State of the Region Address: Atlantic South

Did you guys know that the State of the Region Address was my idea last year, as a rookie?  I think I might have been rookie of the year last year but I never got my trophy.  Started from the bottom, now we here.  Despite taking over the national scene and getting a better understanding of all of our regions, I still have ties to the Atlantic South and they are definitely my favorite teams to write about.  Unfortunately, I don’t have that Illuminati crap coming your way, but that’s really because I’m pretty sure D3West goes to Illuminati Brotherhood Conventions with Pitbull and Justin Bieber.  Enough jibber jabber, it’s time to get to the actual State of the Region Address.  What you’ve seen from West and Central is a very abbreviated team ranking, some more thoughts on individuals, and some even more thoughts on individuals.  I think both are important.  I will be taking a step up and going in-depth into each of these team’s seasons, up until I don’t actually care all that much about the teams.  Which is probably sooner than it should be.  The team recap obviously will be coming first, followed by singles and then doubles.  I just noticed, that’s the opposite of the way an actual dual match works.  Funny how that works out.

Overall, the Atlantic South has enjoyed ups and downs this year.  There have been three teams that have been really surprising out of the gate (Hop, CMU, UMW), one major disappointment (Emory), a laughing stock (NCW), and a lot of other semi-notable stuff.  So far, I’m impressed with my region as we finally might see 3 top 10 teams at the same time.  There’s a lot of season left and I still think that Emory is a national contender, despite what the haters say, and that CMU has an outside chance of making some major noise.  Hopkins looks like it could be the last Final 4 contender and Mary Wash is looking like a pretty darn tough #2 seed in NCAAs.  Let’s get to the Team-by-Team summaries.

1. Johns Hopkins Blue Jays – Down goes Emory! Take a look at what the Jays have done already this year.  They’ve beaten one of their rivals in Emory, another one of their rivals in CMU, and have also beaten Case Western.  Those are three teams that are in the top 10 of our power rankings at this time.  The reason why this has happened is clearly because of their freshman additions.  Buxbaum has been a revelation this year, as he’s made the doubles Fall Nationals, dethroned all his team members at #1, and literally just beat the #1 player in the nation this past weekend.  He’s my MVP for this team by far.  However, Jeremy Dubin at #4 needs to be recognized as well.  Dubin was a sleeper coming into the season.  He didn’t have a stellar ITA performance so he flew under the radar until he came up big against Emory at Indoors and continues to cruise at #4 singles.  He’s got one loss on the year so far and it was in 3 sets to the frustrating Tim Noack.  Talk about some freshman production.  For this Hopkins team, however, I think they will go as far as their juniors take them.  Hwang, Brown, and Lim have all been parts of the good and bad of NCAAs and it will be up to them to take this team to where it never has gone before.  They no longer have the pressure of carrying the team on their backs, but they need to lead this team to victory.  It helps that they are proven in the clutch and don’t ever back down from anyone.  Why can’t this team beat a Wash U or an Amherst, or even a CMS when it matters most?  With great doubles and clear strong spots with experience in singles, this is a team that everyone should have on their radar.  Mid-Season Grade: A+
2. Emory Eagles – This was a tough pick between Carnegie Mellon and Emory.  I went with Emory because I believe in them more and I believe in their coaching and program more.  It’s tough to go against a team that has so much history and a proven record.  It feels really weird to have Emory at #2 in the region, but this is where they belong.  To quickly go over their results so far this year, they’ve lost to Hopkins, lost to Wash U, and beaten everyone else (Kenyon, Redlands, GAC, Bowdoin).  We talk about this year being an Emory down year and that’s definitely a true statement.  What we seem to forget is that every single player in this starting lineup has been on the team for at least a year, with a ton of experience.  We forget that Halpern placed 5^th at Fall Nationals yet hasn’t seemed to find his full game yet.  We forget that Emory hasn’t finished out of the top 8 since we were little kids.  