FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — It was almost as if his competitors were standing still.

That’s how fast junior Nick Willis looked as he flew around the eighth and final lap.

Willis captured Michigan’s second NCAA title of the weekend on Saturday with a resounding victory in the mile. His time of 4:00.69 put him a comfortable 20 meters ahead of the runner-up, Indiana’s Sean Jefferson, who beat out Willis by .01 seconds two weeks before at the Big Ten Championships.

Senior Nate Brannen ran the 800-meter run shortly after but finished fourth — ending his hope of three consecutive 800-meter titles.

Michigan was in third-place overall entering the 3,000-meter run, its fourth and final event. But with both runners having already competed earlier in the day, fatigue played a huge factor. Both Wolverines failed to score as Brannen finished in 10th place and Willis surprisingly dropped out with five laps to go.

Willis, Brannen and the distance medley relay team of senior Rondell Ruff, sophomore Stann Waithe, junior Andrew Ellerton and Brannen provided Michigan with 25 team points at the end of the second day — good enough for ninth place. Arkansas scored 56 points en route to its 40th NCAA track and field championship.

Willis’s victory in the mile was the first NCAA title of his collegiate career. He came into the race seeded third but easily ran away with the lead in the final lap. The pace was slow, which enabled Willis to sit in last place and gradually make his move — the ideal strategy for the New Zealand native.

“I couldn’t have asked for a better situation,” Willis said. “It was a steady pace, nothing ridiculously fast, nothing too slow. There was no jostling around. It was single file so I could stay in the middle of or back of the pack and gradually pick it up.”

The dynamics of the race positioned Willis favorably for the 3,000 meter race that he would run 90 minutes later. But unlike the mile, the 3,000-meter run was quick, and Willis, who hung toward the back of the field for the first 1,500 meters, was unable to keep up.

“It was a pretty solid pace,” Willis said. “And then someone made a move, so I made a big move to get around six or seven guys. And after that, I had a lapse in my brain and I didn’t know if I could go any further, and, subconsciously, I just stepped off the track.”

Willis would later regret his move to drop out.

“At the time it seemed like a comfortable thing,” Willis said. “But it’s really not a good thing to do at all. All this training is done for nothing. I just realized that I let the team down and I let myself down.”

In the 800-meter final, Brannen clocked a 1:47.71 — the third-fastest time in his indoor career. But the congestion that Brannen faced on the straightaways prevented him from moving up after a blistering 24-second first split.

“That’s pretty damn fast,” Brannen said of the first 200 meters. “At that pace, you really can’t move up at all. So at the 400-meter (mark) we were still at a fast pace, so I started to pick it up. But every time I tried to make a move and the pack would drift out. By the time I hit the bend, I would be back in lane No. 1. I tried again at the homestretch, but it was too big of a cluster of guys to get around.”

Brannen faced the same problems as Willis in the 3,000-meter run but gutted out a 10th place finish. His extra effort earned him the admiration of his coach, Ron Warhurst.

“I thought Nate was the champion (of the weekend),” Warhurst said. “He ran in four races, almost placed in the 3,000 — that’s pretty incredible for an 800-meter runner.”

Notes: The Big Ten Conference was well represented at the 2005 NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships. Wisconsin and Indiana finished third and fifth, respectively.

The meet also featured some world-class performances by a pair of Southeastern Conference runners. Kerron Clement of Florida set a world record in the 400-meter finals with a time of 44.57, breaking Michael Johnson’s 10-year-old record by .06 seconds. Arkansas’s Wallace Spearmon clocked a time of 20.10 in the final heat of the 200-meter dash, giving him the second-fastest time ever in the event.