GUESS WHOS BACKKKK!
Well hello there. It’s been a good summer for the bloggers and I must say I’m pretty sad that it’s almost September. September also means that the kiddos start going back to school and jumping on the practice courts for (hopefully not) the first time in a while. Anyways, I’m just telling you all these things that you already know so I should probably get to the point. We’re back at the blog for what I believe will be the sixth year and for me personally, third year. I can say that the team is extremely excited for what’s to come and part of the reason is because we have a bigger team this year! Let’s get to the facts. In this post, I will be kicking off the year – basically, what I’m going to do is take you through our plan for the year, how to navigate the new site, and of course, go through the 10 Burning Questions of the Year for Men’s!
The Blog This Year
I told you in my “Blog Future” post (which you can still check out) that I had big things planned for the glorious year of 2015. Well, with the 2015 season right around the corner, I’m hoping that I will meet both mine and your expectations for the year. Here’s what’s gonna go down:
– The addition of our newest Men’s writer, D3Regional! We have heard some of the smaller schools call-outs that we don’t cover them enough. Well, D3Regional will be your go-to writer for any team that is starting this year in the 31-40 range, as well as 10 other select teams that we think deserve some more coverage. Follow D3Regional’s twitter account here – https://twitter.com/D3Regional
– The unveiling of the Women’s section of the blog! We have added three new Women’s writers with a lot of experience in the Women’s DIII landscape and I really think they bring something different to the table. Given the absolute lack of coverage on Women’s DIII as the Men’s blog has exploded, we felt that this was a great year to expand our horizons. In addition, I will be expanding my role as D3ASouth and covering the ASouth in Women’s as well. Coaches, parents, and players, if you could do us a big favor and tell your Women’s counterparts that we have expanded, that would be great! Please follow all of the Women’s accounts here: https://twitter.com/D3NEWomens
https://twitter.com/D3westwomens
https://twitter.com/d3centralwomen
and of course, myself https://twitter.com/d3AtlanticSouth
– The potential for podcasts. D3Northeast and I are utilizing his insane intelligence and great knowledge of the internet to see if we can do audio podcast previews. Stay tuned on this!
How to Navigate the Site
This is pretty easy, but I’ve changed the site interface to handle all of our new additions. For you returning readers, all of your Men’s Top 30 information can be found if you click the top left “Men’s Top 30” section of the site. For D3Regional action, click D3Regional – all of his posts will be there and on the front page. Same for Women’s as well. We’ve added the “Schools” tab as well, where both Men’s and Women’s posts from each school can be found. If y’all are reading with your significant other on the tennis team, you can both read about yourselves by clicking your school section! Additionally, I have moved Men’s twitter accounts and recent comments on the right sidebar of the site. Women’s twitter accounts and school team sites are found on the left sidebar. If you have site questions, please feel free to comment or tweet at us, we know it’s a bit of a change from our previous functionality.
Men’s Top 30 – 10 Burning Questions of the Year
A kickoff post isn’t complete if I don’t post the 10 Burning Questions of the Year. These questions will be for my bread and butter, Men’s tennis action.
- Is this year FINALLY the year for CMS? – I repeat this question every freakin’ year! But until it happens and until CMS doesn’t have the best talent in the nation, this will be the #1 Burning Question for Men’s. CMS is bringing back their top 5 singles players from last year and two of their doubles teams. They are a team loaded with seniors and it looks like the formula for winning is all set up for a CMS championship. It will be interesting if this team gets mired by their old playoff “failures” or if the team and Coach Settles can take that final step they’ve been craving for so long.
- Who will step up this year in the Northeast? – The Northeast has always been our go-to for having national contenders. To be honest, I really don’t know who’s going to step up in the region. Amherst has lost a lot of their seniors that propelled them to the championship last year, but still have that scary talent base that everyone loves them for. Middlebury, in their fourth season under Coach Hansen, took a step forward last year but are yet to play in a national championship since their dream 2010 season. Williams used last year as a rebuilding year but still were able to keep a decently reasonable ranking. Or maybe it will be Bowdoin, who took a step back last year but are still a mid-ranked team that no one really wants to play.
- Where will Emory hype take us this year? – Last year, I predicted Emory to finish second in the nation. I was a little bit off on that one, as they notched only another Elite 8 finish. This year, they seem more poised to make a run to the top. With Halpern, Ruderman, and Wagner all becoming seniors this year, you can count on them to give it their best effort and make a run for that championship that has eluded them since 2011. They’ll bring the fire on the court, but will it be enough?
