Placing 28th with 565 points at the NCAA Championships last year, MSU men's cross country head coach Walt Drenth said expectations for this season is to place in the top 10.

"We may have to mix and match some of the runners this season," he said. "Our ultimate is to get to the top ten."

Drenth said this year the team will be younger.

"We are going to have a really young team this year," he said. "We have a couple of good experienced upperclassmen, and the rest of the team are freshmen and sophomores."

Drenth said this is his second fall as the coach and will take time in deciding on who and who not to redshirt.

"If we run everyone this year we can make nationals again like we did last year," he said.

Redshirt junior Matt Bartelbaugh said the key to place this year is consistency.

"We were up and down a lot last season and also young," he said. "We have to focus on making sure we gradually get better.

"The regional meet took so much out of us, and when we got to the national meet we kind of got blinded by the stars and, to a degree, our youth and inexperience showed."

During the off-season, Drenth said the practice schedule for each player can vary.

Drenth said most of them run between 60 and 100 miles per week, but freshmen players tend to run less during the off-season.

Bartelbaugh said he runs about 100 miles a week.

"I'm personally a high-mileage runner but once the season start we might bring down some of the mileage," he said.

The first meet at regulation distances is the Spartan Invitational on Sept. 16, and Drenth is expecting improvement from the team.

"We need improvement out of everyone this year," he said. "We need front runners this year because we didn't have that many last year and it really hurt us."

The team finished seventh for the second consecutive year at the 2004 Big Ten Cross Country Championships.