Central Weekend Wrap Up

The first big Central weekend is in the books and I asked for fireworks and I am pleased to report we got just that. Because I wasn’t actually in attendance (sorry Whitewater, the rumors weren’t true), I won’t break down each individual match, but rather point out the biggest takeaways from the results. The good, the bad, and the ugly will be pointed out. For those of you who need reminding, here are the key results:

Chicago defeated Kenyon 6-3 http://athletics.uchicago.edu/sports/mten/2015-16/releases/201602060bj3v7

Whitewater defeated Kenyon 6-3: http://www.uwwsports.com/custompages/mten/2015-16/mten04.htm

Chicago defeated Whitewater 8-1: http://www.uwwsports.com/custompages/mten/2015-16/ucm5.htm

The Good:

Sam Geier: While Kenyon’s weekend wasn’t exactly a good one, Sam Geier made a huge statement by taking down both Chua and Humphreys in back to back matches. These two wins alone put Geier as the #2 player in the region behind Krimbill from Case and they will likely meet one another at some point at Indoors. That should be one heck of a match. It is crazy to think that Geier pretty much has already locked up a bid to individual nationals, but barring an absolute travesty, this weekend did that for the guy with a massive forehand.

Whitewater’s depth: Yes Whitewater got beat pretty handily by Chicago, but no one is going to argue that they are that deep. However, the big surprise for me was Whitewater beating Kenyon at #4, #5, and #6. Kenyon’s depth was supposed to be a strong point, but Thompson, Navratil, and Bisbee came up huge for the Warhawks. I am not terribly surprised by Thompson as he was a relative unknown being a transfer, but I was told he hits a big ball. I was extremely high on Paolucci for Kenyon coming into this weekend, but Navratil handed him and Bisbee was predicted to be WW weakest position in my opinion, but he finished the match off with a win at 6. Moving forward, if these guys get a few more key wins, I could see WW stay in the top 15. The Gustavus match will be massive and there can’t be any let downs on spring break (Depauw).

Chicago’s doubles: I wasn’t very high on the Chicago doubles lineup and pointed to it as a weakness, but winning 5 of 6 against two teams that are typically solid at doubles is a good weekend. I think Chua and Liu at the top are going to be a 50/50 team throughout the year against national level competition, but if #2 and #3 can dominate, that’s all they will need to be to have success as a team. Indoors will be a big step up in competition though so the jury is still out.

Charlie Pei: The young freshman went 4-0 on the weekend including an 0 and 1 win against Paolucci from Kenyon. He had a tough win over Noodles which was somewhat surprising, but Pei is going to be a rock for Chicago throughout the year. I still see him sliding ahead of Leung the rest of the year and maybe even playing #2 ahead of Sven (great win over Turlington!).

Tennis ball emoji: Using a tennis ball emoji to note the score and what team is serving was the MVP of the weekend. Well done Whitewater and D3 tennis coaches, you are on notice. Make this happen.

The Bad:

Kenyon’s doubles: There are plenty of things that I can point out as bad for the Lords, but you have to start with the doubles play. If it weren’t for more of Sam Geier (and Kaye) at #1, they would have gotten swept twice. With a season of question marks heading into the year, this performance certainly didn’t answer any of that. I think #3 is going to be a real issue for Kenyon so they must find the right duo. Fiaschetti and Paolucci were a bit disappointing as well at #2.

Chcago split singles with Kenyon: I have to be fair here and have a bad for all the teams. I was very surprised that Chicago split the singles with Kenyon. Geier over Chua was not the surprise, but Leung and Tsai falling was. Both are studs and I would like to think that the match already being decided probably played a hand in their motivation, but they will need to be better at Indoors.

Jake Humphreys: I am going to make this short because I am not going to say losing to Geier and Chua is really all that bad. What it does do is puts some pressure on Humphreys the rest of the year to get a few key wins. Metzler from Kzoo is the one I see in the future that is really important. Humphreys will be just fine.

The Ugly:

Sportsmanship: There were some grumblings about Kenyon’s sportsmanship over the weekend which was surprising. While I cannot comment fully because I was not there, it sounded like the #BenchMob was a little bit out of control and even potentially turning on each other. An interesting thing of note was Coach Thielke was not in attendance for health reasons so I am more than confident in saying that this would not have happened if he was there.

Side notes:

Michael Liu deserves my apology. He proved he has the goods to play high in the Kenyon lineup. Yes he only went 1-1, but going three sets with Treis and beating Leung is a big deal. Kenyon is going to need him this season.

Scott Butler from Whitewater must be a doubles stud! He went 2-0 teaming up with Noodles to beat Kenyon at #2 and then stepped in to play #1 with Humphreys to take down Chicago.

In other news, Tyler Kratky from Wash U lost at #3 singles to Rose Hulman. This is not an overreaction, but this is a bad loss. No disrespect to Rose Hulman as I think they will likely be regionally ranked by year end, but no one from Wash U should be losing a match to them. Congrats Cam Metzger for getting what will likely be a career win for him.

Best thing of the weekend

This is out of my region, but I don’t really care as this probably made my weekend even more so than Peyton Manning going out on top (please retire old man, I feel your pain). But for those of you who haven’t see the result, Christopher Newport upset NC Wesleyan over the weekend which as ASouth tweeted, might have been the biggest “Let the Rackets Do the Talking” moment of the blog’s history. While the win was satisfying, equally as satisfying was seeing the NC Wes twitter account delete EVERY single tweet from the past. These tweets were putting teams on notice about NC Wes and how good they were going to be. Thank you Coach Hale for coming through and proving once again that I was right. Ah yes that will put a smile on my face any day of the week.