ATTLEBORO, Mass.—One of the best performances in BIG EAST Championships history led Villanova to its eighth conference title and second in the past four seasons at Highland Park early Saturday afternoon. The champion Wildcats placed all five of their runners in the top 10 overall and won with the fourth-lowest team score in the 44-year history of the BIG EAST meet. Villanova scored 27 points to easily outdistance runner-up Providence (55), third-place Georgetown (68) and two-time defending champion Butler (75) among the field of nine teams.
 
This is the second BIG EAST crown in men's cross country for the Wildcats since 2019 and the sixth time that head coach Marcus O'Sullivan has led the Villanova men to a BIG EAST cross country title. Saturday's team score at Highland Park in Massachusetts, a decommissioned golf course which hosted the conference championships for the first time, is only the second time in Wildcats history that the team has recorded a team score below 30 at the meet. The team result came on the heels of a remarkable split of just 22 seconds between the five scoring runners in the Villanova lineup.
 
Senior Haftu Strintzos (Melbourne, Australia) and sophomore Liam Murphy (Millstone, N.J.) came in second and third overall out of 86 runners who started the race. The pair had each taken a turn as the Wildcats top finisher in meets earlier this season. Strintzos ran near the lead with eventual champion Barry Keane from Butler for the entirety of the race and crossed the finish line with a time of 23:21 on the 8,000 meter course.
 
Murphy posted a time of 23:28 in third place, while the rest of the scoring five included senior Charlie O'Donovan (Cork, Ireland) in fifth place (23:34), sophomore Jack Jennings (Mendham, N.J.) in seventh (23:37) and senior Josh Phillips (Belrose, Australia) in 10^th place (23:43). Villanova had six runners in all place in the top 20 individually to earn All-BIG EAST honors in the awards ceremony held at the conclusion of the meet. Each of the five scoring runners garnered first team All-BIG EAST accolades while first year athlete Marco Langon (Raritan, N.J.) tallied a 13^th place finish (23:55) and was named a second team all-conference honoree.
 
Unofficial splits posted twice during the race had the Wildcats comfortably at the front of the team race, but nothing was left to chance as both O'Donovan and Jennings nipped runners from Providence at the finish line to improve Villanova's overall standing and team score. Although it had been Butler that won each of the past two BIG EAST titles since the Wildcats most recently won in 2019, Villanova entered Saturday's race as somewhat of a favorite with a BIG EAST-best No. 11 national ranking in the latest United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) national poll.
 
That ranking is the highest that the Wildcats have carried into the BIG EAST Championships since they were ranked seventh going into the 2014 conference meet. The balance and depth of the Villanova lineup has been the formula for the team's success this season, with additional opportunities awaiting the Wildcats at the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional and the NCAA Championships next month.
 
Rounding out the Wildcats finishers on Saturday was the graduate trio of Jack Fredian (Arlington Heights, Ill.), Ben Seiple (Westport, Conn.) and Evan Addison (Collegeville, Pa.). Fredian tallied a 29^th place finish (24:33), while Seiple was 39^th (25:11) and Addison came in 43^rd (25:22). All eight Villanova runners who placed at the meet finished in the top half of the field of 86 runners.
 
Next up for the Wildcats is the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional at Penn State on Friday, November 11.