What a difference a year can make.

Last year, Colin Mickow was the third freshman to finish for the Illinois men’s cross country team at the 2008 NCAA Midwest Regional Championships, placing 69th with a time of 33:00.90.

This year, the sophomore and top runner for the team placed 18th overall with a time of 31:18, earning All-Region accolades. However, Mickow failed to qualify for an individual bid to the NCAA National Championships.

The Illini finished the 10K course 10th out of 25 teams at the 2009 NCAA Midwest Regional Championships in Springfield, Mo., on Saturday.

The Orange and Blue were a long shot for a National Championship berth going into the meet, needing a top-two finish in order to automatically qualify.

“I felt confident going into the race,” Mickow said. “I definitely wanted to finish top 20 and was shooting for top 15. I am really happy with the way I raced today.”

Mickow was the only real bright spot for the Orange and Blue. For the second meet in a row, the team was not able to reach head coach Wendel McRaven’s goals. At the beginning of the season, McRaven expected top-five finishes for his team in the Big Ten Championships and the NCAA Midwest Regional Championships, and the Illini placed seventh and 10th in those races, respectively. However, McRaven said that his goals were realistic ones.

“You can never set the bar too high,” McRaven said. “If a little thing here or another thing there happened our way, we could have easily been top five.”

McRaven explained that because the team does not have a front runner, there is little room for error. For the Illini to have been successful Saturday, they would have needed the team’s pack to be closer than it was.

“Colin Mickow might turn into that guy who, in the future, finishes in the top five or 10 every meet, but until then, we all got to stick together and find each other on the course,” McRaven said. “As we get older and better, there will be a larger margin for error, just not this year.”

Finishing after Mickow was sophomore Jim Riddle in 57th. Next was freshman Tom Achtien in 58th place. Sophomores Nate Troester (72nd) and Kyle Engnell (87th) rounded out the scoring for the Illini. Sophomore Chris DeSilva did not finish because he hurt his knee in the beginning stages.

“Colin ran a very solid race today,” Troester had. “He put himself in a good position and did a really job. We were not able to back him up.”

The first half of the race was productive for the Illini. A problem for the team all season was the way they started races and positioned themselves with other top teams. Because the runners at NCAA Midwest Regional Championships started conservativly, the Illini had multiple runners in top-20 positions for much of the race.

“We had a great start,” Mickow said. “I’m not exactly sure what happened. We just kind of bombed and fell apart.”