Valentine’s Day has come and gone and now it’s time for all you D3 tennis lovebugs out there to rejoice, it’s dual match season! Last weekend we saw Stevens Tech and Skidmore take the court as the first ranked Northeastern team to play “spring” matches. Skidmore blanked Union without dropping a set and Stevens suffered a somewhat disappointing (yet predictable) defeat at the hands of Mary Washington. As we now turn our regional attention to this upcoming week, I know there is a lot of hubbub concerning next weekend’s “indoor showdown,” but that is NOT the only important tennis going on during the week! Bates and Brandeis travel out to California, Vassar is making an Atlantic South swing, MIT opens their season, and Stevens Tech will look to rebound and keep its National Ranking. Whew! Who’s excited? Over the course of the week I will give a little bit about each match as I try to convince our readers that these matches will be maybe sort of kind of almost nearly as worthwhile as Indoors…ok perhaps not quite. Obviously I know more about the NE teams, so the previews will be slightly skewed in their favor. This short snippet will only focus on the 1st two matches of the week, and either D3West or I’ll be back to preview the other matches by Wednesday.
Monday February 17th 4pm
#23 Bates at #21Whittier
Each of the past couple years Bates has taken a trip out to Cali and each of those years the Bobcats have come back with a sub .500 record. However, this year they’ve modified their schedule. Instead of traveling up to Cruz, they start with the Whittier Poets before finishing their trip at Pomona and CMS. While less travel can only be helpful, the Bobcats may have picked the wrong year to “avoid” UCSC. Bates’ season, as with all NESCAC schools, starts on February 15th. This means they will have had all of 2 days of practice before they get right into match play. This cannot possibly benefit the Bobcats, especially considering their lineup should feature plenty of freshmen. Traditionally Bates has always played strong doubles, and they will need to take a lead into the singles if they’re going to win out west. The match of the day should be Kostantinov and Berg at #1 singles. Both players have high hopes for NCAA’s and while this will have minimal effect on their regional rankings it might set the tone for the rest of their seasons. After David, there is a sharper drop for Whittier than for Bates. Both teams will be debuting multiple freshmen, and since I haven’t seen either team’s lineup it’s exceedingly difficult to pick by position. Recently the other regional writers and I made our own set of rankings and we all believe that Bates should be ranked ahead of Whittier. As it stands though I should get upset points for taking the Bobcats. I’ll take Bates to take a lead into singles, take two out of three spots in the top and bottom half of the lineup, and pull out a hard-fought 6-3 win.
Tuesday February 18th 5pm
Brandeis at #14 Redlands
Brandeis is a team that the blog usually glazes over. Unfortunately, this year will likely be no different. They graduated their top two singles players and consequently their top doubles team. While the Judges did pick up one of their better recruiting classes in recent memory, Granoff and Arguello will have to step into the top ½ of the lineup immediately. This young squad could be on the way up with another solid recruiting class, but for the time being they will be hard pressed to keep this match close. Historically Redlands has a great home court advantage, as they play in the dry, hot desert. This is Redlands’ opening match, and will be warm-up act as they head off to Indoors the next day. If Redlands looks past the Judges, Brandeis might be able to manage a few upsets here or there. My guess is that Brandeis picks up a point somewhere along the way, Redlands 8-1. Later in the week Brandeis wraps up their trip by taking on Chapman and Occidental.
The rest of the week’s schedule is listed below. In addition to the rest of Bates’ trip, I’ve listed all other matches involving at least one ranked and one NE team. I’ll write another quick weekend preview later in the week after I have a better idea of Bates’s lineup.
Thursday
#23Bates @ #17Pomona, 7pm
Friday
Bentley @ #26MIT, 4pm
Saturday
Vassar at #28Mary Washington, 9am
#23Bates @ #2CMS, 1pm
Vassar vs #20NC Wes @Mary Washington, 3pm
Sunday
Babson @ #27Stevens, 1pm