COLUMBIA, Mo.—Junior Alex Nolan raced to a top-20 finish to lead University of Southern Indiana Men's Cross Country to an 11th-place finish in the black race of the Gans Creek Classic Friday morning.
 
Nolan finished 18th out of 260 competitors with a personal-best eight-kilometer time of 24 minutes, 01.5 seconds, which was less than 20 seconds off the winning pace of 23:42.1 set by Iowa Western Community College's Barnabas Ndiwa.
 
As a team, the Screaming Eagles finished with 345 points in the 26-team field. Senior Dominick Beine finished 70th with a time of 24:35.1, while freshman Kraedyn Young carded an 87th-place finish with a time of 24:44.1.
 
Freshman James Haggerty and junior Landen Swiney filled out USI's top five scorers with respective placements of 159th and 164th, while juniors Eli Mojonnier and Isaac Stanford were 169th and 176th, respectively, to round out the Screaming Eagles' top seven.
 
The Screaming Eagles also had four student-athletes competing in the open race. Sophomores Zach Wells and Kyle Kern paced USI's quartet with respective finishes of 42nd and 43rd out of more than 250-competitors.
 
USI returns to action October 17 when it co-hosts the Angel Mounds Invitational in Evansville, Indiana. It will be USI's final regular-season meet as the Ohio Valley Conference Championships are October 31 in Charleston, Illinois, and the NCAA Division I Great Lakes Region Championships are November 14 at Angel Mounds.