Red Raiders Win School's First NCAA Men's Championship

By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor

AUSTIN – The wait might have been long, but everything about the Texas Tech Red Raider men’s track team was fast on Friday night at Mike A. Myers Stadium at the NCAA Division 1 Outdoor Championships.

Behind one of the greatest one-day sprint doubles in history by Nigerian Divine Oduduru and help from a variety of other events, Texas Tech scored 60 points to capture the first men’s national championship in school history.

Remember March Madness? Texas Tech went all the way to the title game – and had two shots to win it late in regulation – but lost in overtime to Virginia.

“I thought (Coach Chris) Beard had it with 20 seconds left,” longtime track coach Wes Kittley said.

Instead, Texas Tech became the fourth Texas school to capture the men’s track and field championship, following UTEP (six times), Texas A&M (four) and SMU (two).

“I’m incredibly proud to bring a men’s national championship to the Red Raider family because they’ve been waiting for one for a long time,” Kittley said.

Imagine how long it must have felt for Kittley. The native of tiny Rule, Texas won 29 NCAA Division II titles at Abilene Christian before taking the job at Texas Tech in 2000.

It was a long wait to No. 30 and included numerous years full of potential that never panned out.

“I can’t tell you how many times we got fifth,” he said.

What it took was the maturation of Oduduru into one of the world’s elite sprinters and a group of committed athletes eager to join the team cause.

“Once you fail once or twice, you learn from it,” Kittley said. “We learned how to handle the moment better on the first day. Wednesday is the most important day. You’ve got to fill up lanes on that first day, and we filled up a lot of lanes and qualified a lot of people.”

Most important was the spectacular Oduduru, who ran 9.86 seconds to win the 100 meters and 19.73 seconds to win the 200. Both wind-legal performances rank No. 2 all-time in NCAA meet history.

And the one-day double is the second-best ever – following a Justin Gatlin effort from 2014 where he ran 9.77 seconds in the 100 and 19.71 in the 200 in Brussels, Belgium.

“I think he’s the greatest combo sprinter in NCAA history,” Kettley said.

Texas Tech made sure not to squander this shot.

The opening salvo came in the 4x100 relay. Texas Tech finished third behind two teams that submarined the all-time college best. Florida won it with 37.97 seconds and Florida State was second in 38.08 seconds.

The Red Raiders ran 38.45 for a new school record, anchored by Oduduru, and secured team’s first six points of the evening. At that point, Texas Tech had 14 points.

Oduduru’s individual wins were worth 20 points.

“I just had to execute,” Oduduru said of the 100, which tied for the world lead. “I just had to move away from the blocks and when I get to my transition, I know it’s going to be good. Then the race is over.”

In short order, he executed again to win the 200.

“Now, I’ll be getting ready for the world championships,” Oduduru said of his next goal. “So, I praise God for strength and grace.”

In the 400-meter hurdles, Norman Grimes tore through the backstretch and built a sizeable cushion coming off the final turn. Eventually, he tied up a bit toward the end and was passed by South Carolina’s Quincy Hall, but he brought eight points to the team for second place.

“If everyone keeps doing their part and doing well, I think we’ll pull it off,” Grimes said after his race.

Texas Tech got three points from the seventh-and eighth-place finishes of Jonah Koech and Vincent Crisp in the 800 meters.

The team pulled another three points out of the triple jump with Odaine Lewis’ sixth-place finish (54-9.50).

Andrew Hudson took seventh in 200 (20.25) and added two more points.

The result of the men’s discus put Texas Tech over the top even before the final two events on the track.

Eric Kicinski, a grad student who three years ago won an NCAA Division II title at West Texas A&M, threw 205-2 (62.53m) to beat North Dakota State’s Payton Otterdahl by two inches and bring the Red Raiders 10 points.

Last year, Kicinski finished ninth.

“He’s been phenomenal all year long and I’m so proud of him,” Kittley said. “They don’t make them better than him.”

Kicinski took the lead on his fourth-round throw on the stadium infield. All the while, he was watching his teammates do their thing on the track.

“I was really anxious in that hotel room, ready to get going,” Kicinski said. “I just had to take care of myself. If I got caught up thinking about the (team) score as well, I’d be thinking about the wrong things.”

Kicinski is a native Texan who finished second in the UIL Class 5A discus for Northwest High (Justin) in 2014.

Following Georgia’s victory last year, Texas Tech’s win marks the first time since 1969-70 that first-time winners have lofted the NCAA men’s track and field championship trophy in back-to-back years.

For Red Raider Nation, it was worth any wait.