VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.—All three Villanova athletes who competed on the final night of the 2025 NCAA Division I Indoor Track and Field Championships ended their evenings on the awards podium and the Wildcats tallied a top 20 team finish at the national indoor meet for the second straight year. Fifth year collegian Liam Murphy (Millstone, N.J.) had the team's best result on Saturday as he finished fourth in the 3000 meter championship race. Junior teammate Marco Langon (Raritan, N.J.) placed seventh in the same race and sophomore Dan Watcke (Hinsdale, Ill.) was fifth in the final of the 800 meters.
 
The trio of Wildcats combined to score 14 team points over two days of competition at the Virginia Beach Sports Center. It all added up to a tie for 19^th place in the team standings out of 59 teams who scored and another 30 who had at least one athlete competing. Villanova has finished in the top 20 of the team standings at four of the last five NCAA Championships spanning the indoor, outdoor and cross country seasons. The finishes included tying for 19^th place indoors both this year and last year, as well as consecutive top 20 cross country finishes.
 
Murphy and Langon became the first pair of Wildcats since 1995 to tally awards podium finishes in the same indoor event in one season. They did so in one of the most impressive 3000 meter fields in NCAA history, although their finishes were no surprise given both their individual talents and Villanova's number one position in the 3000 meters in the United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) Event Squad rankings earlier this year.
 
The field for Saturday's 3K final was both immensely talented and perhaps running on tired legs. All but three of the runners in the field of 16 competitors had raced on Friday night in either the 5000 meters, the distance medley relay or the mile. The race went out at a very tactical pace in the opening laps before turning into a grueling sprint near the finish, but each of the first nine runners across the line were among those who were running their second or third race of the weekend.
 
That context makes the times from the race even more impressive. Murphy finished fourth in 7:53.38 and Langon was seventh in 7:54.25. There was a gap of just 1.02 seconds separating the runners in fourth through ninth places, with Langon holding on to seventh place by a margin of .17 seconds to earn his second podium finish in as many nights after a sixth place result in the 5000 meters on Friday. Murphy and Langon are the top two runners in school history in both the 3K and the 5K.
 
Watcke is quickly building as impressive a resume in his collegiate career as his veteran teammates. Still a freshman in terms of indoor eligibility, he is only the third Villanova runner in the last 40 years to finish as high as fifth place in the indoor 800 meters. He recorded a time of 1:47.22 in Saturday's final, .06 faster than in Friday night's preliminary round. Watcke has tallied four of the seven fastest indoor 800 meter times in school history this season, including the top two times earlier in the year as he took over possession of the indoor school record from his former Villanova teammate Sean Dolan.
 
Saturday's final showcased Watcke at his best, as he came from the back of the pack to surge into the top five at the finish line. His final 200 meters on the bell lap was 26.69, matching the fastest in the field and more than a tenth of a second faster than the national champion and runner-up who topped the awards podium. Watcke's indoor school record of 1:46.32 came on January 31 at Penn State, and he has since added marks of 1:46.46 in the BIG EAST final two weeks ago as well as 1:47.22 and 1:47.28 this weekend.
 
Watcke joins Dolan and former national champion John Marshall as the only two Wildcats to finish fifth or higher in the 800 meters indoors since 1985. He made his collegiate debut during the 2024 outdoor season, finishing second to Dolan in the 800 meters at the BIG EAST Championships before going on to reach the national quarterfinal round of the event at the NCAA East Preliminary and the final at the World U20 Championships in Peru later in the summer.
 
Villanova matched its exact NCAA indoor finish from last season but scored one more point than a year ago. Its total of 14 points is the most since the Wildcats tallied back-to-back top five team finishes in 2002 and 2003.