2018 Pool C Update #4: Show Me Your Cards

Multiple texts have come through this past week, asking me, “ASouth, when is the next Pool C Update?” You guys are like the Walking Dead waiting to feast on the human flesh that is a Pool C Update. And to keep the living dead happy, I must write an article once more (and not the last one) that outlines how 8 teams are fighting for 6 spots. Pool C is DIII Tennis’s version of Battle Royale, just without small Asian children and gruesome deaths via shoddy weaponry. Anyways, enough movie references (lol right, here they come), let’s talk about what happened this past weekend and what that means for the Pool C shuffle.

WEEKLY POOL C PSA BELOW:

If you’re looking for NCAA Rules, but slightly outdated, please click the link in BLOGROLL to the top left of the site. While your arrow is hovering around there, feel free to press the Paypal Donation box too. I hear it brings good luck to all those who click on it.

Reminder: There are 6 Pool C Spots this year, with only one Pool B spot. I hear this sentence in my nightmares. Yet somehow, I find myself always wanting to repeat it. Below, see my famous table of who’s played who.

The previous Pool C article is here, as well as the Bracketology that was posted last week. And here we go again.

OKAY, GREAT. 

JUST KIDDING I LOVE POOL C.

Team-by-Team Thoughts

I’m going to do this a little bit differently this week, as we won’t go through recent results but we’ll go through each team, their chances of making the postseason, and what’s to come for the rest of the regular season for them. Obviously, reference the table above for a breakdown of each team with logos, and again, if you don’t know which logos match up with who, you must be LoveD3Tennis. And your comments will be trashed without me reading them.

Bowdoin – Bowdoin is a lock to make the tournament at this point, despite their lashing by the Panthers this past weekend. To me, Bowdoin is still probably the favorite to win the NESCAC, except by a really, really small margin. I think that match if it happens could go either way. But, as you can see from their wins, they’ve beaten probably every other Pool C contender, they’ll probably pick up a few more wins along the way, and are generally a really good team. Don’t worry about Bowdoin – just worry about their seeding.

Middlebury – What Middlebury this past weekend was downright mean to the Polar Bears. Save the planet. With wins over the top dog in Pool C/NESCAC as well as wins over Pomona Pitzer and Tufts, Middlebury would have to straight-up collapse to miss the playoffs. Matches against Emory, Wesleyan, and Amherst, as well as the NESCAC Tournament are left, and if they win any of those matches they are basically in the tournament. Consider the Panthers a lock and a potential contender for the #1 overall seed if they win out the rest of the year.

Chicago – Chicago took a bigtime L to GAC this past weekend on a neutral court, but that causes more problems in Power Rankings and Twitter than it does in Pool C. Tweet at Brad Entwistle. Chicago is a lock now after this past weekend as they took out Wash U for the second time this year, to go with their wins against Williams, CMU, Pomona, and Case. Chicago is also fighting for a higher seed in NCAAs because I know they don’t want to play a top 4 seed in the Elite 8. Chicago is in, but they have work to do to keep their seed.

Williams – Another team that is more or less a lock at this point, by virtue of their wins over CMS and Middlebury. Even a loss to Amherst and a first round ouster at the NESCAC Tournament probably doesn’t knock them out, and doubt that will happen anyways. Honestly, the rest of the season probably doesn’t all that matter much for Williams as long as they win the matches they should. Looking at potential seedings, #1-7 are basically a combination of all really damn good teams. Any matchup with those is going to be tough, so pick your poison. Williams is in the playoffs.

