EARLYSVILLE, Va.—Senior Liam Murphy (Millstone, N.J.) and fifth year Haftu Strintzos (Melbourne, Australia) each tallied All-America finishes and Villanova finished a successful Fall season with a 20^th place team result at the 2023 NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships on Saturday morning. Murphy led the Wildcats with a 14^th place finish to earn his first career cross country All-America accolade, while Strintzos came in 38^th and is a cross country All-American for the second time. This is the third time in the last four seasons that Villanova has posted a top-20 team finish at the national championships.
 
Murphy posted a time of 29:17.5 in the 10,000 meter race and Strintzos crossed the line in 29:49.3. Both runners were stuck in the middle of a tightly crowded field as the race began with a downhill stretch before they were each able to make a move during the second kilometer. Official race splits showed that Murphy moved up 19 spots and Strintzos gained 44 places by the 2,000 meter mark before they were each able to settle in to a rhythm from there. The other three scoring runners for the Wildcats were sophomore Marco Langon (Raritan, N.J.), sixth year Henry Myers (Portland, Ore.) and fifth year Ryan Kredell (Geneva, Ill.).
 
Villanova got both Langon and fifth year Xian Shively (Glendale, Calif.) back in the lineup this week after each had missed the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional last week. Langon came in 144^th overall in 30:58.9, followed by Myers who finished 182^nd (31:28.0) and Kredell who was 197^th with a time of 31:41.6. Rounding out the Wildcats lineup were junior Devon Comber (Ambler, Pa.) who finished in 32:21.2 and Shively who had a time of 33:03.9.
 
The individual results added up to a team score of 477 for Villanova, which had the best finish among three BIG EAST squads at the meet. Butler was one spot behind the Wildcats in 21^st place with a team score of 484, while Georgetown was 30^th with a score of 686. Villanova came in 19^th at the NCAA Championships last season and was 20^th at the 2020 meet which was held in the Spring of 2021.
 
Murphy and Strintzos are the first pair of Wildcats to be cross country All-Americans since 2013 when Villanova had two top-40 finishers in Patrick Tiernan (9^th) and Sam McEntee (27^th). Saturday's result was an improvement of 78 spots from last season for Murphy, who made his NCAA Championships debut with a 92^nd place result last year in Stillwater, Okla. Strintzos has finished as high as ninth at the NCAA Championships and has three career top-70 finishes in five starts at the national meet. The Wildcats have now had 42 All-Americans all-time in cross country.
 
Villanova capped off a strong season with Saturday's national championship race. Nationally-ranked throughout the year and as high as seventh midway through the season, the Wildcats tallied second place team finishes at both the BIG EAST Championships and the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional. Five all-region performers helped Villanova earn an automatic qualifying berth for the NCAA Championships this week, while Murphy was the individual winner at both the BIG EAST Championships and the Mid-Atlantic Regional.
 
From a historical perspective, the Wildcats are one of only a dozen Division I men's cross country programs to score at the NCAA Championships at least 37 times. Villanova is one of eight teams to have won at least four national titles.