Cougars to Face Stiff Competition in Nebraska

PROVO -- The BYU men's and women's tracksters will face some of their stiffest competition of the weekend as the teams travel to Lincoln, Neb. for the Husker Invitational.

The No. 20 BYU women's team will go up against five teams ranked in the Trackwire top 25 this week. Ranked teams featured at the meet include No. 2 Arizona, No. 4 UCLA, No. 12 Washington State, No. 16 Colorado and No. 25 Nebraska.

"The meet is going to feature some great competition," BYU women's head coach Craig Poole said. "So whenever you face strong competition you expect to see great performances from your team."

The meet will provide one of the few opportunities of the indoor season for the Cougars to compete at a non-altitude location, which should help the team in several events.

"Not being at altitude will help us in our distance events for sure," Poole said. "We should get some national qualifiers in distance out of this meet."

The BYU men's team will be pitted against No. 11 Nebraska, along with Arizona, Colorado, Oregon and Washington State as they look to make a mark in their final regular season competition of the indoor season.

"We will be facing the best competition we have all year," BYU men's head coach Mark Robison said. "We are taking most of our best athletes on the trip so we have high expectations for how we will perform."

The trip will be the last opportunity for the men's team to get qualifying marks for the conference meet in two weeks.

"This will be an excellent trip facing great competition at a marvelous facility," Robison said. "Hopefully that will be the right combination for us and we will be able to accomplish our goals coming in."