CHICAGO, Ill.—Villanova closed out an exciting first day of competition at the 2023 BIG EAST Indoor Track & Field Championships presented by Jeep by winning the men's distance medley relay for the eighth time in the last 10 seasons. The first place finish, combined with individual scorers in the 5000 meters and the weight throw, have the Wildcats in second place in the team standings with 28 points after five out of 18 events have been scored. Action continues on Saturday morning at Dr. Conrad Worrill Indoor Track and Field Center at Gately Park.
 
A lineup of redshirt freshman Devon Comber (Ambler, Pa.), freshman Ronan O'Neill (Wilmette, Ill.), fifth year Evan Addison (Collegeville, Pa.) and junior Liam Murphy (Millstone, N.J.) won the DMR in 9:36.28 and outkicked runner-up Providence by just under two seconds at the finish line. This is the 21^st time that Villanova has won a BIG EAST title in the distance medley relay, including the eighth time since 2013 (there was no indoor BIG EAST meet in 2021). Friday night's winning time of 9:36.28 is the fastest that a Wildcats squad has run the DMR at the BIG EAST Championships since the 2008 team recorded a time of 9:32.89.
 
Comber led off the relay with a split of 2:58.99 over the first 1200 meters and O'Neill followed with a split of 48.30 on the 400 meter leg. Addison ran the 800 meter leg in 1:52.24 and Murphy closed with an anchor of 3:56.77 for the final 1600m meters. It is the fifth known 1600 meter relay split below 3:57 in school history and comes on the heels of Murphy recording an opening leg split of 2:52.3 for 1200 meters just six days earlier when Villanova set a school record with a time of 9:20.44 in the Alex Wilson Invitational at Notre Dame.
 
Three individual scorers combined for 16 team points in the 5000 meters, which will end up being one of the more intriguing events of the weekend. Junior distance runner Jack Jennings (Mendham, N.J.) won his first career BIG EAST medal, taking silver in the 5K with a personal best time of 13:52.60. His time puts him into eighth place on the Wildcats all-time indoor performance list in the 5000 meters. Villanova's other scorers in the 5K were senior Haftu Strintzos (Melbourne, Australia) and fifth year Josh Phillips (Belrose, Australia). The pair had not run a 5K race yet this year and therefore ran in the unseeded section held earlier on Friday afternoon.
 
Strintzos recorded a time of 14:00.39 and Phillips crossed the finish line in 14:06.17 as the two runners finished fourth and sixth, respectively. Strintzos and Phillips pushed each other to run as fast a race as possible in the generally slower unseeded heat, and their marks nearly held up before being surpassed late in the seeded race at night. Fifth year Will Merritt (Smithsburg, Md.) also competed in the unseeded heat of the 5K and produced a personal best time of 14:29.18 which put him 16^th overall.
 
Sophomore thrower Tristan Bolinsky (Gordon, Pa.) accounted for the Wildcats first points of the weekend when he finished seventh in the weight throw on Friday morning. Bolinsky registered a personal best mark of 16.23 meters and jumped up two spots in the Villanova record book for the weight throw. His outing on Friday puts him sixth among all Wildcats performers in the event.
 
The rest of Friday's competition featured preliminary heats in the 60 meters, the 60 meter hurdles, the 200 meters, the 400 meters, the 800 meters and the mile. Villanova had entries in each event with the exception of the hurdles and advanced eight runners into the final of their respective event. The top preliminary event for the Wildcats was the mile in which all four of the team's entries moved on to Saturday's final.
 
Addison and fifth year Charlie O'Donovan (Cork, Ireland) ran in the second of two preliminary heats of the mile and were automatic qualifiers for the final with times of 4:12.92 and 4:13.97, respectively. The top four finishers in each heat and the next four fastest times advanced. In the first heat, Comber was an automatic qualifier with a time of 4:09.02 and fifth year Ben Seiple (Westport, Conn.) advanced on time with a personal best mark of 4:09.41.
 
Senior Sean Dolan (Pennington, N.J.) is the fastest qualifier for the final in the 800 meters after he won the opening preliminary heat in 1:49.48. Dolan is the defending BIG EAST champion in the 800 meters and will enter Saturday's final as the favorite to repeat. Senior Miller Anderson (West Hartford, Conn.) was an automatic qualifier for the final with a time of 1:54.21in the second of two preliminary heats. Junior Chris Weeks (Virginia Beach, Va.) recorded a time of 1:58.17 in the same heat.
 
The other qualifiers for Saturday finals are freshman Amiri Prescod (Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago) in the 60 meters and junior Nicholas Mollica (Jackson, N.J.) in the 400 meters. Prescod recorded a time of 6.90 in his heat of the 60 meter dash to comfortably reach the final, while Mollica advanced on time in the 400 meters by running a personal best mark of 48.99.
 
Villanova had four runners in the preliminary round of the 400 meters. In addition to the time posted by Mollica, freshman Jimmy Milgie (Wildwood, Mo.) posted a time of 49.31, freshman Sal Barretta (Whitestone, N.Y.) recorded a personal best time of 49.60 and junior Jakob Kunzer (George Town, Grand Cayman) crossed the line in 49.79. The final event to contest its preliminary heats was the 200 meters in which O'Neill and fellow freshman Luke Rakowitz (Dallas, Texas) each registered personal best times. O'Neill posted a mark of 22.44 and Rakowitz finished in 23.07.
 
The first event for the Wildcats on Saturday is the unseeded section of the 3000 meters which is scheduled to go off at 12:10 p.m. Eastern time (11:10 a.m. CT).