The OFFICIAL UAA Recap

Another day means another UAA article for the man known as D3ASouth.  Today, I’m going to give you the final thoughts on the UAA before we head off to the other big conference tournaments which are the NESCAC and the SCIAC.  I would like to point out a ton of other conferences finished off their play this weekend.  So, congratulations to Mary Washington, Whitman, Gustavus, Kalamazoo, and others for putting in their bids for the NCAA Tournament.  Everything has been all about Pool C but these teams are looking to be #2 seeds for their regionals and hopefully knocking off the #1 seeds that we’ve been talking about all year.  Anyways, I’m not going to recap “what happened” this weekend because I believe you all know what happened.  Emory won, Wash U 2^nd, CMU 3^rd, Chicago 4^th, and Case Western 5^th.  For those of you that are top 10 focused, that is the only update you need.  If you want information on Pool C, you should go to the Pool C Update #5 that was just posted prior to the 3^rd place match and follow the scenario that actually happened.  It should give you a good idea of what’s going on in the DIII tournament watch.  If you’re here, that means you would like to know my observations on the UAA Tournament and I want to keep this thing fun and not results-driven.  Let’s go through my 7 observations on this weekend and what they mean for DIII, and then I’ll get into some fun stuff that I want to write about.

D3ASouth’s UAA Team Observations

1. Emory has the best top 3 (and maybe 4) in the country.

If you are looking for why Emory is so good, all you need to do is look no further than their top 3.  They did not lose a singles match at those 3 spots all weekend and only lost 1 set, I believe.  We all know how good Rafe is and he will always have a pretty damn good shot at taking his match, especially in his senior season.  There are not many, if any, players I would take over him right now.  I would like to point out the types of seasons that freshman Jemison and junior Manji are having at their respective positions, though.  Jemison has made my claim that he was the “best freshman and it’s not even close” and made that look as right as it possibly could be.  Levine, the only freshman who really has had any success against him, was no match for him outdoors.  Mr. Manji, who I named my POTW this week (not sure if spoiler or not) has lost at most one time this year.  He took out Kratky in straights despite the senior playing some lights out tennis and really has quietly shown that he is one of the best players in the nation.  Quick line about Adrien Bouchet, who plays #4 – this dude hasn’t won as many matches as his top counterparts but he has some really damn good wins.  The only way you can beat Emory is by taking a doubles lead, 2 matches down bottom, and getting one of your top 3 to play lights out on the right day.  It’s a really tough way to beat a team as good as Emory.

2. Would anyone be surprised if Wash U made the Final 4?

The answer is no.  And once again, the answer should be no every year. The Guru is a big proponent of Wash U and it’s really all of our faults that people doubt them every year.  Wash U has one of the best coaches in the business and that takes course throughout the season.  With a ton of players that really love tennis, that is a recipe for success.  Wash U went blow for blow with Chicago this weekend and came back the next day and gave Emory a pretty decent challenge when I thought they might get blown out.  Wash U is lined up for the #5 seed overall, this year, which means they could get any of the CMS/Midd/Bowdoin combo in the quarterfinals.  I can see them surprising any of those teams (especially if it is Bowdoin) and making the Final 4 yet again to play Emory.  Let’s sing the praises for the Bears for the first time this year.

3. The Carnegie Mellon freshmen are going to be a force to be reckoned with for years to come.

CMU would not even be close to the NCAA Tournament had it not been for their stellar recruiting class this year.  Every freshman won in singles against Case in really convincing fashion before taking some lumps against Emory. Against Chicago, they went 3-0 in singles AND Levine/Arora took out one of the best doubles teams in the nation in Chua/Liu to keep the Tartans afloat.  For two freshmen to do that this early in their careers is remarkable.  They have the opportunity to be one of the best top 3’s in the nation by the end of their careers if they keep working.  Until then, they will continue to be key components in what looks to be Coach Girard’s best recruiting class to date.  Chaz Downing has come from virtually nowhere to be a really good #3 singles player, taking out Stroup and Charlie Pei this weekend.  Arora has found his niche at #5, where he got hot and took out Peter Leung of Chicago as well as Kevin Dong.  Great weekend for the Tartan freshmen – it looks like they are 3 for 3 on their recruiting class this year.

