Sometimes even a team's best isn't enough.

That was the case on Saturday, as the No. 21 Michigan men's cross country team turned in a season best performance, but still came away with a sixth-place finish.

Racing in Terre Haute, Ind. at the NCAA Pre-Nationals, six of Michigan's seven runners posted their best times of the year - including four runners finishing less than 25 minutes, more than any other race this season.

"When you get sixth in a race, you always feel a little bit disappointed," Michigan coach Ron Warhurst said. "But after reviewing the results of the other race and our race, I felt that we ran pretty good."

Because of the enormous field of competitors, the Pre-Nationals are set up in two separate races, one for each division. The Wolverines ran in the White division.

The top finisher for the Wolverines was sophomore Nate Brannen (24:21), who crossed the finish line 11th out of 244 competitors. Brannen was followed closely by freshman Nick Willis (24:27), who finished 15th.

Senior Nick Stanko (24:43) and junior Tom Greenless (24:52) finished 40th and 52nd, respectively.

Warhurst attributed the runners' season-best times to the quality of the competition.

"That's why we're in sports," Warhurst said. "You've got to try and get up and get better to face better competition, and that's what we did."

Heading into the race, the coach had hoped for a top-five finish.

"I thought if we were in the top five, we would have a great run," Warhurst said. "We were sixth, so we still did very well."

The team got off to a very conservative start, which may have cost it the top-five finish that Warhurst was hoping for. By the time runners began to break from the pack, many were in lower places than they had expected.

In future races, especially the Big Ten and NCAA championships, Warhurst expects the team to go out with more fire and intensity from the start.

"We learned our lesson that if you want to place a guy in the top five or 10 guys, you have got to run aggressively and keep up with the lead pack," Warhurst said.

Despite coming up short in their division, the race showed some promise for the Wolverines. The team finished only four points behind No. 7 Georgetown.

Michigan also defeated rival Michigan State by 38 points. While the Spartans have currently fallen out of the national top-30, they were consistently ranked ahead of the Wolverines early in the season.