NEW ORLEANS—Sophomore runner Liam Murphy (Millstone, N.J.) and Villanova men's head coach Marcus O'Sullivan earned top honors in the Mid-Atlantic Region from the United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) on Tuesday afternoon. Murphy is the Charles Warner Award winner as the Mid-Atlantic Men's Athlete of the Year and O'Sullivan was voted the Harry Groves Award recipient as the top men's coach in the region. The USTFCCCA announced its award winners from all nine regions that make up Division I cross country following last week's NCAA Championships.
 
This is the third straight season and the sixth time in the last 10 years that a Villanova athlete has been the regional Men's Athlete of the Year in cross country. Murphy is a first time award winner and joins teammate Haftu Strintzos, who earned the award in each of the past two seasons. It is the 12^th time in O'Sullivan's head coaching career that he has been the Mid-Atlantic Coach of the Year, including the eighth time in men's cross country. In his 24^th season as the Wildcats head coach, O'Sullivan guided his team to BIG EAST and NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional titles along with the program's highest finish at the NCAA Championships in eight years.
 
Murphy won the individual title at the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional earlier this month and went on to be the highest finisher from the region at the NCAA Championships last weekend. He recorded a 92^nd place finish with a time of 30:10.2 over 10,000 meters at the national meet in his first career race at an NCAA championship in any collegiate season (cross country, indoor, outdoor). Murphy and teammate Jack Jennings were the only runners from the Mid-Atlantic Region to tally top-100 finishes at the championships this season.
 
One week earlier at the Mid-Atlantic meet, Murphy powered through torrential rain on the Penn State course to finish first out of 181 runners. He had a margin of victory of more than 11 seconds in the race and wound up being the top Villanova finisher three times in six starts this season. Murphy earned first team All-BIG EAST accolades last month with a third place finish at the conference championships. He paced the Wildcats lineup with a fourth place individual finish at the Paul Short Run earlier in the year and tallied four top-five finishes in his six races during the Fall.
 
Villanova had one of its best seasons in recent memory under the guidance of O'Sullivan and men's assistant coach Matt Valeriani. Together they led the Wildcats to the program's eighth BIG EAST title overall and second in the last four seasons with a dominant performance at the BIG EAST Championships in Attleboro, Mass. Villanova placed all five of its scoring runners among the top 10 overall finishers at the conference meet and won with the fourth-lowest score (27 points) in the 44-year history of the meet.
 
A deep Wildcats lineup gave the team its best depth in recent seasons and Villanova was ranked first in every Mid-Atlantic Region ranking released by the USTFCCCA during the season. The team came in at No. 11 in the national poll going into conference championship weekend which is the highest national ranking the Wildcats have had at that point in the season since 2014. Villanova maintained the No. 11 ranking after winning the team title at the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional where six runners finished in the top 15 to earn Mid-Atlantic All-Region honors. It marked the fifth time since the current regional format was instituted in 2000 that the Wildcats have had six all-region honorees.
 
Villanova earned an automatic bid to the NCAA Championships and tallied a 19^th place finish at the national meet, its highest since 2014 and the second appearance in the past three seasons in which the Wildcats posted a top-20 team finish.