I’m sure some of you (my twenty fans) have noticed that my activity has dropped off pretty significantly at the end of this year. Some of that is because of other (read: real) obligations got in the way, but mostly it’s because my usual end-of-season melancholy kicked in a little earlier than usual. I always get pretty morose at the end of the season because it makes me think of the last time I laced ’em up and went out on the court and fought tooth and nail with my 12 best friends. I know that a lot of these guys are feeling the same thing, and that no tennis match will ever mean as much to them again. They will continue to love tennis, but it won’t ever be quite the same. This malaise particularly hits home when I see four-year starters like Chris “Wiech-iech-iech-iech-” iechert, Chris “Whiskers” Schommer, and Andrew “Angelhands” La Cava finish out their careers. To all the seniors, I’ve grown to admire you guys throughout the years, and I wish you luck in all your future endeavors.
Enough of this feelings stuff. Let’s get down to the Elite Eight. I don’t have a neat idea like Central, so I’m just gonna provide my brief thoughts on each team and a general prediction.
Johns Hopkins/CMS
The Blue Jays have sort of been flying under the radar this season. They made a splash in February by beating Emory and Case at Indoors. They followed that up by picking up another nice win over Carnegie, losing to Emory, and then taking a nice month and a half long break until NCAAs. It’s easy to see how we might have forgotten about them. Now that they’re here, let’s not strain ourselves too much to remember them because they’ve got CMS in the quarters. It should be a one-and-done situation for the Jays. I’ll leave the rest of this up to AS because I don’t know this team too well. It is interesting how the years can fly by, though, as the Hopkins junior class that was supposed to propel them to new heights has yet to take the team past the Elite Eight. They will have just one more chance to do it next year.
The Stags have done anything but fly under the radar. Even before the season has ended, they have entered the GOAT conversation. All they have to do now is win to solidify their place in history, and it really seems like everyone else is playing for second place. To list some of their more impressive accomplishments: they have not trailed at any point in any match all season, they have not lost more than 3 matches to any DIII team, they qualified 4 singles players into individual nationals in a very talented West region, and they qualified 2 doubles teams into individuals (as much as I disagree with the decision) in an era when that seemed impossible. What’s even scarier is the fact that they return their top 5 singles players next year. Moreover, we always talk about the teams with the most experience usually taking over in the postseason. Despite the fact that they don’t have many seniors, the Stags have more championship experience than any team out there. Kotrappa and Pereverzin have even been around long enough to remember losing 7 team match points against Williams. This team knows heartbreak, and they have the will to prevent that from happening again. I just don’t see them faltering in this tournament, certainly not against the Blue Jays. 5-0 Stags with wins at 3 and 4 singles.
Trinity (TX)/Wash U
I’ve been tooting a fuzzy, clawed, maroon horn all year, and now is the time for all of that to finally pay off or get thrown back in my face. Make no mistake, an Elite Eight finish is nothing to be ashamed of, but the Tigers have been stuck in this territory for a couple years now, and they will be losing two of their most consistent point-earners after this season (though they will bring back their monster junior class). If we look back to Trinity’s two losses to CMS and Wash U, you can see pretty easily where they will need to turn things around to win this match. Between the two matches, they went 0-6 in tiebreakers. The CMS match couldn’t really have gone the other way, but that made a big difference against the Bears, where they needed that 2-1 lead after doubles and dropped a tiebreaker at 3.
Meanwhile, in St. Louis, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been underrating the Bears all season. I’ve picked them to win pretty much every match that they won, but I always did it with a stupid little, “but if (insert something that wasn’t even close to happening) the (insert team that got destroyed) could pull off the upset.” You can see that I haven’t learned my lesson, and I still think the Tigers could win this match. That being said, I have to give credit where credit is due. Despite Carswell clearly being stacked behind Putterman, Putterman is about to do what he has done the past couple years and come up with a shocking singles victory to silence all his critics. It could be against Deuel to push his team to its 70th consecutive Final Four, against Fritz to push his team over the hump and into the final, or against Wood to continue the Stag May heartbreak. It’s going to happen. Take it to the bank. Once that falls in place, the Bears are terrifying. Their two freshmen have been lights out all season long, and Chu is one of the few #6’s that could take down Pereverzin (looking ahead a little bit here). Moreover, their doubles lineup is incredibly strong. Despite their loss to Whitman, Putterman/Bush should be the favorite in every match they play except maybe against Wood/Dorn. Carswell/Kogan have also been very good, and Chu/Hirsch appear to be hitting their stride at the right time.
