Happy Monday folks! I hope you had bountiful feasts last week and are ready to hibernate for the rest of the winter until DIII tennis begins again. This season preview is a little different because I am going to be covering two teams, seemingly intertwined by fate. That’s right, we have a previews of the SAA’s very own Millsaps and Rhodes. Because I am doing two previews I have shortened the previews slightly so I don’t bore you like Northeast with a massive #WALLOFTEXT, but I think I still stuffed plenty of content into this article. Let’s get it going!
Millsaps Fast Facts
Location: Jackson, MS
Coach: Davis Elkins (1st Season – Interim Head Coach)
ITA Regional Ranking: TBD (Atlantic South)
Power 6 UTR: 61
Twitter Handle: @MillsapsTennis
Key Departures: Diego Marti-Vertiz, Alex Centurion, Avinash Anath
Key Additions: Ben Falk (2 Star/9.95 UTR), John Kimball (2 Star/10.09 UTR), Mac Lane (2 Star/8.91 UTR)
Brief Overview: Last season, this relatively unknown team finished second in the SAA, earned its first ever national ranking and qualified a doubles team for NCAA individuals. What a season. In fact, it was a season good enough to make their coach, the ITA Atlantic South coach of the year, a very hot commodity. Because of this Coach Box took his success to Swarthmore, PA and left the Millsaps team without a coach. On top of that, this team graduated 3 very impactful starters. Most people would be pressing the panic button on this Major squad, but I am still optimistic. They brought in a very large recruiting class, returned a few starters from last year and still have that swagger that we know and love. This team has a lot of heart and is very fun to cover, so let’s crack into it.
Player to Watch: Jacob Niehaus– Niehaus, who primarily played 5 and 6 singles last year, had a very nice start to his fall season with a win over NC Wesleyan freshman, Jhonny Acosta. Acosta was a #9 seed and was one of the Bishops higher rated freshmen going into the fall, so that win should give Niehaus some confidence moving forward. If Niehaus continues to step up and play at this level, the Majors could be in store for another solid season.
Schedule Analysis: Millsaps has a pretty similar schedule to last season, and you can look at it in its entirety here. They start off the schedule with SAA opponent Hendrix. While they do have a new coach and an increased twitter presence, I don’t think the Warriors will put up much of a fight against the Majors. On that trip they also play the University of the Ozarks, who have a Power 6 UTR of 31, enough said. The following match against Huntingdon won’t be much different.
Now the schedule gets a little more interesting. The Majors travel to Shreveport, LA to play LeTourneau University, Centenary College and Austin College. The Majors will be favored in the first two matches, but they should be more competitive than the first few and then the match against Austin College will be pretty much a coin flip. The Majors head home after that for a tune up match against Belhaven before heading to Orlando for a very tough Spring Break schedule against Wash U, Case, Kenyon and Ohio Wesleyan. The good news for Millsaps is that they will gain much needed experience against elite teams to prepare them for SAA rival Sewanee later on in the season.
After returning from Florida, the conference schedule really begins. Millsaps takes a quick trip to Georgia to play Berry and Oglethorpe. The following weekend will be a crucial match for SAA seeding against Rhodes. The winner of that match should be the #2 seed going into the conference tournament. The weekend after that they will draw from the experience playing Case, Kenyon and Wash U and try to knock Sewanee off the top of the conference. They round out the season with matches against Centre, East Texas Baptist and Birmingham Southern. While Millsaps did go 5-4 with Birmingham Southern last season, I believe this year won’t be that close since the Majors reloaded and the Panthers did not.
Keys to Success:
Davis Plummer – Plummer had himself one hell of a season last year qualifying for NCAAs with partner Alex Centurion in doubles. He also went 16-5 at singles at the #2 spot. While he did not compete this fall, I am fairly certain he will be back in the spring. This season he will most likely be playing the #1 spot and will be huge in the team’s success this season. If he can find the same chemistry with another partner as well as picking up where he left off in singles, the Majors will be in good shape, otherwise, it might be a long season.
Depth – This team struggled with their depth in the big matches all of last season and this year they will really need to step it up with the loss of Marti-Vertiz, Centurion and Anath. The talented incoming freshman will be incredibly important and they need to adopt the workmanlike mentality and grit that the Majors have been known for the past couple of season. The good news is that there is plenty of upper classmen leadership that will help this cause.
Realistic Best Case Scenario: I’m considering this a little bit of rebuilding year for the Generals, with the departure of 3 key starters and a head coach, however I do still think that this team has the potential to produce a relatively good season. Best-case scenario for the Majors is a second place finish in the SAA.
Realistic Worst Case Scenario: As I mentioned before, this is a rebuilding year and there could definitely be some growing pains. Rhodes once again appears to have brought in the talent to be a force in the SAA and other teams like Oglethorpe and Centre have brought in recruits that could immediately impact the landscape of the conference. A realistic worst-case scenario for this team would be a fourth place conference finish.
Rhodes Fast Facts
Location: Memphis, TN
Coach: Tyler Cempre (5th Season)
ITA Regional Ranking: TBD (Atlantic South)
Power 6 UTR: 63
Twitter Handle: @Lynx_Tennis
Key Departures: NONE!
