Track To Send Six To NCAA Indoor Championships
3/6/2001 12:00:00 AM | Track & Field
March 6, 2001
WACO, Texas - Baylor's seventh-ranked men's track team will send six athletes to this weekend's NCAA Indoor National Championships at the Randall Tyson Track Center in Fayetteville, Ark., however, only five of those athletes will compete.
Defending indoor 400-meter national champion Brandon Couts, a senior from Greenville, Texas, will be forced to miss the meet due to a pulled hamstring suffered during the finals of the 200 meters at the Big 12 Indoor Championships two weeks ago in Lincoln, Neb. Couts would have been seeded fourth in the event after running a season-best time of 46.09 seconds in capturing his school-record 12th conference title at the Big 12 meet.
"I don't think it would be wise on our part to compete Brandon," Baylor head coach Clyde Hart said. "It's just too soon after the injury to risk him hurting himself even more."
Despite the loss of Couts, Baylor will still send arguably the deepest stable of quarter-milers in the nation to Fayetteville. Senior Bayano Kamani enters the meet seeded eighth in the 400 meters, he ran a provisional time of 46.39 seconds on this same track at last month's Tyson Invitational. Also running the 400 will be sophomore Zsolt Szeglet, who finished second at the Big 12 Championships with a provisional time of 46.53, Szeglet will be seeded 12th.
Baylor will also enter the championships as the nation's top-ranked 4x400-meter relay team - even without Couts. The quartet of Kamani, junior Michael Smith, senior Floyd Thompson and Szeglet turned in a time of 3:06.79 in winning the Big 12 title. Senior Damian Davis, a four-time all-American, will also travel to Fayetteville as an alternate for the 4x400 team.
The Bears just missed adding a seventh member to their trip as junior Jim Autenreith missed making the cut in the pole vault by a quarter-inch. His height of 5.30 meters (17-4 ?) ranked 17th nationally and just behind the final invitee, Steve Michaels of UCLA, who posted a mark of 5.31 meters.
This will be Baylor's 19th-consecutive appearance in the NCAA Indoor Championships on the men's side. Last season, the Bears tied for 15th with 10 points, all coming on Couts first-place finish in the 400. Baylor's highest finish was a third-place showing in 1985, the Bears have finished in the top 10 nine times.
