Sunday, November 26, 2006

2006 Fall WLV8 Rankings

FITD's fall rankings based on fall results:



1) Princeton

2) Wisconsin

3) Radcliffe

4) MIT

5) Georgetown

6) UCF

7) Stanford

8) Marist

9) California

10) Dayton



The first five crews are pretty obvious - they finished 1 - 5 at the Head of the Charles and the Princeton Chase confirmed that result for those who raced there. The only argument here might be those who say that Princeton's 2V should be third but, sorry, this only ranks 1Vs so a school only gets one boat.



Some judgment comes into play for positions five through ten. UCF finishes 6th because, despite not racing in the Charles and really only showing up once, they dominated the Head of the Hooch. They also get to live a bit off of their results last spring. Stanford comes in at 7th, based on it's races against California. Cal raced in the Charles so we have some means to compare Stanford with the other Charles boats and Stanford's margins over Cal puts them ahead of Marist. Marist was 6th at the Charles and so, in a bit of a surprise, comes in at 8th. Cal followed Marist in Boston and takes 9th, while Dayton, which also only raced once (the Tennessee), comes in 10th. Quite honestly, while the Stanford, Marist, Cal order is correct, where UCF and Dayton fit is an educated guess. UCF and Dayton raced no one who was at Boston so comparisons are very difficult. Dayton may in fact be faster than some of the crews ahead of it, but those crews get the benefit of the doubt for racing at the Charles.



So this is the way the fall shakes out. The major story was the strength of the Princeton squad, while a minor story was the success of MIT. Princeton will start the spring season as the crew to beat. To be fair, Wisconsin was only 14 seconds back at Boston, a margin which would narrow considerably in a 2k race, with Radcliffe only another 14 seconds back from Wisco. Perhaps even more impressive than Princeton's Boston result, however, was it's Chase result, where the Tigers finished 1 -2 over Radcliffe and Georgetown. We don't need a student newspaper article quoting rowers talking about team depth to know Princeton has it. With a likely 12, or even 16 rowers who could be in Princeton's varsity eight, there will be no rest for the weary on Lake Carnegie come spring. MIT, meanwhile, continues to build off of last year's impressive IRA petites win by finishing fourth in Boston. So often a rebuilding program squanders the previous season's momentum, but MIT seems determined not to let that happen.



There may have been other lightweight eights racing this fall, but if they weren't designated as lightweights, they couldn't be ranked.



In a few days I'll post the fours ranking.



Technorati Tags:

No comments: