2017 Season Preview: George Fox Bruins

George Fox University

Coach: Neal Ninteman (8th season)

Location: Newberg, OR

ITA Ranking: UR

Blog Power Ranking: UR

Twitter Handle: @GFUTennis – very good updates

Spencer Watanabe and Alex Namba, All-Americans!
Spencer Watanabe and Alex Namba, All-Americans!

Overview:

This week in D3Regional season previews, we transition from the UAA to the SCIAC and now the good old NWC, one of my favorite conferences just because nobody seems to know what it is outside of Whitman.  George Fox is certainly in that next level of schools along with Lewis & Clark, Pacific (OR), and Whitworth (In the Whitman vs. Whitworth match on Twitter last year, Whitman was using “Whit vs. Whit” in their updates, classic……), but this year, GFU looks to have an incredibly different roster with 10 freshmen, 2 juniors (including Spencer Watanabe), and nobody else.  That’s a lot of young blood for a squad to handle, and also a lot of uncertainty for me to attempt to write about in a preview.  Time to completely form my opinion of a tennis program based on one tournament (NW ITA) worth of results!!

Keys to the season:

Spencer Watanabe:

I’ll get more into intangibles/leadership in a moment but for this young team, any keys to their season has to start with the dude that absolutely dominated the Northwest ITA.  Watanabe was a solid but not amazing #1 last year, beating Pacific, L&C, Wabash, and Whitworth, but losing every dual match he played against ranked schools, including Whitman (x2), Wesleyan, and Carnegie Mellon.  However, this year Watanabe has looked to take a Bruin-sized step forward, winning the NW ITA in both singles and doubles, losing just 15 games in singles.  Watanabe isn’t going to be able to beat teams all by himself unless he gets some disguises and takes some very well-timed medical timeouts, but counting on him for two points every match is a great start.

Freshmen Development:

This is an obvious one, but if the freshmen don’t develop this offseason, George Fox could find themselves outside of the NWC tournament (top 4 make the tourney).  The Bruins have 10 freshmen on their roster, but with only five of them playing in ITA’s, and Matt Biggi being the only one to win more than one match, the freshmen are going to have to train hard this offseason.  They have plenty of options, but with Watanabe as the only sure thing at #1, the Bruins are going to have to have a solid winter.

Team Chemistry:

This Bruins team is going to look completely different from years past, and there is a lot more that goes into building a winning program than simply what takes place on the court in matches.  With so much of last year’s roster absent, Watanabe and Tristen Lerma will need to work hard to unify this young bunch.  With such a young team, things can get out of hand very quickly, especially in the offseason with no head coach supervision.  However, in another sense, this can be viewed as an opportunity to completely reshape the team culture at GFU.  I have no idea what the team culture is at GFU (or do I…….), but without too many upperclassmen, Watanabe and Lerma can help change the way this team operates for years to come, both on and off the court.

Key Additions:
Oh boy.  Matt Biggi (2 star), Alex Namba (2 star), Ryan Malinowski (2 star), Jacob Farmer (1 star), Davin Lee (1 star) were the five freshmen that played singles at ITAs.  For the full assortment of Bruins freshmen, check out the full roster.

Key Departures:

Oh boy again.  This won’t capture all of them but…Chris Lilley (#2 singles), Nicholas Grafton (#3), Mitchell Miyashiro (#4), Vincent Viloria (#5), Nick Ekern (#6)

Projected Lineup:

I really have no clue what the Bruins’ lineup is going to look like after Watanabe.  So instead, here’s a list of what I imagine to be their top 7 guys plus their UTR’s.

#1: Spencer Watanabe – 11.69

#2: Matt Biggi – 11.18

#3: Ryan Malinowski – 10.04

#4: Jacob Farmer: 9.49

#5: Alex Namba – 9.37

#6: Davin Lee – 8.43

#7: Tristen Lerma – 8.32

My idea of the Bruins’ doubles pairings is about as foggy as my brain felt today having to work on 12/23, but don’t worry, I pretty much spent all day writing this preview.  Watanabe and Alex Namba have to start at #1, given how they rolled through the ITA tournament, but after that, GFU did not win another doubles match in the main draw, though Tristen Lerma / John Mackay won a couple matches in the consolation including a win over a Whitman team.  The Bruins have played pretty good doubles the past couple of years, but this is almost a completely new roster, so this should be another big focus for the offseason.

Schedule Analysis: http://athletics.georgefox.edu/sports/mten/2016-17/schedule

Last year, the Bruins had a ton of variety in their schedule, with the NWC matches and two trips to southern Cali, one where they played Occidental, Vassar, and Chapman, and another where they played in the Ojai.  They also hosted RPI mid-season.

This year, their schedule looks very weak.  It is only NWC conference matches, and there isn’t even a match against Whitman on the schedule, though upon further investigation, there is a Whitman v. GFU match on Whitman’s website.  This gives me a funny feeling that their schedule is still incomplete, so it’s something for us to keep our eyes on.  As it stands, however, on the Van Zee Vault grading scale, this schedule gets a “N/A” because it literally only has the conference matches that are mandatory to play.  Let’s hope the Bruins have more up their sleeve than nine conference matches.

Look, in reality this preview was about 1,000 words of me babbling that I have no idea what to expect from George Fox.  Watanabe is set up to have a terrific year, and him and Alex Namba should be highly ranked to start the year in doubles as well.  Outside of this, I could see GFU coming together and finishing as high as #2 ahead of Pacific, or falling to #5 behind Whitworth, who they only beat 5-4 last year.  Watanabe has developed from a 2 star into one of the best players in the country, so who can say that one of these freshmen can’t do the same?  We shall see!

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