Beta, Cutters battle for Spring Series lead

Halfway through the Little 500 Spring Series, the men’s white jersey still has no clear owner.

The white jersey belongs to the team who wins the IU Student Foundation’s Spring Series. Right now, three teams still have a good shot at it, and two others aren’t far behind.

That means Saturday’s Miss–N-Out competition will have that much more significance.

“I think that the white jersey will be determined on Saturday,” said Beta Theta Pi senior rider Will Kragie.

Currently, Cutters has the lead with 22 points after Kevin Depasse and Tim Nixon went one-two at Wednesday’s Individual Time Trials and earned 10th at qualifications. The lowest score wins the jersey.

Beta sits in second place with 24 points, as it won the pole for the second consecutive year last week, and Eric Anderson and Tom Laser finished sixth and seventh, respectively, at ITTs.

Black Key Bulls retains third with 27 points, qualifying second and having four riders in the top 13 at ITTs.

Delta Tau Delta and Phi Delta Theta round out the top five, with 42 and 57 points, respectively.

Kragie is the top returning finisher from last year’s Miss-N-Out competition. He finished third, edging out Nixon.

“I’m hoping he doesn’t try to get his revenge this year,” Kragie said. “Those guys (Cutters) are talented.”

It’s not the first time this spring the Cutters and Beta will square off in a Miss-N-Out event. During the first Fast Friday at the beginning of March, Beta’s Matt Green won a much smaller MNO, with his teammate Eric Anderson finishing second. Nixon finished third with Depasse behind him.

“We refer to that day as the Beta-Cutters team death match,” Kragie said. “That’s really how I think it’s going to be the end of the season and into the race. We have good relations with those guys, and it’s always fun to compete against them.”

Kragie said he believes MNO is much different from ITTs and qualifications, as it’s not just about how fast you are, but about how smart you are on the bike.

“It’s not so much about raw speed,” Kragie said. “It’s more about how good of a bike racer are you, how good do you handle yourself in a pack and how do you advance yourself in a pack? I think experience and bike handling are the most important things.”

Kragie said he believes this competition is much more tactical than the others. He said his strategy for Saturday is to win the backstretch in order to win the competition.

“How you set yourself up for the final sprint, where you’re positioned and so on and so forth, really comes into play there,” he said.

He said his teammate Green may have the most outside race experience behind Depasse and he will look for him to squeeze into spots Saturday.

After Saturday is finished, Kragie said he hopes the team feels better about its chances of claiming the white jersey. They don’t want to wear the green jersey (pole-sitter) for the second consecutive year.

“Wearing the green jersey in the race for two years in a row would be nice,” Kragie said, “but we kind of want to avoid the curse of the green jersey and look past that and not be a quals team.

“Twenty years from now, we don’t want to be the guys at the bars talking about how we won quals two years in a row. We want to be talking about how we won either spring series events or the race. The white jersey is our goal this year.”