ITA Midwest Regional Championships Preview

The Central ITA Regional Championships were fun to cover last week, but my name is not d3MIDWEST10s for nothing! The Midwest ITA Regional Championships are where all the fun is at. While there are feasibly three or four players that could win this tournament, I love getting to cover these teams. If you haven’t looked at the draws, you can find them at https://gustavus.edu/athletics/mt/ITA16/Brackets/index.php.

Let’s start with Singles:

The Favorites (Seeded)

1-seed. Mohanad Alhouni (Gustavus) – Sometime in the middle of last season, Al-Houni’s name changed to Alhouni. Doesn’t matter to me as long as he plays as the same Mohanad that we’re accustomed to. For the most part, Alhouni beats who he’s supposed to. His biggest competitor in this tournament is Coe’s Brady Anderson, and the Gustie didn’t lose to Anderson last year (although one of their meetings went unfinished). The one thing I don’t like about Alhouni’s draw is that Carthage’s Herman Abban is in his semi. I suspect that’s because Coach Valentini wanted Alhouni and 4-seeded Zach Ekstein on different sides of the draw, but that definitely doesn’t help Alhouni. The only other thing to note is that Mohanad lost to Macalester’s Joshua Doyle 6-2, 6-2 last season, but that was his only blip. In this season’s Drake Invite, Alhouni beat a dude with a 13.43 UTR. He’s my pick to win it all.

2-seed. Brady Anderson (Coe) – After Anderson’s breakout season last year, the junior has continued his success early in the fall, capturing the IIAC Flight A Singles title last week. He also had some solid results in the ITA Summer Circuit tournaments he competed in. In the NCAA team tournament, he had a close result with Mohanad, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he won this whole thing, also given that Abban isn’t in his semi.

3-seed. Herman Abban (Carthage) – It might seem like Abban is an unknown/wildcard at this point, but he’s really not, having played #1 singles at a JUCO the past two years, being the captain of the Ghana National Under 18 team at the African Junior Championships several years ago, and achieving an ITF junior high of 826. In his short time at Carthage, Abban went undefeated at the CCIW fall invite and defeated a Chicago freshman a couple days later. Abban is seeded properly, and it’ll be interesting to see how he does.

The Best of the Rest (4-8 Seeds)

4-seed. Zach Ekstein (Gustavus) – Ekstein had a rock solid year at #3 singles last year (going 14-3) for Gustavus, but fell against the top dogs at the Drake Invite last weekend. Unfortunately, I think there’s a big drop off between 1-3 seeds and everyone else. Nevertheless, Ekstein could go far this weekend.

5-seed. Rithwik Raman (UWW) – Raman has some big shoes to fill this year as UW-Whitewater’s probable #1. Problem is that although Raman was a stud at #3 last year, he didn’t really win matches at #2 and #1. Against teams from other divisions at the Warhawk Invite, the only win Raman secured was by walkover. He was playing tough opponents, though. Surprise me, Noodles.

6-seed. Luke Elifson (St. Thomas) – This is terrible, and I probably shouldn’t say it, but I never heard of Elifson until I had to write this preview. I know of Mitch Elofson, the recent Gustavus grad, but not Elifson. Now that I got that out of my system, Elifson did really well at the top spot for St. Thomas last year, going 12-3, but he didn’t fair to well against Mohanad (2-6, 1-6) and lost to Allegheny’s Thomas Manning 7-5, 6-4. I could see Elifson getting upset early. This is singles, obviously, but Elifson is a solid doubles player. He and his partner beat Gustavus’ top tandem last year during the season.

7-seed. Joshua Doyle (Macalester) – Macalester’s Doyle came to fame last year when he handedly beat Alhouni. Along with that win, Doyle had losses to some relatively unknown 1s. All credit to him for the win over Mohanad, but I’m not seeing a big upset this time.

8-seed. Jose Coloma (Grinnell) – Much like Doyle and Elifson, Coloma is a fine #1 for Grinnell, but Grinnell doesn’t have the toughest schedule out there. It looks like he took Brady Anderson to three sets during the season last year but has otherwise struggled against top players.

Who else can win?

Well, I don’t really think someone seeded 4-8 can win, and one of the problems with the seeds is that a #1 from a school not ranked is typically seeded higher than a 2, 3, or 4 from a powerhouse program even though the 2, 3, and 4 are oftentimes better.. I think there are some guys from the top 3 teams in this tournament (Coe, Gustavus, and UW-Whitewater) that we should watch out for.

Grant Thompson (UWW) – Thompson’s biggest problem is that he draws Alhouni in the round of 16. Apparently, he was battling/plagued with an injury all spring and took Anderson to a 3rd in the quarters of last year’s ITA. I was about to predict an upset win for Thompson over Mohanad but just realized a picked Alhouni to win the whole thing. Don’t be surprised if it happens, though.

Zane Navratil (UWW) – Navratil could be counted on when the Warhawks needed him to win last year. While he played lower in the lineup, the dude is a grinder and can run, run, run, which is huge for ITAs. Looks like he’s got Abban in the round of 16, and that’d be a sick match.

Josh Pudlo (Coe) – Rumor has it that Pudlo is pretty good this year although he played toward the bottom of the Kohawk lineup last year. The reason he’s on here is because he has a solid draw and lost to Anderson in a super breaker last week.

Nate Ackert (Coe) – Ackert lost to Anderson in the final of the IIAC Flight A singles final; a bit of a long shot to win it all, but he definitely deserves a shout out.

Patrick Whaling (Gustavus) – Whaling is really, really trending upward. The guy was barely playing #6 last year but had some fantastic wins against D1 players at the Drake Invite last week. He’ll have to get through Raman and Anderson just to makes the semis, though. Yikes.

UPSET ALERT

Sergiy Tyhonenko (CSS) – Well, someone did some UTR research and found out that Tyhonenko has an 11.58 UTR (with a 22% reliability). He claims that Sergiy will beat Ekstein in the first round. I don’t think so, but I’ll put it on here anyway.

Doubles

For the Central ITA, I didn’t even bother with doubles because it’s so hard to talk about and predict. Like I said last week, with 8-game pro sets until the final, anything can happen. The teams that I like the most to win it are Carthage’s Abban/Jaworski, Gustavus’s Alhouni/Whaling, UWW’s Raman/Thompson, Coe’s Anderson/Pudlo, and St. Thomas’s Elifson/Beck.

There you have it. Good luck to all the teams and players this weekend!

One thought on “ITA Midwest Regional Championships Preview

  1. Prophet

    Your friend deserves a raise for that upset call

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