2016 Season Preview: #1 CMS

Coach: Paul Settles

Location: Claremont, CA

Ranking: #1

Twitter Handle: @CMSTennis

Overview: 

After finally getting King Kong off their back with an undefeated National Championship season in 2015, the Stags have bid adieu to the program’s two winningest players and the guy with probably the winningest facial hair in DIII history. They have have a monster recruiting class coming in next year, so this figures to be a rebuilding year, right? NAAAHT!!! Despite a slew of graduation losses, the Stags still have a ton of guys with championship experience returning to go with a fair bit of freshman talent. They might not be deep enough to have their “B Team” beat top 20 teams anymore, but their A team will do just fine. I count at least seven guys who have seen significant starting time in the last couple years, and a couple more who have seen action against nationally ranked competition in CMS’ packed schedule. I won’t bore you with my witty banter, let’s take a look at the roster.

Lineup Analysis:

Singles:

#1 Singles – Skyler Butts (Sr.) – This is a no-brainer. Butts is a two-time ITA Champ and the returning NCAA Singles finalist. In my mind, he’s the favorite to win the singles national championship at the end of the year, but I’m sure there are plenty of people who would argue with that. Without a doubt, Butts is one of my favorite players out there. He’s a lowly 3-star who has succeeded in an environment dominated by junior rankings. He qualified for NCAA’s as a #4 singles player and a #2 doubles player his sophomore year, and did himself one better by moving all the way up to #2 singles (past The Stache and Marino) for a dominant junior season. He picked up right where he left off this Fall, winning the ITA without dropping a set and coming within a couple points of playing for the Fall national title before finishing third. As a coach, you’re often worried about a player’s ability to step into the #1 singles position. This is not one of those times. Sometimes when I feel like there’s nothing beautiful in the world, I think about his one handed backhand, and everything is OK.

#2 Singles – Glenn Hull (Jr.) – Some people are going to look at Hull at #2 singles and think that he’ll be playing a little above his comfort level (after all, he hasn’t played above #6 singles), but that couldn’t be further from the truth. We all know he was only playing so low because of all the studliness above him. In the rare instances Hull has gotten to play guys higher in the lineup, he has excelled. Last year, he won the California ITA. This year, he lost to Butts in the finals after a stellar match against Yasgoor, which is an early contender for match of the year. I’m sure he’ll pick up a couple losses as #2, but he’ll fare well, even against the best of DIII.

#3 Singles – Daniel Morkovine (Jr.) – I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been pretty harsh on Mork in the past. During his freshman year, he seemed to go 3 sets with just about everybody, and he had little streaks where he looked like he could be beat by a strong gust of wind, but he hardly ever lost. Last year, he was without a doubt the best #5 singles in the country. He went undefeated during the regular season and rarely even went the distance in dual matches. His lone losses in tournament play came in tight matches against Yasgoor and Lipscomb. I doubt he’ll get through another undefeated season at #3, but he won’t have any problem winning a majority of his matches. If he continues his trajectory of improvement, he’ll be among the best #3 guys in the country. An early-season out-of-division match against Concord will be a good indicator for how he’ll fare against the bigger hitters he’ll see higher in the lineup.

#4 Singles – Max Macey (Jr.) – If there’s one singles spot that CMS has to be a little worried about, it’s #4. Macey spent the first half of last season as CMS’ #6 singles player before getting benched in favor of Hull. While he performed admirably at that position with some notable wins, he picked up a couple losses against Johns Hopkins and Howie Weiss. He’s a solid player, but I worry about his ability to put balls away consistently without making errors. Most teams would be thrilled to have him at #4, but if I’m looking for a weak point in the singles lineup, this is it. Teams like CMU, Amherst, and Trinity (TX) will be looking to this spot for victories against an otherwise loaded lineup.

#5 Singles – Julian Gordy (Fr.) – Despite the graduation of three of the best players in program history, CMS still has upperclassmen at the top four singles position. Gordy is really the only underclassman I see playing for this team. He had a very impressive debut in the Fall tournament, beating Valdez and Stone before falling to Hull in three tight sets in the quarterfinals. I missed the tournament, so I can only go by results, but I’m guessing at #5 singles, he’ll be playing well within his comfort zone.