4. Chicago’s season has fallen off a cliff.

In what will sure to be reflected in Power Rankings this week, Chicago’s season has really imploded on them and they are on the cusp of not making the tournament.  Chicago was a national championship favorite coming into this and it really has gone downhill from there.  Whether that be a large case of bad luck or something else, it’s the truth.  Chicago has lost the last match against Case, Wash U, and CMU this season and they really don’t have any other wins worth noting this season.  In what started as a 2^nd place finish at Indoors has become a 4^th place finish at UAAs, and that was only due to seeding.  Chicago has to hope and pray that they are in the tournament and it must feel terrible to be waiting there like a fish out of water.  Some spots we thought would be guarantees have become liabilities and they are just hoping to get the chance to be the #8 seed and turn this thing around.  If they make it they should still make the quarterfinals, but they will have to go through Emory to even have a shot at making it back to their performance last year.  Not great.

5. Case Western should be proud of their season.

In what was an event of unfortunate seeding, Case Western simply got caught on the wrong day by a fired up CMU squad and ended up losing a big match.  This was through no fault of their own and they simply got outplayed by a tough team on the wrong day for them.  However, they have put themselves in an amazing position because of their work all year.  When things get tough, Case Western somehow seems to pull out matches they shouldn’t be pulling out.  Their 5-4 win over Chicago from two weeks ago becomes their saving grace.  Here’s a lesson everyone should learn from Case Western – just because you get a big win early in the year, never think that your season is smooth sailing from there.  The Spartans didn’t do that and now should be in the tournament despite a tough weekend.

6. Brandeis might be a little closer to challenging for the top 20.

Things started so poorly for the Judges as they got wrecked by Wash U in what was a really bad match for them.  Coach Lamanna then pulled the doubles strings and went with a totally different lineup mid-tournament.  That was how drastic it was for them to switch up the juju. Brandeis came in hoping to give Wash U an upset big and came away with a 0.  However, they recovered a bit and took out Rochester in a must win match and geared up for Case Western on Saturday.  They can come away thinking this – they took 4 singles matches off of a top 10 team that has defeated everyone but Emory in the UAA.  If they only righted the ship in doubles (they got swept by Case) they could’ve had a win.  Brandeis needs to go into next year thinking that doubles is the key to their upsets.  They’ve got some great players but they are not great enough to overcome doubles sweeps against top ranked (and even unranked) teams.  Can this be a bridge year for the Judges or will it be another of the same old, same old.

7. Rochester and NYU aren’t in the same class as the top teams, but they are hard workers and passionate players nonetheless.

I was impressed by Rochester and NYU this weekend in a tournament where they are almost always overshadowed.  However, that does not make them any less of people and they seem to have great human character based on what I heard from the people I knew in Florida this weekend.  Despite being in the 7^th place match, both Rochester and NYU battled their hearts out in what were some of their last matches of their career.  These two teams always seem to have great battles and that match is essentially their championship at the end of the year.  It’s nice to go out on a win, so great job to the Violets for keeping it fun this weekend and outplaying their seed.  For Rochester, a loss doesn’t define who you are.  Great season and I am sure you made a lot of memories along the way.

There you have it, the team by team observations from UAAs.  I’m sorry to NYU and Rochester that I didn’t get them a paragraph each, but it seemed to make sense to lump the two together as they had fairly similar tournaments.  NOW, I will get to some intangible and fun observations I had from this weekend as well as some player shout-outs that I would like to get to as well.

D3ASouth’s UAA Tournament Intangibles

1. The UAA Twitter Account did a phenomenal job with updates and running the tournament.

Another year, another year of great running of the tournament by the man that runs the UAA Twitter account.  As he knows, I am sometimes harsh on those that run the tournaments that we get to enjoy and watch, but I can give a good word to a well-run tournament.  With Men’s and Women’s at the same place and no live stats, it’s up to Twitter to provide everyone with their updates.  Great job on that and we truly do appreciate it.  Hopefully next year, there will be some live stats to make it easier for you! Maybe I will volunteer to be a live stats person for all ASouth matches. Anyways, we hope that you feel that the tournament gets covered by our writers with as much attention to detail that you put into the tournament and the way it’s run.  Good times all around.

