Led by sophomore Morgan McDonald, the Badgers ran to a sixth-place finish on their home course Friday in the 2015 NCAA Great Lakes Regional. The Badgers finished the day with a total of 203 points collected from their five scoring runners, McDonald, sophomore Joe Hardy, junior Malachy Schrobilgen, sophomore Troy Smith and junior Russell Sandvold.
 
The top two teams at each of nine regional sites across the country automatically qualified for the NCAA championship, while another 13 squads will earn at-large invitations. The Badgers, who have qualified for every national meet since 1972 while building the longest-ever streak of consecutive NCAA appearances, will not be among them.
 
"We've got to go back to the drawing board," Wisconsin Director of Track & Field and Cross Country Mick Byrne said. "It's very well-documented that it's been a rough year, and we'll sit down now that it's over and reevaluate things.
 
"That's what you have to do. You have to look at maybe we made some mistakes. We're going to look at training, we're going to reevaluate and see what we come up with. You always have to do that. We've got to take the bad with the good."
 
Michigan won the Great Lakes Regional title with a total of 67 points, paced by individual champion Mason Ferlic, who finished the 10-kilometer race on UW's Zimmer Championship Course in a time of 30 minutes, 18.3 seconds.
 
Michigan State earned a second-place finish with 88 points, while Eastern Michigan was third with 102 points. Notre Dame collected 127 points to finish fourth, and Indiana rounded out the top five with 141 points.
 
A pair of sophomores in McDonald and Hardy paced the Badgers squad, remaining in the lead pack near the halfway mark. As the race progressed through five kilometers, McDonald pushed to stay with the leaders as the pack began to separate from the rest of the field.
 
McDonald finished the race in ninth place overall, covering the course in 30:51.1, and Hardy took 24th in 31:20.1. Schrobilgen, two weeks after being forced to drop out of the Big Ten meet due to injury, finished 33rd in 31:32.8.
 
Smith finished fourth for the Badgers and 64th overall, clocking in at 32:21.0, while Sandvold rounded the scoring for UW with a 73rd-place finish in 32:29.8.
 
The field for the 2015 NCAA Cross Country Championship will be announced Saturday at 2 p.m. The championship meet is set for Nov. 21 in Louisville, Kentucky.
 
For Wisconsin, the focus turns to plotting a course that will get the Badgers back to the NCAA meet in 2016.
 
"If I thought for one minute that we couldn't fix this, I'd walk away tomorrow," Byrne said. "I mean that from the bottom of my heart. We've been beaten before, and we came back.
 
"This doesn't define the Wisconsin cross country program."