in 24^th place (26:46.9), junior Nick Steele (Harvard, Mass.) in 25^th (26:48.5) and sophomore Charlie O'Donovan (Cork, Ireland) in 26^th place (26:50.2).
 
Villanova had mixed and matched its lineup through the first few meets of the season while the team built towards the BIG EAST and other championship meets.  It paid off with Saturday's conference championship, in which Marston and Comber were running for just the second time while Rodriguez and Strintzos were competing for the third time.
 
Next up for the Wildcats will be the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional at Lehigh on November 15 at Lehigh.  The distance increases to 10,000 meters for the NCAA regional and national meets, with the top two teams at the regional championships earning automatic bids to the NCAA Championships later this month.  The men's Mid-Atlantic regional race goes off at 12 p.m.