2. Seniors showed up, once again.

Pretty much all the seniors in the tournament had a solid showing.  Rafe Mosetick went 6-0 for the whole tournament.  So did CJ Krimbill.  Abhishek Alla played seniors in his first two matches but came up with a big win against Chua in the 3^rd place match.  Yuvraj Kumar of CMU came in and really held his own against Emory while winning a massive match at 6 singles against Case Western.  The two teamed to win at #3 doubles as well.  Stuerke had a rough weekend but took advantage of the back draw to notch some good wins and also went undefeated in doubles.  Down at the bottom, Brandeis senior Lubarsky notched a big win against Kevin Dong of Case.  Unfortunately, the NYU/Rochester seniors all lost their final match so there goes that notion, haha.  But seriously, this is the time of year where seniors come to play.  When it’s your last match, you give it your all. It should be interesting in the NCAA Tournament because as I’ve written before, seniors haven’t necessarily lit it up this year.

3. Let’s talk a little about tournament “strategy.”

One thing that I think is kind of swept over a little bit is the fact that a team playing a clearly better team can basically go into conserve mode and save energy for the far more important match the next day.  I suspect a little of that happened in the CMU/Emory match and actually something fairly similar happened with Chicago on the Women’s side of things.  It’s well known that the seeding is based off of coach’s voting or something of the sort – let’s say you have faith in your team to win the 4/5 match, do you choose to take that match in the hopes of getting spanked by the #1 seed and save energy for the 3^rd place match?! A question that coaches definitely think about I’m sure.  Although, this could just be a blogger getting lost in his thoughts and most coaches think they can win all the matches. Who knows, it’s an interesting thing to think about considering everything that is at stake regarding Pool C.

4. Let’s talk a little about seeding too.

Can we get rid of this whole coach’s call where we “vote” to get seeds? Why don’t we just go by ITA ranking? Seeding is so important when it comes to NCAA berths that it seems silly to leave it up to those who will obviously have some bias, whether it is conscious or not, on who they want to play.  Case Western got the shaft when it comes to seeding in this tournament and they are now left wondering if they even make it at all.  Now, some of those questions are answered by the fact that Wash U made the final, but even then.  There are situations out there where that doesn’t happen and now we’re left second guessing ourselves.  Let the teams play it out. It feels to me like Wash U got the #3 seed based off of one win over Case Western and nothing else.  How does that make any sense?

5. Okay, enough complaining. There were some fantastic coaching performances at the UAA Tournament.

The fact that Emory is so good this year kind of overshadows the fact that Coach Browning has done a really great job this year. I’ve given him some flak in the past but man, this guy is a good coach.  He’s created a lineup that no one can question and has read his team properly by putting the right players together in doubles.  He’s held faith in his guys at every position and has not tinkered with his lineup once.  He got it right from the beginning and now the Emory train is rolling. For Wash U, Coach Follmer has done another fantastic job getting his team to perform at exactly the right time.  Indoors was a bit of a surprise for him but they were dealing with injuries as well as getting to know who was going to be a main contributor.  The Carswell/Bush swap has been great with the way John has been playing and the doubles lineup switches this week were big as well.  Browning and Follmer have both done a great job optimizing their lineups.  Another coaching performance I’d love to mention is Coach Girard of CMU this weekend. CMU made the UAA Tournament their season and that team was ready to play this weekend.  They’ve clearly coached their freshmen pretty well and have hit on their recruits as I mentioned earlier.  The management of Chaz Downing’s rise has gone pretty much perfectly and he has built enough confidence where he is a potential top 7-8 #3 singles player.  While CMU has doubles to figure out once again after going down 2-1 in every match this weekend, CMU can rest on the fact that they have their singles figured out and doubles is the easier part of the game to fix.  I’m looking forward to what they can do in the NCAA Tournament. Also, shout-out to Coach Lamanna of Brandeis for going big and totally switching the doubles teams mid tournament.  That takes guts and it worked out for you.

6. The Completion/Decision Argument

One unique thing about the UAA Tournament is that every match is played to completion.  I am a big fan of that because it keeps the players in their routines of finishing matches.  If you have the court space, there is no reason to play college tennis matches like they should be played.  I personally think playing matches to decision gives the better teams an advantage as they get to manage their rest better and generally play games with their lineups.  Completion gives everything the feel that everyone has to win their match or you’ll be on the court for way too long.  I know from back in the day that if there were matches played to decision, I’d be hoping that I didn’t even need to get out there if my team already won.  I believe playing to completion sets the stage for more upsets and just a better environment overall.  This is a team sport the way we play it, let’s get the whole team out there.  I’m looking at you, NESCAC tournament.

