[Jamesy]

Stanford did win an outright national title in 2009.

pauloalto referred to ties for first place.

If I understand how points are scored, doing one place better in any of the races would have meant a championship.

Or, if any additional team had beaten Texas and not Stanford in any event (specifically the 2V8+).  For the 1V8+, the tricky part is that Texas was pretty dominant.  Their splits were just faster across the board that morning, and to say that Stanford should have beaten them is to wave away the reality of how much speed they had available to them.  Now, if you say that Stanford should have rowed eight seconds slower in the semifinal to conserve energy for the final, that might be an interest thought experiment.  But again, coaches tend to believe that crews need the confidence of having proven themselves front runners if the crews are going to be asked to dig deep and outlast other crews.  Obviously the fastest first half and dial back that Princeton 1V8+ put down in the semifinal wasn't enough to get them into second place, but maybe that was what they needed to stay one second ahead of kal in the final.

In the 2V8+, if Princeton could have been 4.4+ sec faster (this is a significant effort), they would have beaten fourth-place Texas and reduced Texas' point total while not affecting Stanford (in second).  But Princeton had been beaten by Texas across all boat classes earlier this season (14.2 sec win in -April), and there wasn't a reason to suspect results would change.  Princeton did change their lineups fairly effectively to generate a national championship in the V4+ boat class, and of course, being in the northeast where programs get less water time in the winter, Princeton will typically find more boat speed as the season progresses compared to programs where water is rowable all year long.  This is true for the midwest programs as well.  Similar to the 1V8+, I would find it hard to say that Stanford "should" have beaten Yale in the 2V8+ event.  A careful nitpicking of the split times between the semi and the grand final reveals, however, that the 2V8+ had a rough second 500m in the grand final compared to the semi, and that difference might have been close to the margin between Yale and Stanford.  Post-hoc analyses are rarely pleasant, as it's never really as simple as "why didn't you go faster."

As for the V4+, they had an uncharacteristic race.  It is a nice observation that the #17-20 best rowers (and the #3 coxswain) in a program are now very crucial in deciding a national championship.  Team depth matters, and the age of the coach focusing on one boat, leaving the others to flounder, are pretty much over in women's rowing.

Your last paragraph is accurate but not sure it necessarily applies to Stanford this year. They had the Coxswain and stroke from last year's ncaa second place finishing 1v8 boat in the v4 plus last year's conference newcomer of the year with world championship experience. Maybe the less experience of the remaining two rowers was the difference but I thought the level of experience and skill (on paper at least) in the v4 was higher than usual.

[Jamesy]

Stanford did win an outright national title in 2009.

pauloalto referred to ties for first place.

If I understand how points are scored, doing one place better in any of the races would have meant a championship.

Or, if any additional team had beaten Texas and not Stanford in any event (specifically the 2V8+).  For the 1V8+, the tricky part is that Texas was pretty dominant.  Their splits were just faster across the board that morning, and to say that Stanford should have beaten them is to wave away the reality of how much speed they had available to them.  Now, if you say that Stanford should have rowed eight seconds slower in the semifinal to conserve energy for the final, that might be an interest thought experiment.  But again, coaches tend to believe that crews need the confidence of having proven themselves front runners if the crews are going to be asked to dig deep and outlast other crews.  Obviously the fastest first half and dial back that Princeton 1V8+ put down in the semifinal wasn't enough to get them into second place, but maybe that was what they needed to stay one second ahead of kal in the final.

In the 2V8+, if Princeton could have been 4.4+ sec faster (this is a significant effort), they would have beaten fourth-place Texas and reduced Texas' point total while not affecting Stanford (in second).  But Princeton had been beaten by Texas across all boat classes earlier this season (14.2 sec win in -April), and there wasn't a reason to suspect results would change.  Princeton did change their lineups fairly effectively to generate a national championship in the V4+ boat class, and of course, being in the northeast where programs get less water time in the winter, Princeton will typically find more boat speed as the season progresses compared to programs where water is rowable all year long.  This is true for the midwest programs as well.  Similar to the 1V8+, I would find it hard to say that Stanford "should" have beaten Yale in the 2V8+ event.  A careful nitpicking of the split times between the semi and the grand final reveals, however, that the 2V8+ had a rough second 500m in the grand final compared to the semi, and that difference might have been close to the margin between Yale and Stanford.  Post-hoc analyses are rarely pleasant, as it's never really as simple as "why didn't you go faster."

As for the V4+, they had an uncharacteristic race.  It is a nice observation that the #17-20 best rowers (and the #3 coxswain) in a program are now very crucial in deciding a national championship.  Team depth matters, and the age of the coach focusing on one boat, leaving the others to flounder, are pretty much over in women's rowing.

Your last paragraph is accurate but not sure it necessarily applies to Stanford this year. They had the Coxswain and stroke from last year's ncaa second place finishing 1v8 boat in the v4 plus last year's conference newcomer of the year with world championship experience. Maybe the less experience of the remaining two rowers was the difference but I thought the level of experience and skill (on paper at least) in the v4 was higher than usual.