Something about this team says to me that they are a snake in the grass, waiting for the right time to strike.  With a long season, a determined coach, and determined players, Emory is a team that no one wants to face come NCAA time.  That is even moreso if they are a #2 seed in a region.  This weekend is obviously a big weekend to see where the Eagles are a little more than halfway through the season.  Emory will play Kenyon, Case, Midd, all in one weekend which is sure to be a measuring stick for all teams.  Not to mention UAAs, and then the eventual NCAA tournament.  All it takes is one big match to turn this thing around for Emory and who is to say they can’t do it.  Because personally, I sure as hell wouldn’t be the one betting against them.  Watch out for them this weekend.  Mid-Season Grade: C
3. Carnegie Mellon Tartans – SO wanted to put the Tartans in that second spot.  The Power Rankings are telling me that CMU is a better team right now.  They have so far lost to Hopkins and Wash U and beaten Pomona, Redlands, Bowdoin, and GAC.  Sound familiar?  Good, because we basically just went through those same wins in the last paragraph on Emory.  CMU often strikes me as that kid in college that you know for a fact is smart but is off drinking with his buddies on a Tuesday night.  Who drinks on a Tuesday night?  When committed, this team can do crazy damage to the top 10.  The last time I think this team put everything together, they made the Elite 8 (2009-2010).  That season is the watermark for this program.  This team we have here today is more talented.  However, not all the pieces are together at this very moment.  What the best teams and the teams that make the Elite 8 can do is fend off your strengths and play to their own.  CMU has trouble doing that because they have no way of stealing doubles points at this time.  Their #2 and #3 doubles teams are weak at best right now and that’s the truth.  They’ve been down in doubles to every single ranked team they’ve played other than Bowdoin.  That includes Mary Washington as well.  We can talk all about their freshmen and their rock solid singles lineup all we want.  But the fact of the matter is that without a 2-1 lead in doubles, I’d like to see them pull of 4 singles wins against the best experienced teams in the nation.  A tough task when three of your singles players are freshmen.  So far, so good for CMU.  But now is the time to get this thing all tied up for the stretch run.  Mid-Season Grade: A-
4. Mary Washington Eagles – If you go back to my season previews, I was lower than the low on the Eagles.  This was a program spiraling downwards after making the Elite 8 in 2008 (Yes, I remember that).  If you told me that the Eagles would be closer to a top 15 ranking than to out of the Top 30, I would have told you to go back to your drug den where you belong.  Well, I was downright wrong about this team and I’m glad.  The Eagles have found what they’ve always needed, and that’s depth.  With the addition of the transfer Gilmore, who is currently playing a surprising #2 singles and doubles, as well as the freshman Griffin, they’ve created a team that might not be the best at anything, but can certainly compete at almost every single spot.  They’ve been able to put doubles teams together almost purely on team chemistry and fit which allows them to have almost a guarantee of not getting swept with the possibility for more.  To me, this is what the Mary Washington program really stands for.  It’s a full team effort, a grind it out mentality on their slow, high-bouncing courts.  When I think of all the teams in the ASouth, this one strikes me as one of the closer teams.  They all just seem so damn similar!  I’d also like to take this time to give a shoutout to Alex Blahkin.  As we all know, I was notoriously tough on him last year and I think rightfully so.  Well, he’s been lights-out at #5 singles and has now been moving up in the lineup all the way to #3 singles this past weekend against Bates and CMU.  I’m proud of the bounce back season he’s had so far this year and I hope he can keep it up for the rest of the year.  Really nice guy, too.  Just in case ANY of you cared.  For the rest of the season, I think UMW really just has to keep doing what they’ve been doing.  They probably don’t have the tools for a big upset at NCAAs, but they can certainly play a team close and give themselves some opportunities.  Either way, this will be a nice step year for a maybe better year next year.  I like where this is going.  Mid-Season Grade: B+.
