Friday finals

A two horse race for a women's national championship.

Women’s national championship

Team national championships are curious things.

On Wednesday, it feels like a wide open field. There are so many events left to swim, so many points left to contest. With numerous events remaining and many points still available, it's easy to overlook occasional slips in expected finishes or the unexpected surges from a team initially seen as just one more contender among many. Yet, by the end of day two, you can start to sense how each missed scoring chance opportunity, or each point put on the board, subtly narrows the range of possible outcomes. 

Until you get to Friday night and, for one team at least, what once looked like a wide road to victory has narrowed to a donkey path through the Andes. And other teams that at the beginning of the meet looked like solid contenders, well they just aren’t in the picture at all anymore.

Here’s what we mean, in the form of our Monte Carlo simulation. You know the drill, 10,000 runs, 30% variability for the remaining projected points, added to the points that have already been booked. 

• NYU: 5,179 wins

• MIT: 4,724 wins

• Kenyon: 97 wins

For the first time since we started the Monte Carlo sims, one team has more than 5,000 wins. MIT’s win total is also very very high, so high that were MIT to win tomorrow, it would be a completely normal outcome.

Kenyon winning would qualify as an upset.

@briantzeva.photo

Men’s National Championship

For fun we doubled the variability in projected points to 60% (which would probably require multiple DQs). With 10,000 simulations at ±60% variability:

• Denison: 9,929 wins

• Emory: 71 wins

Even with significantly increased variability, Denison remains overwhelmingly dominant, although Emory retains a small possibility of victory.