After a rough start to the outdoor season, the men’s track team has cracked the USTFCCCA NCAA rankings, grabbing the No. 25 spot with a compiled computer score of 75.61 points.
The Sun Devils jumped 11 spots and 24.79 points overall.
ASU is the fifth Pac-10 team in the rankings behind No. 8 USC, No. 9 UA, No. 20 Oregon and No. 23 Stanford. UCLA dropped out of the rankings this week.
The women’s side maintained its ranking from last week at No. 10 with a compiled computer score of 159.1 points.
ASU is one of four Pac-10 schools in the top 25, and all four are in the Top 10. The Sun Devils trail No. 3 Oregon, No. 5 USC and No. 7 UA in the rankings.
Milus honored
After one team relay and two individual victories at the Sun Devil Open last weekend, redshirt freshman sprinter Ryan Milus was named Pac-10 men’s athlete of the week. Milus is the second consecutive Sun Devil to win a Pac-10 athlete of the week award, with redshirt senior sprinter Jasmine Chaney taking the women’s award two weeks ago.
Milus opened his day in Tempe last Saturday as the anchor to the men’s 4x100 meter relay team and slammed home his leg of the race for the first-place time of 40.36 seconds.
Milus’ showing in the relay gave him the opportunity to compete in the 100-meter dash as well. With a 3.9 meters-per-second tail wind, Milus took the victory with a time of 10.07 seconds. His time ranks as the fifth-best national time this season, and if the wind had fallen to under two meters-per-second, the time would have been an ASU record in the 100-meter dash.
The wind worked against Milus in the 200-meter dash with a head wind of 3.1 meters-per-second. Milus still managed to run out the first sub-21-second 200-meter dash of the season for the Sun Devils with a time of 20.91 seconds.
Over the past two weeks at the Mt. SAC Relays and the Sun Devil Open, Milus has emerged to give some energy and notoriety to a down men’s side of the ASU sprinters and will be a huge player during this year’s championship season and for the future of Sun Devil sprinting.
Sun Devils around the world
The success for ASU track and field is not limited to its current roster.
On April 18, former Sun Devil All-American Desiree Davilla took second place in the 115th Boston Marathon. Davilla finished with a time of two hours, 22 minutes, 38 seconds, which was only two seconds behind the first-place runner Caroline Kilel of Kenya.
Davilla’s time was the fastest by an American on that course of the marathon and the third-fastest in history by an American woman.
Davilla held the lead until the turn onto the final street of the race. Kilel made a late surge to take the victory as Davilla held on and pushed herself into the second position.
Reach the reporter at zcavanag@asu.edu
