Knecht Cup - Eights
There are 13 light eights entered at the Knecht Cup, including two from Radcliffe. The top ten except Stanford and Bucknell are entered, plus Marist, St. Joseph's, UMass, and Buffalo. Stanford had been scheduled to attend, so their absence is a disappointment, although an understandable one. They just raced Wisconsin, Radcliffe, and Princeton and are unlikely to make a big dent in those splits by Knecht, so it makes some sense to save the trip and spend the time training. On the other hand, it would be nice for the rest of the field to gauge how fast the Cardinal really is this year. For seeding, the current FITD ranking would do well, although I think it will be upset by the time the weekend is over. Of the remaining four, I would guess that Marist or St. Joe's will be fastest. It's also disappointing to see Ohio State miss this race. They are an unknown right now, although when we see how Marist does we'll have a better idea of their speed. As I mentioned before, it's also disappointing not to see Penn State or Lehigh. Since they both are entering fours, I would suspect that they don't have light eights. On the other hand, they may put eights together for Dad Vail when the competition is less intense.
Some key questions to be answered:
- Is Wisconsin still fastest?
- Is Radcliffe for real (or was Princeton's Windermere row a fluke)?
- Is UCF for real?
- Can Dayton sustain last year's momentum?
The freshmen race at Knecht as well, with a five boat final including Radcliffe, Georgetown, Wisconsin, Princeton, and MIT. This should be an excellent race, with the boats coming in to it relatively unknown and untested.
3 comments:
Are the LW8 heats a Knecht fair?
First of I would like to state that the Knecht Cup is the second biggest race for the whole of lightweight women’s rowing this year. The only thing that is bigger is IRA. The 5 top ranked crews attending are in 2 heats and only 4 will get to go to the GF. Heat 1 has Princeton #2 and Radcliffe #3 making unlikely that Dayton #12 will advance, not really my biggest problem but they might be the 6th fasted team there. In heat 2 there is Wisconsin #1, Georgetown #4, and UCF #6 so one of them isn’t going to the GF. Then there’s heat 3 with MIT #8 as the best crew and URI #12 also and two unranked teams. Why should a #12 team have a better chance of advancing then a #6? Why not have 2 heats with #1, #4, and #8 in one and #2, #3, and #6 in the other. Why should there be three heats? Just so Radcliffe can have there JV race. That’s ridicules.
Those heats are not yet seeded. The final seeding will create fairer heats.
now there are just two heats...seems like most of the concern about fairness are gone. I wish we were racing a b boat too...how sweet would it be to have events for varsity lightweight 8a, varsity ightweight 8b, varsity 4, freshman 8, freshman 4?
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