2016 Women’s Season Preview: #17 Wesleyan Cardinals

E V Doubs

Location: Middletown, CT

Head Coach: Mike Fried, 4th year

Twitter Handle: @CardsTennis

2013 National Ranking: UR
2014 National Ranking: UR
2015 National Ranking: #17
2016 Pre-Season National Ranking: #17

 

Intro:
The Wesleyan Cardinals are definitely a team on the rise! Just two years ago they were an unranked team. Before last year, the last time Wesleyan found themselves in the national rankings was in 2002 at #21 (in 2001 they were the #11 team in the country). Coach Fried has reawakened this program by some pretty nifty recruiting, and they are on a good trend. I think that they are actually a little under-ranked at #17, but looking back at last year’s results, they did not have an actual win to support moving them up – they came close to beating Bowdoin but lost 4-5 in the NESCAC quarterfinals. They were *this* close to a doubles sweep, just missing it in an 11-13 breaker at #2 doubles.
Looking at Wesleyan’s schedule gets me very excited about the Pool C scene for DIII tennis. Pool C for women’s tennis is again at 8 teams, which the NESCAC, UAA, and SCIAC will dominate. Looking at those conferences, I’d say the NESCAC has 4 (maybe 5) teams that will compete for Pool C spots, while the UAA have 3 (maybe 4), and the SCIAC has 1 (maybe 2) teams. With the quality of teams in the national top 20, at least a few teams who are deserving of playing in the big dance will be denied.
Lineup Analysis:

Let’s take a look at my projected lineups for Coach Fried’s Cardinals.

UTR Power6 Rating (the sum of the supposed top 6 players on a team): 51

The first thing that stands out about this lineup is just how young they are. 5 sophomores and 1 freshman! This is pretty exciting but also leaves them vulnerable to a collective sophomore slump. Hopefully any hardships that they go through will help shape the leadership that they will need to do great things.

#1 Singles: Eudice, sophomore, 10.76
#2 Singles: Victoria Yu, freshman, 10.16
These top 2 players will be the most dependable points for Wesleyan, which is saying a lot given the quality of players at the top of most good teams. They met at the finals of the ITA regional, in which Eudice won handily 6-2, 6-2. They paired up to win the regional doubles title as well as the ITA National doubles title.
It will be interesting to see how opponents play Eudice, as players get to know her game better.

#3 Singles: Helen Klass-Warch, sophomore, 7.55
Klass-Warch played mostly at #2 last year and did not have a good year, going 1-8 against teams in the top 40. Going down a spot will help the team but I’d say she is still a position too high.

#4 Singles: Aashli Budhiraja, sophomore, 8.12
It didn’t look like Budhiraja played at all in the fall (injury? abroad?) If she does play in the spring I’d slot her in at #4. If she does not play, then Wesleyan is looking at at much weaker lineup, especially at #6, and a very different year. Budhiraja had a so so year at #3 last year, going 4-5 against ranked opponents.

#5 Singles: Nicole McCann, sophomore, 7.25
McCann played mostly at #4 last year, going 4-5 against ranked teams. Again, playing a position lower will help the team.

#6 Singles: Dasha Dubinsky, sophomore, 7.12
Dubinsky played mostly at #6 last year, and went 3-6 against ranked teams.

Doubles:
Doubles can get really interesting for Wesleyan, I think. This situation of having 2 dominant players poses the question: Should Coach Fried keep them together for an almost sure point at #1 doubles and a qualification for the individual doubles tournament or should he split them up to give the team a better shot at possibly 2 points in doubles? Or a hybrid – have them play enough matches together to qualify for the individual tournament but split them up against teams that they want to take a little bit of a risk against? Good luck Coach Fried!

