Of course. But...maybe.
Of course, the Emory women will win. They go into this weekend's UAA championships ranked #1 in SRS (and CSCAA), and have won every UAA championship since 1998. But...maybe NYU wins this thing?
As we head into a weekend of high-stakes conference championships, no women’s team looks stronger than the Emory Eagles.
They’ve dominated all season.
Coming off a meet against Division I Georgia, where Allison Greeneway, Elodie Mitchell, Megan Jungers, Penelope Helm, Sophia Joos, and Sarah Daly each posted swims worth over one SRS point, they now top the SRS rankings with 50+ points—three ahead of Kenyon.
And they’re also #1 in the CSCAA poll, which means if an impromptu dual meet between (say) Emory and MIT takes place in the next 36 hours, Emory would be the favorite. Good to know.
On top of that, did you know that the last team to beat the Eagles at the women’s UAA championship was Johns Hopkins? And that was in 1998.1 Hopkins isn’t even in the UAA anymore. And the last time any current UAA team finished ahead of Emory at the women’s UAA championship? That was 1989. Way to go University of Rochester.
So, of course, this weekend, at the women’s UAA championship, Emory is going to win. Of course.
But maybe…
To be clear, we are the last publication you should pay attention to right now.
First, we couldn’t find some key details on UAA scoring that would have made our predictions more precise.2
Second, we don’t think we can rely on SRS for predicting outcomes in conference championship meets. We love SRS for estimating, even months out, where teams might rank at nationals. But we are unclear on how much SRS really helps us figure out what will happen next weekend.
So, we took a different approach. We looked at simulations, from a couple different models. And we worked our way through each event with the best information available to us. We were repeatedly surprised at how close the score was even when the constraints favored team depth (i.e., Emory).
In the end, we have the NYU women winning the UAAs this weekend.
Now, obviously that is ridiculous. Of course it is. Of course. But maybe…
Johns Hopkins is no longer in the UAA.
And unlike NCACs, where we have everything we need like psych sheets, scoring rosters, explanations of points distributions and meet scoring, the UAAs makes that information a little harder to find.
The Emory women haven’t been challenged at UAAs for as long as I can recall. I think it’ll be closer this year, regardless of the order of finish.
Maybe it plays out like last year, where Emory’s depth helps keep their conference streak alive, but NYU’s top end speed earns more points and a podium finish at NCAAs? But? It seems both teams are even deeper than last year! Especially NYU in the 500. Can’t wait to follow along and see what happens!!