5. Washington & Lee Generals – This is where the drop off starts to happen in the ASouth.  We used to have NCW but they’re all permanently studying abroad, so that leaves us with the #5 by default, Washington & Lee.  This is one of the feistier teams in Division III that no one really knows about.  They play with a lot of pride, and that’s really stemmed from their recent culture despite the departure of Hayden White.  To me, Washington & Lee is almost like a weaker version of Mary Washington.  Despite a difference in team personalities, they are a team that won’t really wow you with any of their positions.  What they’ll try to do is take advantages for your weaknesses and pray to god that you’re strengths aren’t having great days.  I think another thing to mention is that this is a very young team.  The Generals really don’t have any impactful seniors leaving the team next year, so this team should be able to work on chemistry, skill, and whatever else goes into a good tennis team for the rest of the year.  They have a promising freshman in Krasner at #4 who can probably be an above average spot if he gets good enough development moving into next year.  Michael Holt, a sophomore, has already proven he can work it in doubles and is nipping at the heels of Shamshiri for that #1 spot.  He’s a guy that definitely deserves a watch flag for the rest of his college career.  What this team needs this year is really all about development.  They definitely aren’t going to make waves this year and will probably enter the NCAA tournament as a #3 seed in the Emory hosted region.  That means potentially Emory in the second round, and we basically know how that’s going to go.  Think of this as a reset year for the Generals. Mid-Season Grade: B-
6. Swarthmore Garnet – I could have went bungi-jumping off the cliff that just occurred right there.  Swarthmore is the next seeded team in the Division III Rankings in my section, so they get nominated for the beloved #6 spot.  I’m bullshitting here, by the way.  Swarthmore is a team that really just doesn’t overwhelm.  They are definitely a passionate team and I admire their effort and fight on the court, even in the B draws of ITAs.  Thing is, they just aren’t up to par with the top 25 teams in the nation.  Their losses so far this year have all been worse than 6-3 to CMS, Pomona, GAC, Skidmore, and Kenyon.  They’ll play Hopkins this weekend to the tune of a 9-0 or 8-1 loss.  Overall, this is just a school that doesn’t necessarily have the resources and the talent to compete in the top 30 every year.  Swat can do their best to develop players but sometimes it just isn’t in the cards.  Not a terrible year for these guys, but certainly nothing to write home about.  Mid-Season Grade: C+
7. Sewanee Tigers – Ha! I didn’t forget you this time, Sewanee.  I love a team that can be called by two names and the University of the South presents me with that opportunity.  Sewanee has really come a long way from being a doormat to the best teams and providing top 20 teams with a warm up match on their spring break or before it.  They’ve been able to snag the “freshman sensation” (not really a sensation, just a good player) in Avery Schoeber, who took down Johnston of Middlebury this past weekend.  They also have a couple of other talented players in Rand Jackson, Connor Winkler, and Eric Roddy.  Did you know that Eric Roddy recently beat Ian Wagner of Emory in a recent dual match?  Wagner used to be one of the best #3’s in the nation.  That’s impressive from a guy you definitely haven’t heard about yet this year.  Sewanee still has a bit of a ways to go if they want to consistently be in the top 30, but they’re a lot closer than they were two years ago or even last year.  It’s not a specific thing that they need to work on, it’s just the team.  They need to get some more recruiting classes like this past one or just develop players at a Hansen-level rate.   Not a great season so far, but it’s progress. Mid-Season Grade: B
8. NC Wesleyan
9. Haverford
10. Rhodes
11. Christopher Newport University
12. Franklin & Marshall
13. Anyone else I missed (Piedmont?! Washington College?!!!!!!)

The rest of these teams are simply not good enough to be mentioned in depth in this article, especially when I just went decently in depth to Sewanee.  I didn’t even include them in my Best of the Rest somehow.  These teams really battle it out against each other but with no chance at making the top 30.  NCW is obviously the biggest disappointment of the year but that’s what you get when players are making max exoduses from the team.  Haverford has shown us that they can compete just outside the top 30 by at least getting a few matches against Stevens, but that doesn’t really matter.  They just came off this apparently nuts win against Kalamazoo… so there’s that.  The rest of the schools are really bottom dwellers at this point.  One team I’d like to keep on is CNU, who I believe is on the uptrend based on things I’ve been hearing.