In this match, one thing that could help the Tigers is the fact that Skinner is now playing #4 singles. In the previous matchup, he lost a close one to Carswell at #2. I’ve long since abandoned the notion that Carswell will lose a match, but having Skinner at #4 gives TU a better chance against Noack. Chu has been a dominant 6, but he will face a different animal in Curtis this time around. TU’s best hope for victory is to take two of three doubles matches, have Pax win at #1, Skinner win at #4, and find a win at 5 or 6. As much as I would like to see that happen, I think TU will only be able to win one doubles match (at #2) and will drop a brutal 5-4 match with Bush winning a 3-setter at #3 singles to clinch it (to go with Wash U wins at #2 and #6). I still believe in these Tigers, but they haven’t put their doubles together quite the way I hoped they would this season. If they get hot this weekend however, we might be seeing a 2009 Cruzian run.
Emory/Amherst
It has been a very underwhelming year by Emory standards. Originally, AS and I were in agreement that they were the #1 contender behind CMS to take home the title. Mosetik was supposed to be dirty (or at least dirtier than he has been), Halpern was supposed to be dominant at 2/3, and they were supposed to be deeper than any other team except CMS. We knew their doubles would be a question mark, but we always kind of figured they would be able to win at least one of the three matches and take it from there. Unfortunately, their UAA rivals have had them beat in areas where they used to dominant. Case is way better at doubles. Wash U took over at the middle of the singles lineup. And CMU was deeper. In the end, Emory was the best in the conference at nothing, and that really cost them. On to the good stuff, the true bright spot on this team has been Alex Ruderman. The dude has come up huge more times than I can count. Add to that the fact that Halpern is finally starting to get his feet beneath him after coming back from injury, and you’ve got perhaps the best 1-2 punch in the country.
This will be huge against Amherst, as Fritz hasn’t been quite as good as D3NE thought he would be, and Dale has been beatable at #2. Amherst has been true to its reputation as the most enigmatic team in DIII tennis. I’ll leave it to D3NE to puzzle them out in his preview. When it comes to this match, however, I actually think the Eagles will win at 1 and 2 singles, but it won’t matter in the long run. Zykov, Yaraghi, and Reindel make up a brutal bottom half. I think Amherst moves on with victories at 1 and 2 doubles, 3, 5, and 6 singles.
Middlebury/Case Western
I have to say that I got a little chuckle out of Drougas’ tweet that said, “a bunch of guys nobody wanted will get to play for a national championship. Somehow, I don’t think Will was waiting by the phone with bated breath until Wojo, the only coach that believed in him, called him up and asked him to come play for the Spartans. I would also like to point out that Klaw the “1-star” was ranked in the top 400, Reinbold the “1-star” was ranked in the top 500, and Healy the “2-star” was ranked in the top 350. That being said, you can’t say enough about what these seniors have done for the Case program. They totally bought in to Wojo’s unusual style, worked their asses off, and brought a totally unknown team to the Elite Eight in four short years. That is quite an accomplishment that deserves applause, and it will be very interesting to see where the program heads now that Wojo has a bevy of 3-stars to work with. At the very least, it’s hard to see the “Nobody Believes In Us” mantra working for that much longer.
Against Middlebury they’re gonna have to rely on what has been their strength all season: doubles. The Panthers have been pretty good in doubles all year, but they’ve had their struggles too. Their most clutch team has been Johnson/Lebovitz at #1, and I think a Case victory starts and ends with Klaw and Kimbrill stealing a point there. I would like nothing more than to see the Spartans shut up the most obnoxious Twitter presence in DIII tennis, but I think the middle of that Middlebury lineup will bury the Spartans (see what I did there?). I like the Panthers with wins at 1 doubles, 3 doubles, 2 singles, 3 singles, and 5 singles. Again, I don’t know a ton about Midd, so, D3NE, you’re on.
There you have it. That will probably be my last article before the team championship is decided you ungrateful plebes. As poorly as I’m doing in the writer voting, at least I should be able to take solace in the West region winning at least one national title this year! West is best! Legooooo!