Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Mowatt’s best time gets third
EUGENE, Ore. — Arkansas junior Kemar Mowatt had no trouble locating the rainbow at the end of his 400-meter hurdles final Friday night.
Mowatt placed third in 48.49 seconds behind defending champion Eric Futch of Florida and UCLA’s Rai Benjamin, but another personal best had the Razorback smiling at the NCAA Outdoor Championship at wet, chilly Hayward Field.
“It was a great race, but I just kind of tightened up in the last 50,” Mowatt said. “It was cold, and me being from Jamaica, I’m not really used to this. I’m just happy for the new PR, honestly.”
Futch caught both Benjamin and Mowatt down the backstretch to win in 48.32 seconds.
“He’s a great guy, a great competitor, and he won it last year,” Mowatt said, “so for me, I’m the underdog. It’s just fun for me.”
After 19 of 21 events, the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville stood 12th in the team race with 17 points. The Razorbacks still had competitors left in both the 5,000 and 1,600 relay. Florida held a 56.5-49.5 lead over top-ranked Texas A&M.
The Razorbacks’ best result of the day came in the triple jump, where two-time indoor national champion Clive Pullen finished second to Florida’s KeAndre Bates. Pullen started the final round with a mark of 54
feet, 5½ inches on his fourth attempt, only to see Bates land at 55 feet right behind him to take the lead.
Pullen congratulated his SEC rival with a hand slap and a smile on the runway after what turned out to be the winning jump.
Bates capped his series with a leap of 54-11½, and Pullen went 53-9½ on his final two attempts.
Arkansas picked up its first points Friday with a seventh-place finish in the 400 relay. Running in lane one, the team of Roy Ejiakuekwu, Mowatt, Josh Washington and Kenzo Cotton ran 38.82, slightly behind their semifinal time and .05 seconds off their season best.
Houston won in 38.34 to break LSU’s year-old Hayward Field record. The Tigers missed their first baton pass and failed to finish Friday’s race.
Meanwhile, Arkansas’ heptathlon quartet, which swept the top four spots at the SEC championships, took an early hit in the 100 hurdles when Kelsey Herman tumbled over the first barrier and out of the competition.
That left Taliyah Brooks, Payton Stumbaugh and Leigha Brown to pursue two-time outdoor champion Kendell Williams of Georgia, a senior and 2016 Olympian who didn’t compete in the SEC multievents.
All three Razorbacks exceeded 1,000 points in the hurdles, led by Brooks’ 1,069, but they didn’t score any personal bests in their first four events.
Williams led with 3,743 points, with Stumbaugh second (3,552), Brooks third (3,509) and Brown fourth (3,489).
Arkansas State University junior Jaylen Bacon started his double All-American day in the 100 with a fifth-place time of 10.25.
Tennessee’s Christian Coleman, who set a collegiate record of 9.82 in Wednesday’s semifinals, won in 10.04 while running into a headwind.
Bacon, who was bothered by a sore left knee in Wednesday’s semifinals, sported a slight limp after his two races.
“I kind of took myself out of it mentally-wise,” he said. “I didn’t know if my leg was ready for it.
“We’ve still got USAs coming up, so I didn’t want to seriously mess myself up for the rest of the season.
“You just have bad days sometimes.”
Bacon came back 35 minutes later to place eighth in a rainy 200 in 20.84 while running the tight curve in lane one.
“I put myself there,” he said.
“I ran 20.39 in the prelims, so if I wanted to complain about it, I should have ran faster.”
Coleman completed the sweep of the indoor and outdoor sprints for the first time since Tennessee’s Justin Gatlin in 2002 by winning the 200 in 20.25.
Bacon’s teammate, junior high jumper Tiaan Steenkamp, cleared 6-9¾ on his second attempt before missing three attempts at 6-11¾. His qualifying mark for the championships was 7-1¾.