It was a weekend of mixed results for the rowing team as the Bulls sent two teams into the Grand Finals and two into the Petite Finals in the Knecht Cup at Villanova on Saturday.
"I think of all the events, this Knecht Cup was a very well attended and very competitive regatta," said head coach Rudy Wieler. "There was a pretty good cross section of crews from across the U.S. including California, the Midwest, etc. It was some pretty good competition."
Recent weather has forced the team to practice indoors and Wieler was reticent of the fact that it may have impacted the team's results.
"I think that we didn't do as well as we would have liked to have done in general," Wieler said. "I think the weather for our particular program in the past two weeks before going to the Knecht Cup did a real job of not helping us to get maybe as much water time as we would have liked to have had going into the regatta."
Both the Frosh/Novice Eight boat and the Lightweight Eight boat closed out the day in the top five in their respective Grand Finals after they posted very good times in the preliminary heats.
However, the first and second Varsity Eight boats were relegated to the Petite Finals, a step below the Grand Finals, but finished third and first, respectively.
In the Grand Finals, the Frosh/Novice Eight crew finished third behind Rhode Island, a team they went against in their preliminary heats as well. The boat finished with the third-best time out of the field of 27 in 7:23.7, two full seconds behind Rhode Island's second-place finish of 7:21.5 and seven seconds behind winner Kansas which posted a time of 7:16.0.
"The Freshman Eight did a really good job in coming in third," Wieler said. "We could have a much stronger Freshman Eight, but some of our freshman are actually rowing in our second Varsity Eight. Those are the best ones and if we put them into the Freshman (Eight), we could have won. "
The Lightweight crew drew the unfortunate circumstance of being in a race with defending national champion Wisconsin as well as perennial powerhouse Harvard Radcliffe A and B, as well as Georgetown. The team finished fifth, 0:3.2 seconds behind Harvard Radcliffe B and more than 30 seconds behind Wisconsin. The Badgers won the Lightweight Eight final in 6:55.7.
"I think the Lightweight Women's Eight did a good job," Wieler said. "They are still some ways away but they were racing against probably two of the best crews in the U.S."
The Second Varsity Eight boat rowed to the top position in the Petite Finals following its heat against 15 other crews in the heats. With a time of 7:15.5, the Bulls came out on top of boats from Boston College, North Carolina and George Mason. Buffalo's time was a full four seconds better than the next best squad.
The Varsity Eight, on the other hand, finished only two seconds behind Dayton and Petite Final heat champion North Carolina. The Tar Heels finished in 7:05.0 while Buffalo crossed the finish line in 7:07.8. The Dayton Flyers were in between the two with a time of 7:06.8.
In what was originally scheduled to be a two-day event, inclement weather forced the rescheduling of the regatta into a one-day event on Saturday.
Buffalo's next action will be this coming weekend for a quad-meet against Colgate, Connecticut and Eastern Michigan in Syracuse, N.Y. The Bulls' Varsity Eight crew will be competing directly against Eastern Michigan for the annual Harvey Cup.
