Nilsson on the run

The OVC cross-country championship runs Saturday in Nashville and JSU's David Nilsson has to be one of the runners to watch.

The 22-year-old freshman from Sweden has been the Gamecocks' best runner all year and one of the best in the conference. He has won five of the six races he entered, and the race he didn't win -- the JSU Foothills Invitational in Oxford (he finished second, 10 seconds off the lead) -- was attributed to an extra-long training run he put in the day before.

Nilsson already has run -- and won -- on the Vaughn's Gap Course that's staging the conference meet, claiming the Commodore Classic (that included six OVC teams) by 30 seconds. His toughest competition is expected to be Eastern Kentucky's Stanley Mugo and Wesley Ruttoh, who have the two fastest 8K times in the conference this year, and Southeast Missouri's Jason Lumpkin.

Eastern Kentucky is the traditional favorite in both races. The EKU men have won the event 17 times and has produced the Runner of the Year the last five years in a row. The EKU women have won it 23 times, three in a row and five of the last seven.

The men's 8K race starts at 9 a.m., with the women's 5K race going off at 10. It will be the 48th men's championship and 31st for the women.