BOSTON, Mass. – Racing Saturday on the Charles River, the No. 13 Wisconsin men's rowing team earned the Cochrane Cup for the 12th consecutive year.
This year, the teams decided to shake things up, combining the Cochrane Cup (versus MIT) and the Jablonic Cup (versus Boston University) into one race Saturday morning.
The varsity eight squad finished with a time of five minutes and 55.5 seconds to defeat MIT, who finished roughly 20 seconds behind them with a time of 6:13.2.
"We retained the Cochrane Cup against MIT," Head Coach Chris Clark said. "We've held that for a number of years now and today we kept the streak alive, so we were very happy about that."
Yet, despite Wisconsin's success against MIT, the same varsity crew fell to No. 8 Boston University in an attempt to earn the Jablonic Cup. The Badgers finished just over one second behind the Terriers, who won the race with a time of 5:54.1. This is now the fifth-straight victory for BU in the Jablonic Cup.
"The first varsity was probably the most frustrating because we executed that exactly how we planned to do perfectly, took the lead in the third 500 (meters)," Clark added. "Traditionally, more experienced guys shut it down, the race is over at that point, but we have one guy who has ever been in the varsity boat and instead of pretending to do what gave them the lead, they decided to take off and change the rhythm, and it gave BU just enough to come back and take the win by just a little bit.
"We were right there. That is the good news."
Additionally, UW's second and third varsity boats went head-to-head against the stiff competition.
Wisconsin's second varsity boat got out to an "uncharacteristically very slow start." The Badgers crossed the 2,000-meter mark at a time of 6:02.2, beating MIT by a landslide, but falling behind BU by four seconds. BU's second varsity eight boat finished with a time of 5:58.3 to win the race.
"All of these boats were attacking the first 250-500 meters and we bobbled some and though not great, we really held them the whole way after that point," Clark noted. "We were fine in the second half of the race. We have to be in it earlier."
Wisconsin's third varsity eight boat also finished second in their race with a time of 6:07.0 while BU's third varisty eight crew led the way with a time of 6:00.7.
"They under stroked meaning they were not nearly as aggressive as BU. BU was out and gone so that was disappointing and I'm sure they'll come back harder tomorrow and change that up," Clark said.
The Badgers are back in action tomorrow morning as they take on Northeastern in the Congram Cup.
Results
Cochrane Cup/Jablonic Cup
Boston, Mass.
April 29, 2017
2,000 meters
Men's Varsity Eight
1. Boston, 5:54.1; 2. Wisconsin, 5:55.5; 3. MIT, 6:13.2
Wisconsin Lineup: Michael Callahan (cox), Nick Montalvo, Laing Wise, Andrew Griffin, James Bernard, Tristan Amberger, Jonah Van der Weide, Kyle McCarthy, Erik Kernozek
Men's Second Varsity
1. Boston, 5:58.3; 2. Wisconsin, 6:02.2; 3. MIT, 6:38.8
Wisconsin Lineup: James Roen (cox), John Hollow, Alexander Butler, Nathan Petersen, Sam Weeks, Andrew Flannery, James Lueken, Alex Idarraga, Thomas Walker
Men's Third Varsity
1. Boston, 6:00.7; 2. Wisconsin, 6:07.0
Wisconsin Lineup: Andrew Hamilton (cox), Dylan Adams, Christoph Bub, Kyle James, Jacob Hurlbutt, Zach Ruedinger, Graham Mink, Timothy Glennon, Steve Knopp
