No. 2 Syracuse placed three runners in the top five and each of the five scoring runners finished in the top 20. The Orange was paced by sophomore Justyn Knight, who finished second after Virginia Tech’s Thomas Curtin passed Knight down the stretch of the 8 kilometer course. Knight’s time was 23:24.3.

Syracuse claimed its fourth straight conference title, the last three in the Atlantic Coast, and sixth league crown in seven years on Friday. Colin Bennie (23:31.4) took fourth and 2014 champion Martin Hehir (23:37.4) finished fifth. Knight, Bennie and Hehir have finished in the top six in each of their races this season.

Syracuse’s 46 points were well ahead of runner-up No. 12 North Carolina State (95). No. 7 Virginia (115), No. 18 Virginia Tech (120) and Louisville (130) rounded out the top five. This is the Orange’s first conference championship since Mark Coyle was hired as director of athletics in June.

“We pretty much knew that Shaun Thompson from Duke and Thomas Curtin from Virginia Tech were going to force the issue a bit and our guys just wanted to sit on that and be dictated to for the first 5k,” SU head coach Chris Fox told Cuse.com. “We went two, four, five today and that’s been happening all season. Colin Bennie probably ran his best race ever today for fourth place and Justyn has come up short by a half second in each of his last two invitationals, but I think he’ll be right in the mix at nationals.”