Key Additions: Alexander Lloyd (2 Star/10.01 UTR), Ryan Crump (2 Star/9.43 UTR), Frank Stitch (2 Star/9.41 UTR), Alvaro Siu (International/9.09 [p] UTR)
Brief Overview: This team has had the best recruiting classes in the conference (aside from Sewanee) every season and I always find myself jumping on the hype train. The past few seasons though, this team has fallen short of expectations, especially last season with a very disappointing loss to Birmingham Southern at the end of the year. I say this every year, but I really think this team is trending up. With the recruiting class they brought in, the returning key players and finally a solid #1, this might be the year that they live up to the red Kool Aid hype.
Player to Watch: Ritwik Chatterjee – When this Rhodes recruiting class first came in, I was very young in my blogging career and naïve to the fact that the studs weren’t always the top ranked player, so I honed in on Phil Lauture, who was a 4 star. While Mr. Lauture has had a fine career, Ritwik Chatterjee has exceeded all expectations and is the player to watch on this Lynx squad. He had himself quite the fall ITA in singles, but that’s not the most impressive part. He has consistently been improving his doubles over the past two years and ended up making the quarterfinals ITAs. Look out for Chatterjee sneaking into a singles spot in the individual NCAAs this spring.
Schedule Analysis: I like this schedule for the Lynx because it has challenges from start to finish that will test this team, but also give them opportunities to prove themselves. They begin the season with a trip up to Ohio to take on Kenyon and Dension. Both of these teams will be strong this year and will give us a good indication of where the Lynx are to start the season. Following this trip, they will hit the reset button and take down, I mean on, Hendrix.
Next up is Spring Break where they will fly out to California and play 5 matches in 6 days. The first match against Cal Tech intrigues me, but could get out of hand very VERY easily depending on which Rhodes team comes to play. The next match is against a rocky Redlands team that we really won’t know much about until the season starts. Whittier is a crucial match and will most likely be a coin flip. The good news is that Rhodes has two outdoor California matches to acclimate before taking on the Poets. Chapman and Hope International will be a bit weaker than the first three opponents and should allow the Lynx to end this trip on a high note.
They return home to Memphis and host DII Christian Brothers and NAIA Bethel, who I really don’t know anything about sooo, moving on. Next up on the docket is a match against the reigning champs Sewanee. I don’t think this match will be especially close, but if there is one team in the SAA that has the talent to beat the Tigers, it’s this team. They finish out their schedule with five straight conference matches. They will tune up with Centre before a revenge match against Birmingham Southern. Sandwiched in the middle of their remaining schedule is the all-important match against Millsaps that will be crucial for tournament seeding. They end the season with relatively easy matchups against Berry and Oglethorpe before going into the conference tournament.
As I said earlier, I like this schedule, but the only thing I don’t like is that most of their significant matches (ranking wise) are out of region. This is fine for national implications, but in terms of individual in-region opportunities, they aren’t there as much as I’d like to see. Ritwick had himself a great fall, but unless he runs the table in the conference and picks up multiple out of region wins he won’t qualify for NCAAs by climbing the ASouth individual rankings.
Keys to Success:
Strength at the top – We all know that Chatterjee was good at #1, but if you look at the rest of the results at the top of the lineup, you can see areas that significantly need to be improved. At #2 singles the Lynx were 6-14 and at #3 singles they were 10-12. That’s not good. At #1 doubles they were 6-16. If they want to put together a great season, they really need some players to really step up this season and get the win percentages at the top of the lineup.
Learn from early opportunities – As I mentioned earlier, the front half of the schedule provides many opportunities to compete against nationally ranked teams like Sewanee. Rhodes will need to learn from these matches and take the experience into their important matches late in the season. Last season, they really didn’t have many chances against very good DIII teams and ended up falling apart later in the season. This year they should be more than prepared. Should be.
Realistic Best Case Scenario: While they do have talent, I haven’t seen anything that shows me they have what it takes to take down Sewanee… Yet. A best case scenario this season would be that the Lynx come in second place in the SAA and push Sewanee to a 6-3, maybe even 5-4 match.
Realistic Worst Case Scenario: A worst case scenario would probably look pretty similar to how last year’s season ended. A late loss to a lesser team, which leads to unfavorable seeded at SAA’s and a semifinal exit to Sewanee.
Overall Prediction!!!: I wanted to save my overall prediction for the end because the real question is which team is going to claim the #2 seed in the conference. I do firmly believe it’s going to be one of these two teams, and if it isn’t I will fall flat on my face with grace. I like Millsaps a lot and have picked against them in years past only to be proven wrong, but I think this year is finally the year that Rhodes takes that jump to where we expected them to be. Millsaps has just lost too many key pieces to return to where they were and I think it’s going to be another couple of seasons before they really rebound.
Boom, done! Do you agree? Will these two teams be second and third? Let me know via Twitter, email or the comment section below! Keep your eyes out for our next preview from Northeast later this week. Until next time, RegASouth out!