- Trinity TX can’t beat this past season, right? – Trinity TX has always been the team that beats expectations and works their way to the top. I remember last year in the Power Rankings, there was a lot of debate that Trinity hadn’t done anything and that they didn’t deserve to be so high in our rankings. Like always, Trinity quieted the haters and went to the 3rd place match. They put together an amazing effort and eventually won the 3rd place. Right now, I don’t believe they can beat that, but they’ve proven all of us wrong before. What’s in store this year for the always feisty Tigers?
- Who will this year’s breakthrough team be? – This is my favorite question of the year every year. We’ve seen a breakthrough performance from a mid or lower ranked team every year. I’m thinking California Lutheran hitting the top 10, Pomona-Pitzer the year after, Carnegie Mellon in two separate years including last year, Bowdoin in 2011, and of course Case Western two years ago. It seems like every year, there is a team that breaks into the Elite 8. What is the formula for these teams? They seem to be so different (#BallouForTwo or the grinding of Case Western) yet it happens like clockwork. My potential breakthrough teams to watch out for this year are Chicago, Wesleyan, Tufts, and Redlands. Can any of them break the top 10? Maybe the top 15?
- What will the next chapter be in the Case/CMU rivalry? – This is one of the best rivalries in DIII Tennis outside of Wash U/Emory. Think about it. These teams have played in huge matches the past 3 years and the results have always been close. Case has sent CMU home all three of those years. CMU beat Case in the regular season last year in a barn-burner on their home courts. Case comes back and sends CMU home on their home courts in the Sweet 16. There is definitely no love lost between these two teams and I’m excited for whatever clashes they might have this year. The UAA is a great conference.
- How will the teams that took a step back last year make a comeback? – I’m talking about those teams like Kenyon, Bowdoin, and California Lutheran. Kenyon had been a perennial top 10 team and had even recently made a NCAA final, but they stumbled in the beginning of last year and finished outside the top 10 for the first time since 2010. Bowdoin was supposed to be continuing their run into the top 10 until a whole bevvy of things happened and they finished #16 in the nation. And of course CLU with the loss of Ballou and Worley, taking a huge step back into the 20s and never looking back. These are teams with a lot of pride and have had a taste of winning. We all know that the wounded bear comes back stronger, so can these teams make it back to their previous national prominence?
- Will the “Black Hole” reappear once again? – Something happened last year that I’ve never seen happen in my time at the blog and in DIII Tennis. Every team from the 18-30 team range seemed to be able to beat each other at any time. It was so muddled at one point that the ITA committee actually had to have “honorable mentions” in the ranking system because there was just waaaay too much s*** going on. This was something that I don’t believe will happen every year, but it will definitely be a big question this coming year. With the depth of the DIII talent pool getting larger and deeper, could this be a new trend in DIII tennis until things normalize?
- What about Johns Hopkins? – A team that not everyone takes as seriously as they should is Johns Hopkins. Hopkins is bringing back seniors Tanner Brown, Ben Hwang, and Erik Lim to go with their newfound #1 player Michael Buxbaum. This is a team I like to call “CMS-Lite” because of their knack of getting a ton of talent but also not living up to expectations in the postseason. Hopkins will almost certainly be a #1 seed this year and I hope they don’t get a terrible draw like last year. This is one of the most dangerous teams in the nation this year. I promise you that.
- Which one of you will underestimate Wash U? – It happens every year. People come in saying that Wash U can’t do something, but they always make the Elite 8 and most of the time, the Final 4. Last year we had people saying that they might drop out of the top 10. Instead, they won Indoor Nationals. They unfortunately didn’t make the Final 4 last year, but they’ll be back this year with a vengeance. They didn’t have any MAJOR graduations last year and they have a good recruiting class coming in along with their powerful freshman duo from last year. Coach Follmer is going to have these guys working to the bone once again. We always say it, but definitely don’t underestimate Wash U this year.
Phew! Well it has been a while, but I still think I’ve got this blogging thing on point. I’m really excited for this year and I can’t wait to get the writing flowing. Please welcome our new writers with open arms and our new readers as well! I’m glad to be back and I’m ready to kill this thing this year. For the first time of the 2015 season, ASouth, OUT.