Schedule Analysis:

Here’s Wesleyan’s schedule: http://www.wesleyan.edu/athletics/wtennis/scheduleresults.html

3/8 v Georgetown
3/10 v #20 Case
3/11 at #18 Redlands
3/14 v #13 WashU
3/19 at #5 Midd
4/2 at Conn
4/3 #8 Bowdoin
4/10 at #1 Williams
4/16 at Hamilton
4/17 at #3 Amherst
4/19 v Bates
4/23 at Colby
4/24 v #24 Tufts
4/27 at #30 Trinity
4/30 at #28 Brandeis
5/6-5/8 NESCACs at Bates

This is an interesting schedule, as it does not leave a lot of room for error. I would have liked to see Wesleyan play more ranked teams in the #9-#16 range to boost their Pool C chances. Their spring break match against WashU is going to be HUGE. HUGE. I think they should be able to handle Case and Redlands leading up to it (although they are dangerous Pool C opponents; losing to either one of them may be devastating for their Pool C chances), but the bottom half of Wesleyan’s lineup will have to work hard in those matches, as they should be pretty evenly matched. Against Midd and Bowdoin, Wesleyan’s bottom half of the lineup will be outmatched but Wesleyan will have the upper hand in the top part of the lineup. Here is where Coach Fried can perhaps split Eudice and Yu in doubles to possibly get 2 points in doubles and go into singles with a 2-1 lead. If Eudice and Yu can get their singles matches, all of a sudden Wes has 4 points and everyone is nervous and it is a whole new ballgame. If it works they can try it again against Williams and Amherst, what a fun formula. Of course, you also run the risk of going down 0-3 with zero momentum going into singles. I am very excited to see how things actually play out this season!
Tufts is also going to be a good match. Tufts is a pretty young team as well, and they had fairly good results in the fall tournaments. These two teams might well be playing for the last spot in Pool C, which will be an exciting race to the finish.
Wesleyan should be able to take care of the rest of the teams without too much trouble. There might be a couple of individual matches at the bottom of the lineup that might get close.

 

D3NEW’s 3 Keys to Wesleyan’s Season:

#1. Experience – As I said, this is a very young team and this year should be about gaining match experience. They might hit some bumps in the road, but every match they play is a win in the experience column.
#2. Leadership – Just as important as the match experience is, who is going to step up and lead this young team?
#3. Doubles and depth – Coach Fried has an interesting option to work with in doubles and it just might work at the right time(s). The bottom half of the lineup will have to work hard this season, but all in all I’m very much looking forward to what Wesleyan can do this season. Will they have another groundbreaking year???

Over and out,

NEW

2 thoughts on “2016 Women’s Season Preview: #17 Wesleyan Cardinals

  1. idoc

    I think you pointed out last year that teams don’t change very much in the rankings over the years. Wesleyan appears to be a team that is an exception. It looks like they may come out of nowhere to be a top ten team. Next year’s recruiting class might even make them a top 5 team or even challenge for the championship? I must admit that I tend to root for dynasties like Williams and the Patriots, but it’s nice to see fresh challengers.

    1. D3NE Womens

      Yes, definitely Wesleyan is trending up. Inspired by your question and the Guru’s article (http://www.division3tennis.com/7148-2/), I made a simple spreadsheet of women’s teams and their end-of-year rankings for the last 5 years. In the current top 20, there were only 3 teams that went from unranked to ranked: Case went from unranked in 2012 (and 2011) to #25 in 2013 to #22 in 2014 to #20 in 2015. Wesleyan was unranked as recently as 2014 (as well as 2013, 2012, and 2011) and is #17 in 2015. MIT was unranked in 2011, then #30 in 2012, then #23 in 2013, then #13 in 2014, to #9 in 2015. Another notable “climb” is Sewanee going from #26 in 2011 to #12 in 2015. Maybe I’ll do a Guru-esque article if I find a couple of more interesting trends! Anyone else see any interesting trends?
      Also, who’s in next year’s recruiting class for Wesleyan that you talk about? I looked at TRN and only see 1 3-star committed…

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