7. The Jersey Mike’s/Jason’s Deli Debate

Which one is better?! Please sound off in the comments.  I personally would go with Jersey Mike’s on a “to-go” basis just because I feel like you don’t get the Jason’s Deli experience when you go to-go. But that might be just me.  Would love to hear what you UAA people think.

8. Blogging Coverage

I must say, I had an awesome time covering the UAA Tournament this weekend and I feel like you all were satisfied with the coverage as well. While I can’t do this every weekend, this was a huge weekend and I just had to give it all I got.  Thank you to D3Regional and D3TennisGreek who teamed up with me on a lot of the previews and kept me sane during the whole process.  I think we’re at a place where DIII Tennis has a really nice niche in the tennis community and I would love it if we could get back to the days where we got 6-8 comments on every article.  I know you guys are reading from the site stats that we get, but feel free to start debate! I promise I won’t lambast you like I do with some people on bad days.  I’m trying to turn over a new leaf J

9. Discussion Topic: From those of you that played in the UAA Tournament, what are your thoughts on rain delays and how they affect your play?

This was something that was brought up to me and crossed my mind on the first day. I know it’s somewhat of a “hot take,” but there was a rain delay between the doubles and singles portion of the first round matches.  That meant CMU could “regroup” and come back against Case despite being down 2-1.  Do we think that this had an effect on the match? Do any players want to chime in? Coaches?

10. Team MVPs

I’m going to take some time to go through team-by-team and who I believe they should be thankful for this weekend to finish off this article.  Starting with the champion, of course:

Emory – Rafe Mosetick, senior – Easy pick here as I believe Mosetick’s impact has gone far beyond his talent on the court.  Without his leadership, I doubt Emory would be having this successful of a season.

Wash U – Tyler Kratky, senior – Kratky has been through it all and he came this weekend to play. With great success at #3 doubles and #3 singles, Kratky notched a ton of important points as well as a tone-setter against Charlie Pei against Chicago.

CMU – Daniel Levine, freshman – Levine is CMU’s MVP this year in my eyes. The kid has stepped in to be one of the best in the country at #2 singles and has teamed with Arora to be a great #1 doubles team.  Against Case, he notched a big win over Fojtasek.  He notches two wins and the clincher against Chicago.  More than you could ask for from a freshman.

Chicago – Sven Kranz, junior – Despite not playing in doubles, Kranz notched two massive wins against both Wash U and CMU. Kranz has been up and down the lineup and now we can officially say that this man is a really good #4 singles player, ousting Jeremy Bush and taking out Kenny Zheng.

Case Western – CJ Krimbill, senior – The man went undefeated this tournament and deserves way more recognition than team MVP.  Krimbill has been an absolute delight to follow and Coach Todd is thanking his lucky stars for a player that has given more to the program than almost anyone that I can remember.  Krim Shady in the house.

Brandeis – Brian Granoff, junior – The Florida native didn’t have the best tournament, but notched 2 big victories against Rochester to set the tone and went out and beat a really tough player in James Fojtasek against Case Western.  Granoff has taken his “demotion” to #2 singles in stride and continues to give it all on the court despite no longer playing as top dog.  Kudos to you Brian and I hope that you continue your success.

NYU – Matt DeMichiel, junior – The longtime blog follower DeMichiel had a tournament that really stood out to me against a ton of opponents.  First off, beating Josh Goodman is nothing to scoff at.  Then, he comes out and takes out Kevin Dong of Case.  To finish it off, he wins against Mevorach of Rochester to capture a 6-3 upset. Not to mention, he took his third doubles match there too. DeMichiel slightly edges Umberto Setter (which is a fantastic name by the way) for his Team MVP.

Rochester – Masaru Fujimaki, freshman – The freshman all the way from Shanghai International has had a damn solid year at the top spot.  Fujimaki won both his matches against NYU, despite in a loss, and has a lot of potential moving forward.  I was encouraged by his three set loss to Bunis of Brandeis.  Fujimaki has been a great addition to Rochester this year and he will need to take another step next year to continue his freshman success.

THIS IS A REALLY LONG ARTICLE. That’s all you get from the UAA from here on out as I know at least four of these teams should be moving onto the NCAA Tournament.  Thank you to all who followed this weekend to make it great.  For those of you that read to the end of this, please comment and banter with me about anything DIII Tennis.  Any thoughts, observations, or questions that you might have are welcome.  And as always, ASouth, OUT.