Short NESCAC Recap

Well, at the behest of the almighty commenters, as well as the almighty D3TG, here is the NESCAC recap.  Given that this recap basically only matters for three teams, I will only recap for three teams.  This is because most of the teams will be getting season ending recaps/grades at the end of the year anyways, in which we will most likely touch on their conference tournament performance.  That will also give me more time to go in depth into all my Northeast as well as Atlantic South teams, and even delve deeper into some of the teams that are flying under the radar.

Williams Ephs

What I Liked: Obviously, the fact that they won.  But what I liked the best was the way they did it.  Not to mention the fact that senior Dylan Page is back in the lineup after a rough year or so with injuries.  They now feature 5 seniors in the lineup, and junior Micheli who has a ton of experience.  Best individual performance came from Muscle Shirt Micheli as he took down Kahan at #2 singles, something that I really wouldn’t have expected prior to this tournament.  Not to mention, he took down Kahan again at #2 doubles, and essentially won the Ephs the title with his championship day performance.  Also, Captain Clutch Chow once again… came up clutch.  All those in a deciding match against this guy should be very worried.  The guy just has unbelievable heart and clearly has those clutch genes.  You’ll see later on that I believe this Williams team really has a lot of things going for them in NCAAs.

What I Didn’t Like: The disappointing play of Felix Sun and Zach Weiss over the weekend.  Although Sun ended up going 3-1 in the important matches he played, he also played at #3 singles.  This is a guy that used to be a top player in DIII.  Now, he lost to Yaraghi routinely in the champ match.  As for Weiss, I’ve always thought he might be a bit overmatched at #4.  He’s got the match mentality to gut out wins, but he needs to find his way and get a big W here in his senior season.  These two guys only have a little bit of time before we see the team getting challenged and potentially coming down to these spots.

Amherst Jeffs

What I Liked: Amherst came into the NESCAC tournament with iffy doubles play.  They left with at least solid doubles play, with a potential to be better.  A clean sweep of Bates was impressive, especially at 1 and 2 where Bates is a strong team.  Yaraghi/Dale showed that they can hang with the big boys as they beat Crampton/Bettles 8-5 and basically ended their season.  Shoutout to Fife for coming up with 2 big singles wins this weekend as a freshman.  That is an impressive feat.  Not to mention, the play of Andrew Yaraghi, who went 3-1 and beat Sun as mentioned before.  Overall, the freshmen for Amherst are going to have to step up and this was a good move in the right direction.  They did go down 2-1 in doubles, but the fact of the matter is that was an improvement versus getting swept against Williams last time out.  As long as they get one match somewhere, they have a fighting chance with most teams.

What I Didn’t Like:  One thing that has really gone overlooked is the play of Joey Fritz.  He seemed to have gone abroad last semester, and he hasn’t had amazing results so far this year.  He lost the first vs Crampton before the match was called, and lost a match to Trey Meyer that I thought he would have the advantage in.  He’s a great player, but these were some surprising results.

Middlebury Panthers

What I Liked: It’s gotta be their improvement.  The Panthers got throttled by Williams last time out there, and this time around they brought it to 5-4 and almost won the match.  That’s a real quick turnaround from a team that had no chance just about three weeks ago.  They now bring that momentum into NCAAs where Coach Hansen is known to excel.  We saw his impact with this improvement against the Ephs, as he is one of the best in-game coaches if not the best in DIII.  They’re getting good fight from the bottom of the lineup, which easily got beaten last time, and have a solid top 3 that they can really get a match or two from most times out.  Not to mention they went up 2-1 against the best doubles team in the Northeast, a huge boost and a huge indicator of how they’ll play against doubles-troubled Hopkins.

What I Didn’t Like: Obviously, the fact they lost.  But they showed great improvement as I said and I can’t really find too many bad things with this showing.  They destroyed Tufts, and set themselves up for a chance at the end of the day.  All you can ask for.