Amherst – Now, we finally get interesting. Amherst has a crazy nice resume right now, but the fact of the matter is LATE SEASON PLAY matters a lot to the NCAA, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they take into account the fact that 2 key contributors on Amherst’s team have quit. Whether that’s fair or not, I will not say. But it’s real. Amherst has only tough opponents left the rest of the way, and most importantly, one of them is Wesleyan. Wesleyan is currently the first team out based on ITA Rank, Power Rankings, and general consensus, and are fighting to get back into the tournament. An Amherst loss to Wesleyan in the regular season would set up a potential rematch between the two teams in the first round of the NESCAC Tournament. Depending on how you look at it, that match could mean one of the two is either in or out. We’ll get to those scenarios if they actualize, because there’s a lot of meat and potatoes there. Anyways, watch out for the Amherst/Wesleyan match THIS WEEKEND. If Wesleyan loses this match, I am very, very down on their chances of getting into the tournament even with a win against Amherst at the NESCAC Tournament. So, be tuned in from 2PM on for what will be a playoff matchup.

Carnegie Mellon – The more I look at what CMU has done this year, the more I get impressed with their overall resume. They have a lot of matches on their resume, both wins and losses, but they’ve done virtually everything needed to really give them a good shot to make the playoffs. Right now, this team is looking almost as good as Amherst to make it in the tournament, mostly because they now will play no one else that is on the outside looking in. CMU only has the UAA Tournament remaining, where they are now locked into the #3 seed and will play Case Western in the first round. Assuming they get through that challenge (a loss would knock them out of the playoffs), they’d take on Chicago and the winner/loser of Emory/Wash U. If we were to go by seeding, CMU would play Wash U in the 3rd/4th place match. This match would essentially determine the placing of the two teams in the 5th and 6th spots of Pool C. You’ll see why this is important as we get closer, but obviously both teams don’t want to be the “last team in,” as it puts them in a precarious position for the NESCAC Tournament a week later.

Wash U – Wash U is a similar but slightly different story than CMU in this case. The Bears are essentially floating along on their win against Wesleyan, and they have wins over Pomona Pitzer and Redlands (doesn’t matter) as well. That’s really all they have considering they have 7 losses against the top 9 teams in the nation so far this year. Wash U played a top heavy schedule due to their location, and that may come back to hurt them later on in certain scenarios. Again, Wash U will most likely have to survive Brandeis and win the 3rd/4th or stun Emory to move up in Pool C. They are currently the last team in and are the team most likely to be knocked out by Wesleyan due to their weak resume of wins.

Wesleyan – We’ve gone through every other team so far, but Wesleyan is your team to root for if you love the underdog story. After a rough start to the year with losses to CMU and Wash U, we’re talking about a mountain to climb for the Cardinals. They had a fantastic weekend this past weekend, notching two bigtime resume wins over Tufts and Swarthmore, both ranked within the top 20. Adding any amount of top 20 wins at this stage in the game is big for Wesleyan given that they’ll need to get into some resume battles with either Amherst/CMU/Wash U at the end of the year. Wesleyan has 4 big matches left – and the most important is obviously Amherst and NESCAC Tournament. The question here is quite obviously:

Why does Wesleyan need to beat Amherst twice? Well, if you take a look at the resumes with Wesleyan splitting with Amherst, you’ll basically see resumes that are similar or worse than Amherst/CMU/Wash U, no matter who you compare against. All three of those teams would have direct wins against Wesleyan. Wesleyan must win the final two matches against Amherst, because it’s looking bleak otherwise.

Tufts – With a loss to Wesleyan this past weekend, Tufts only has a match against Bowdoin and the NESCAC Tournament to salvage their tournament hopes. Based on what Tufts has shown us for a long time, they are currently not a threat to overtake any of the above Pool C candidates.

Kinda Important Upcoming Matches

Tufts @ Bates, 2PM Friday

Emory vs. Amherst, 3PM Friday

Bowdoin vs. Williams, 10AM Saturday

Amherst @ Wesleyan, 2PM Saturday*****

Middlebury vs. Emory, 3PM Saturday

Final Thoughts

Make sure you take a look at the quick hits section from the previous Pool C article to give you some more blurbs on Pool C. Overall, it’s a pretty clear cut picture right now – but things could still go haywire depending on some results this weekend. Watch out for another big NESCAC weekend as well as UAAs next weekend! ASouth, OUT.