Rankings - For the Last Time

For the last time this year, we'll take a look at the rankings, starting with the coaches' poll. The top six boats stayed the same, but Ohio State made a huge jump from 14 to 7. This was precipitated, of course, by their Dad Vail victory. Long Beach State jumped from unranked to 8th, also as a result of their Dad Vail performance.

Buffalo drops one spot to 9th, and LMU also drops to 10th. LMU's rank below both Buffalo and Long Beach State is curious. The Lions raced LBS twice, winning both times. The last win was by a sliver, but a win nonetheless. They seem to be in the wrong place to me, but since all these boats should be going to the IRA, we'll find out soon enough. One other interesting move here is Bucknell's drop from 7th to 12th. I'm not sure what might have caused a coach who has been voting Bucknell 7th to now drop them, unless there is some concern about whether they can actually field a light eight or if the eight will be competitive.

In looking at the cMax rankings, we should begin by looking at last week's rank and margins, and how they compared to the actual margins at Sprints.

Margin	cMax	Actual	Difference
Wisconsin	-	-	-
Princeton	2.8	2.63	(0.17)
Georgetown	10.3	6.03	(4.27)
Radcliffe	13.0	12.57	(0.43)
MIT	24.5	46.36	21.86

With the exception of MIT and, to some extent Georgetown, it was awfully close. Georgetown got faster and most observers would have predicted a result closer to cMax's estimate. In the current rankings, the margins don't change a great amount, and once again OSU gets a big bump up from 18th to 6th. At this point, you should have a pretty good idea what a huge win Dad Vail was for the Buckeyes. UCF hangs in at 7 and here LMU is ranked 8th, above LBS and Buffalo. Interestingly, Dayton sneaks in at 9th. I'd say the cMax poll gives us a pretty good idea of where we stand right now.

As an aside, I want to mention the Georgetown press release on the Hoya's Sprints performance. It covers the usual ground, but includes this quote from Coach O'Connor:

Due to the success these girls have had over the last two seasons it might be easy for people to forget that only two years ago we lost this race by 19 seconds. The group has come a long way and it is a good sign of the continued improvement of the entire squad.

Excellent point and again, this is the same position Georgetown was in last year when they won silver at IRAs.