This Sunday the Hoosiers will look to continue their early-season success as they travel to Purdue for the Big Ten Championship meet. The team is ranked No. 18 in the nation and enters the tournament as a favorite, but will receive strong competition with four other teams ranked in the top 20.\nAlso looking to compete for the Big Ten title are No. 11 Wisconsin, No. 12 Michigan, No. 15 Minnesota and No. 20 Ohio State. Wisconsin finished fifth in the NCAA meet last year.\nThe men's team last competed Oct. 19 at Pre-Nationals in Terre Haute where they placed fourth in their heat of 35 teams.\n"I always tell people that cross country is similar to football and basketball in that every year, you can count on four or five teams from the Big Ten being in the top 25," coach Robert Chapman said.\nThus far this year, the team has been led by freshmen twins John and Sean Jefferson. Each sibling has been named Big Ten Runner of the Week once.\n"I am happy that our younger runners have found success, they take the pressure off me," junior Bart Phariss said. "I know that they will run well, so I can just worry about myself."\nPhariss, sophomore Tom Burns and freshman Eric Redman have rounded out the team's top five in recent meets. Juniors Robert DeWitte, Jon Little and Nathan Purcell and freshman Stephen Haas all hope to crack the team's top five.\n"Any of the nine guys we're sending out could be in the scoring five for us the rest of the year," Chapman said. "We've been pretty low key with training this fall, looking more toward November and the track season, so a lot of these guys are really rounding into form about now."\nChapman said he entered the season focusing on the later meets. Now that those meets have arrived, Chapman said his team is physically and emotionally prepared to run well.\n"I don't ever have to worry about getting the guys up for these meets," Chapman said. "But we also made essentially zero emotional investment in any of the meets we have run in so far, so we're pretty fresh in that department."\nTeam members said the squad felt depleted around this time last year and attributed putting less concentration on the earlier meets as a factor. With the training to improve fitness and the early meets out of the way, the Hoosiers are fresh and focused on the important meets. The team will also race in an NCAA regional race on Nov. 16 and the NCAA Championship on Nov. 25. \n"With three races in 23 days, the focus shifts from training to building fitness, to training to prepare to race," Chapman said. "With this group, I just need to make sure they have fresh legs for the races and get them to the meet on time."\nThe Big Ten tournament kicks off at 11:30 a.m. Sunday at Purdue.
Team takes on Big Tens
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