#6 Singles – Lester Yeh (Sr.) – Look at this! A “Rebuilding” team has upperclassmen at the top four positions and a senior at #6 with a freshman at #5. If this is how the lineup turns out, the lineup looks a lot like that of the team that lost in the national championship match to Amherst a couple years ago. I know the Stags are looking for another national championship, but that wouldn’t be a bad result. Yeh is another guy I’ve been pretty harsh on in the past because he sometimes doesn’t look like he’s trying on the court, but a little bit of that is just his playing style. He seems to have turned it on for his senior season after making the semis in the ITA for the first time this past fall. He’ll be Pereverzin-esque if he manages to hold on to the #6 singles spot, going nearly-undefeated against some of the best competition in the country.

The Other Guys – Bryan Mehall (Sr.), Patrick Wildman (So.), Alex Brenner (Jr.) – And here are three very legitimate starters sitting on the bench. Mehall has been sniffing the starting lineup for two years now, and he feels like he’s been around forever. He will almost certainly start in doubles, but he’ll have to overtake another senior if he wants to crack the starting lineup his senior season. I’d love to see the two-star from Colorado pull it off. Brenner is a transfer who was just outside of the starting lineup last season, probably right behind Yeh and Mehall. He’s got a nice serve and a good game, but I expect he’ll spend another season riding the pine. Wildman hardly played at all last season, but I put him on this because he picked up a nice win over Sam Malech from Pomona-Pitzer this Fall.

Doubles – Honestly, everything up to this point has basically been filler because the Stags will make or break their season on the doubles court. That singles lineup has the good to take at least three matches off anyone else in the country, but they’re gonna have a hard time coming back from a doubles deficit against the likes of Amherst, Emory, and Chicago. Among the players on their roster, Butts is the only one who has much of a history of doubles success, but I guess that’s what happens when you graduate a national championship team that’s been playing together for three years. Mork is probably the second best player on the doubles with his sneaky hands, but he’s not really a big hitter, and I don’t see him being successful at the top spot. Hull and Mehall both teamed with Marino at different points last season at the #3 spot, but that was probably the weakest spot in the whole CMS lineup. If I had to take a stab at their doubles lineup, it would be Butts-Hull, Mork-Yeh, Mehall-Gordy, but that’s really just a blind guess. It’s hard to see that doubles lineup striking much fear into the hearts of opponents, but we’ll see.

Schedule Analysis

Here is the CMS schedule

This is just more of the same for CMS. I already discussed the most distinctive feature of the schedule briefly on Twitter; they’re only road matches are against Redlands, UC San Diego, and UC Irvine. They don’t have to leave Bisantz for SCIACs, and they probably won’t have to leave for Regionals. If they’re going to leave the state of California, it will be fore nationals in Kalamazoo. Beyond just missing out on the team building aspect of road trips, I believe learning how to play on the road is a big part of being successful in college tennis. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they’ve played well at nationals the last couple seasons when they’ve played true DIII road matches against tough teams, and I think they might struggle if they get to Kalamazoo because of this. I digress.

The Stags have their usual smattering of matches against lower ranked teams in late February/early March, but their first true test of the season will come against CMU. I expect they’ll win that one because the Tartan aren’t quite as well equipped to take advantage of the Stags’ doubles deficiency as some other teams. A potential second-round Stag-Hen match against Trinity, however, could be another story. We’ll cover those matches when we come to them. Otherwise, they’re running the top-10 gauntlet with additional home matches against Amherst, Bowdoin, Chicago, and Williams in the rest of March. Obviously, the Amherst and Chicago matches are the ones everyone will be keeping a keen eye on. In early April, the Stags play Pomona-Pitzer and Middlebury on back-to-back days. The Hens came about as close as anyone to beating CMS last season, and most of the blog (myself included) has Middlebury pegged as a national championship favorite.

After that, the Stags finish up SCIAC play, and I think they’ll go undefeated in the conference for the 108th consecutive season. I absolutely love the move to schedule UC San Diego and UC Irvine in mid-to-late April to keep the team sharp coming into April. We take it for granted, but CMS will be heavily favored to host their own region and advance to the Elite Eight again this season, though Pomona-Pitzer figures to provide some pretty stiff competition.

Conclusion

All in all, I’ll predict that they lose their first regular season match in four calendar years on March 25th against Chicago and then drop another one on April 2nd against Middlebury to go with a bunch of impressive victories. They will enter the post-season as the #3 overall seed and make it to the semifinals and avenge themselves on Chicago before falling to Middlebury in the national championship match to make their fourth consecutive national championship match. Unlike the Buffalo Bills, they will have won one of them. Like most of the other West region teams, I’m excited to see how this will all play out. They’ve got a lot of guys stepping into new positions, and I expect readers will have to get used to hearing names like Hull, Gordy, and Mork for the next couple seasons, as they are some of the best players in the country who have been waiting patiently for the last couple seasons, making good use of their time on the bench.