Texas Tech sprint relay runs top-5 time in Division I in last home meet
The Texas Tech men's track and field team has so many capable sprinters they can win 400-meter relays with first one lineup, then another.
In Tech's final regular-season home meet Friday night, Josh Bour, Shawn Brown, Jack Marshall and Antoine Andrews ran a season-best 38.72 seconds to win the event at the Corky/Crofoot Shootout.
Going into Friday, three Red Raiders' sprint relay lineups had posted top-20 times in NCAA Division I this year, Jalen Drayden and three-time NCAA sprint champion Terrence Jones running on others.
Jones has competed only once this season and won't do so again until the Big 12 championships. He's had a slight hamstring strain and coaches don't won't to overwork him for a long outdoor season that could include the Olympics after the Big 12 and NCAA regional and national meets. Drayden felt tightness on Thursday.
And still, Friday's lineup ran the sixth-fastest 400-meter relay in the program's history.
"I was really pleased with that," Tech coach Wes Kittley said. "It's going to be hard to change that (lineup) for Big 12, because that's a pretty good little group right there, but we'll see."
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Bour is a junior from Lawton, Oklahoma, Brown a junior from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Marshall a senior from Brady and Andrews a sophomore from Nassau, Bahamas.
Even with the altitude conversion to account for Lubbock's 3,200 feet of elevation, the time the Red Raiders ran Friday would rank fifth in Division I this year, pending results from meets elsewhere this weekend.
Kittley said he wasn't surprised by the 38.72.
"I think we've got seven, eight guys that can run 38," he said. "I think we can run low-38-flat if we get Terrence on there with good stick (exchanges)."
Last year, a Tech lineup of Adam Clayton, Courtney Lindsey, Don'Dre Swint and Jones ran 38.24 at the Big 12 outdoor, Division I's third fastest time in 2023. Jones is the only one left from that group. Swint exhausted his eligibility for outdoor last year and finished his college career as a key performer on the Red Raiders' indoor national championship team in March.
Andrews and Tech's DeVontae Ford finished 1-2 in the 110-meter hurdles in wind-legal times of 13.49 and 13.61, respectively. Tech all-American Vashaun Vascianna was scheduled to compete for the first time in two years, but was a late, precautionary scratch with hamstring discomfort.
In 2022, Vascianna won the 60-meter hurdles at the Big 12 indoor and took fourth at the NCAA championships. He suffered a torn hip labrum in April 2022, underwent surgery in Vail, Colorado, and has not raced since.
"He's looked great (in training)," Kittley said. "He looked good today warming up. He's been progressing the last three weeks."
A return to form by Vascianna could give the Red Raiders a formidable hurdles crew. He, Andrews and Caleb Dean all have achieved first-team all-America status — a top-eight finish at an NCAA national meet — during their careers.
The Tech women's highlights included a 1-2-3 finish in the 100 meters by Alyssa Colbert (10.96), Rosemary Chukwuma (10.97) and Success Umukoro (11.23) and a 1-2-3 finish in the 200 by Chukwuma (22.96), Serena Clark (23.31) and Umukoro (23.42). The wind was 4.1 meters per second in the 100, well beyond the legal range, and 0.7 mps in the 200, well within the legal range.
In the 100 hurdles, Tech's Destiny Smith and Naomi Krebs finished first and second with wind-assisted times of 12.92 and 12.94.
The meet concludes Saturday with distance runs scheduled from 7:30 a.m. to 9:50 a.m. and remaining field event start times from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Texas Tech sprint relay runs top-5 time in Division I in last home meet
