UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.—For the third straight year and sixth time in the last seven seasons, the men's cross country team is headed to the NCAA Championships. Villanova did it the easy way on Friday afternoon at the Penn State Golf Courses, winning its second team title in three years at the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional to earn an automatic bid to the national meet. Fifth year collegian Liam Murphy (Millstone, N.J.) won his third straight individual Mid-Atlantic Regional title and went 1-2 with junior teammate Marco Langon (Raritan, N.J.) as all five Wildcats scorers garnered all-region accolades.
 
Murphy joins former NCAA cross country national champion Patrick Tiernan as the only Villanova runners to be three-time Mid-Atlantic Region individual champions. He and Langon finishes 1-2 at both the BIG EAST Championships and today's regional meet, matching the feat of Murphy and the now graduated Haftu Strintzos from last season. It is the fourth time the Wildcats have had the top two finishers at the regional meet since the current format began in 2000.
 
Villanova's scoring runners were the same five who also earned All-BIG EAST honors two weeks ago. Murphy and Langon were followed by redshirt freshman Bailey Habler (Sydney, Australia) in the top 10, with Habler continuing his strong season with a ninth place finish and a time of 29:48.7. Another redshirt freshman, CJ Sullivan (Milton, Mass.), broke 30 minutes on the 10,000 meter course and placed 13^th overall with a time of 29:54.8. Sullivan moved up in the individual standings at every juncture of the race, including picking up 21 spots in the second half of the race and passing two runners in the last 1200 meters.
 
Senior Devon Comber (Ambler, Pa.) was the Wildcats fifth scoring runner and came in 25^th overall (30:21.1). He and Langon each secured their second career Mid-Atlantic All-Region honors, while Habler and Sullivan garnered their first. Murphy becomes the 13^th Villanova runner to be a four-time all-region performer. There was a spread of less than a minute separating the Wildcats five scorers, with the team's top four crossing the finish line within 32 seconds of each other.
 
Rounding out the Villanova lineup were redshirt freshman Nick Sullivan (Middletown, N.J.) and true freshman Jack Coomber (Brisbane, Australia). Sullivan placed 40^th in the field of 192 runners with a time of 30:53.0, while Coomber was 76^th in 31:38.4.
 
It took every bit of a strong team-wide performance for the Wildcats to emerge with their 10th team title at either the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional, or its predecessor which was the NCAA District II Championships (1978-99). Villanova scored 50 points to outkick Princeton and Georgetown, who tied for second place with 80 points apiece. Navy was just a point behind in fourth place (81), with the top four teams accounting for 19 of the 25 all-region honors. Georgetown and Navy also had each of their five scorers be all-region. Penn State came in fifth in the team standings with 129 points.
 
Murphy's winning time of 29:22.8 is the ninth-fastest in school history for a 10K cross country race. He now has three of the top nine times on that list, including the Wildcats second-fastest 10K race on the grass (29:05.5) at least year's NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional.
 
Villanova will now prepare for the NCAA Championships which take place on Saturday, November 23 on the Thomas Zimmer Championship Cross Country Course in Madison, Wis., the same course that the Wildcats ran on for the Nuttycombe Wisconsin Invitational earlier this season. It is the sixth time in the last seven seasons that Villanova has earned a team berth to the NCAA Championships. The team has posted three top-20 finishes in the last four seasons at the national meet.