Follow our 2017 FloXC Countdown, where FloTrack ranks the top ten cross country teams and individuals in the NCAA this season which will be LIVE on FloTrack. The No. 8 men's spot goes to Johns Hopkins, and here's why:

Probable Top Three:

JR Oliver Hickson (14:58 5K; 31:27 10K; 135th at '16 NCAA XC)
JR Scott Pourshalchi (3:54 1500; 77th at '16 NCAA XC)
JR Alex Doran (14:57 5K; 199th at '16 NCAA XC)

Fourth/Fifth Man Battle:

SO PJ Murray (14:55 5K)
SR Panth Patel (14:58 5K)
SR Charlie Thornton (15:15 5K; 32:25 10K)
SR Brandon Fielder (15:08 5K)
SR Geoffrey Kazlow (237th at '16 NCAA XC)
JR Liam Wall (14:57 5K)
SR Louis Levine (15:14 5K; 31:45 10K; 155th at '16 NCAA XC)
SO Alex Glavin (14:57 5K)

Impact Freshmen/Transfers:

Patrick Dye via Syracuse, NY (9:27 3200; 5th at '16 NY State XC)
Jared Pangallozzi via Maplewood, NJ (9:19 3200; 16th at '16 NXN NE)

Analysis:

Look how comically long that list of names is! That's five men who ran at last year's NCAA meet, then four more who broke 15:00 in the 5K during track, then two more who ran 15:15 or faster. But it's a true team. Though there are six sub-15:00 runners on the team, none has broken 14:50. (Only conference rival Haverford, with seven, had more sub-15:00 athletes in all of DIII last track season, and no one returns more.)

That's exactly the way coach Bobby Van Allen likes it, telling me that "no one's mentioned a single individual goal in our goal meetings -- it's all been about how tight the pack can be and how they can do as a team."

If the Blue Jays can get five of those guys firing on the right day, they can surpass last fall's program-best eighth-place finish. This has been the formula for few podium-ish teams in the past, but it can work. Last year, the UW-La Crosse men took sixth in the nation with no runners in the top 65 but their entire top five in a 16-second span between 67th and 119th. That's roughly the type of result that Hopkins will hope to replicate, though Pourshalchi is the 37th returner and could lead off the scoring as an All-American. Where Hopkins could really get dangerous (and start dreaming of the podium) is if one or two men breaks away to finish in the top 30 or so, or if the whole pack is so astonishingly strong that they finish more in the 45-70 range than the 75-100 band.

Everyone has seen the team dynamic where the group keys off the alpha dog, which can lead to a great day when the leader runs well and a crappy one when he doesn't. But this year's Hopkins squad isn't like that. As Van Allen explains, "There's not an overwhelming amount of pressure on one guy to be the man . . . If one guy goes down, it's not going to matter this year. Hopefully we'll have the best fifth man out there. And we need to in order to be successful."

FULL MEN'S RANKINGS HERE