Kansas ready for NCAA Championships in Austin

LAWRENCE, Kan. – The Kansas men’s and women’s track & field teams are sending a total of six entries to the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships at Mike A. Myers Stadium in Austin, Texas, June 5-8.

The KU men tallied four entries at the NCAA Championships, with three freshmen earning qualifying spots, while the Jayhawk women qualified two entries for Austin.

FOLLOWING THE NCAA CHAMPIONSHIPS
Live results of the NCAA Track & Field Championships will be hosted through FlashResults.com. All events will be available to watch via live stream at WatchESPN.com. Wednesday’s action on the track will be aired on ESPN2 starting at 6:30 p.m. and Thursday’s running prelims will be aired on ESPNU starting at 7 p.m. for one hour before switching to ESPN2. Friday’s men’s running finals will be on ESPN starting at 7:30 p.m. and the women’s track finals on Saturday will air on ESPN2 starting at 5:30 p.m.

THE STREAK
Kansas junior  Bryce Hoppel continues to dominate on the track in 2019. Including the indoor season, Hoppel has yet to lose in an individual race—prelims or finals—and has brought his win streak to 17 after wins in both the first round and the quarterfinal at the NCAA West Prelims in the 800 meters. Of the 17 wins, 14 have come in the 800, eight of which were during the outdoor season.

HOPPEL LOOKS TO SWEEP NCAA 800 TITLES
With the 2019 NCAA Indoor 800-meter title in the bag, Kansas junior Bryce Hoppel will look to sweep the NCAA titles in the event at the Outdoor Championships. If he does so, Hoppel will be the fifth men’s athlete to sweep the 800 in the last 10 years, joining Oregon’s Elijah Greer (2013), Mississippi State’s Brandon McBride (2014), Iowa State’s Edward Kemboi (2015) and UTEP’s Emmanuel Korir (2017). If Hoppel were to win the outdoor 800-meter title, he would be the first Kansas men’s athlete to do so. A top-eight finish at the NCAA Championships would mark Hoppel’s second First Team All-America honor and just the third in KU men’s history in the event (Jeremy Mims, 2005).

KANSAS MEN NO. 21 IN USTFCCCA RANKINGS
The Kansas men’s team came in at No. 21 in the USTFCCCA week nine track & field rating index. The No. 21 ranking is a one-spot drop from week eight when the Jayhawks earned their highest ranking (20) of the 2019 outdoor season.

Kansas Jayhawks

EMILIANOV BACK FOR MORE
Kansas sophomore Alexandra Emilianov is back at the NCAA Outdoor Championships for the second-straight year, and this time around she will look to improve on her 12th-place finish and Second Team All-America honors in the discus at the 2018 championships. Emilianov enters the NCAA Outdoor Championships with a season-best mark of 58.01 meters (190-4 ft.) set at the Big 12 Outdoor Championships, which earned her the conference title. Emilianov has yet to hit a personal-best this season after notching a school record-breaking throw of 60.24 meters (197-8 ft.) at the 2018 Big 12 Championships. Following her Second Team All-America performance at the NCAA Outdoors in 2018, Emilianov went on to have an extremely successful summer in which she won the IAAF World U20 Championships in the discus for her home country of Moldova and later placed eighth at the European Championships.

DUDAREV LOOKS FOR THIRD HAMMER ALL-AMERICA HONOR
Kansas junior Gleb Dudarev is making his third trip to the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships in the hammer throw, where he will look to earn his second First Team All-America honor. Dudarev placed third in the hammer throw at the 2017 NCAA Championships for first team honors, and notched second team honors with a 12th-place finish at the 2018 NCAA Championships.

YOUNG KID, BIG BARS
Kansas freshman Zach Bradford was one of the most highly-touted men’s pole vaulters of a very stacked freshman class across the country. With a second-place finish at the 2018 World U20 Championships in Tampere, Finland, Bradford came to Kansas, a program that already had a pole vault national champion on the team (Hussain Al Hizam, 2018 Indoor), and elevated his performance to the next level. Bradford had a successful indoor campaign in which he finished the season as the No. 4 performer in school history and placed fifth at the NCAA Indoor Championships to earn First Team All-America honors. The rookie parlayed that success into an already eventful outdoor season, where he broke a 36-year-old school record, clearing 5.77 meters (18-11 ft.) at the Kansas Relays and placed third at the Big 12 Outdoor Championships. Bradford hopes to earn the fourth Outdoor First Team All-America honor in the event at Kansas in the last 10 years, where he would join Jordan Scott (2010) and Al Hizam (2017-18).

conley web lead Big 12

FERGUSON COMING ON AT THE RIGHT TIME
Freshman Treyvon Ferguson figured things out at just the right time to earn a trip to the NCAA Outdoor Championships. On the outside looking in and down to his final attempt in the triple jump at the West Preliminary, Ferguson used a personal-best mark of 15.68 meters (55-5.5 ft.) to move into qualifying position. Ferguson’s qualification in the triple jump marks the third-straight year the Jayhawks will be represented in the event, after Barden Adams qualified in 2017 and 2018.

WOMEN’S 4X400 BACK ON THE BIG STAGE
The Kansas women’s 4×400-meter relay is back at the NCAA Championships, after qualifying for the big stage in 2017. Mariah Kuykendoll, Jedah Caldwell, Marleena Eubanks and Honour Finley posted a time qualifier at the NCAA West Prelims to earn the trip to Austin. Should the quartet earn All-America honors, it would be the first in the event for Kansas since winning the team national championship in 2013, where the 4×400-meter relay team of Denesha Morris, Diamond Dixon, Taylor Washington and Paris Daniels placed sixth to earn first team honors.

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