Individual Portion – this will be a lot less in depth, given that I don’t know the players as well as I would like.  Plus, it’s late.  However, I do want to say this.  WTF Abhishek Alla?  You single-handedly started messing up rankings this weekend.  Let’s get in the game, why don’t we.

1. Alex Ruderman, Emory – This is just a huge surprise to me.  Ruderman is technically the only person not to lose in this region right now.  He has wins over Buxbaum (JHU), Schoeber (Sewanee), Putterman (WashU), Lipscomb (Redlands), Smith-Dennis (GAC), okay, he’s damn good.  Ruderman deserves this spot because he’s only lost to Razumovsky this year.
2. Michael Buxbaum, Hopkins – Remember, this is based on regional results.  Buxbaum was really a #3 in my opinion but again, Alla kind of wandered off this weekend and got handled by Buxbaum in straight sets.  Buxbaum has lost to Ruderman, but also beaten Putterman, Krimbill (#1 in Central, Case), Shamshiri, Berg (Bates), and Yaraghi (Amherst).  That’s an impressive resume and Buxbaum is my #2
3. Abhishek Alla, CMU – #1 in the nation, #3 in the region.  I assume that the national rankings will be updated shortly but this is just a downright surprise.  There’s a case to even move Alla down to #4 in the region but fact of the matter is he still won ITA’s.  Which means he has a shit ton of quality wins.  He’s already beaten Bragg (BOW), Smith-Dennis, Putterman, Weichert (PP), and Heinrich (Stevens) this year.  However, he’s lost to Buxbaum, Carey (UMW), and Lipscomb.  Come on Alla, I gave you props in the last time I wrote about you and it turned around with this.
4. Tyler Carey, UMW – This is the surprise of the regional rankings.  UMW fans may be up in a storm considering Carey just beat Alla, but let’s remember that one set made the difference in that match.  It’s not going to go as planned every single time.  What matters here is that he has that win over Alla and two over Shamshiri to get this spot.  I don’t like it, but facts are facts. 
5. Eric Halpern, Emory – Yep, we’re already into the #2 singles players.  That’s what happens when you have a pretty shallow region.  Halpern has notched an in-season win against Winkler (Sewanee), Hwang (Hopkins), Leisner (GAC), Trinka (BOW, indirect over Heaney-Secord), and oh yea, he placed #5 in Fall Nationals.  Won’t be surprised if he’s ranked higher, but this is where he belongs.
6. Christian Heaney–Secord, CMU – I really wanted to put Schoeber of Sewanee here, or Collard of Swat, or even Acaba of Haverford.  But I simply couldn’t.  None of those guys have any key regional wins and we can’t just assume that they’re good enough to make the national team. Heaney-Secord has beaten Leisner (GAC), Hwang (Hopkins), Gimore (UMW), and Yaraghi (Amherst).  He also had a good performance in ITAs as he made the semifinals before losing to Hwang.
7. Ben Hwang, Hopkins – The run of #2 singles players continues as Hwang comes in at #7.  First off, he made the finals of ITAs back in the fall, and that still matters.  He notched his big win this year over Holt (W&L), but also has wins over Planche (Bates) and Klawitter (Case).  However, he’s lost to Heaney-Secord and Halpern in the spring so it’s clear that he deserves to be behind them.
8. Avery Schoeber, Sewanee – I honestly don’t have that much data to back this one up.  Schoeber does however have a win against Alex Johnston (MIDD) who is currently ranked #17 in the nation.  That’s really all he has.  He has losses to Ruderman (not a big deal) but no one else in the region.  One win is better than no quality wins.
9. Tanner Brown (Hopkins) – Tanner might get in on name alone, and the fact that the #8 spot is seriously up for grabs.  He has a big win over Rafe Mosetick who placed 2^nd in the Emory ITA back in the fall, so that definitely has to count for something.  He has wins over Duncan (CMU) and Hu (W&L) to back up his resume a bit.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s the third Hopkins guy in considering Schoeber is hanging by a thread.
10. Rafe Mosetick (Emory) – His great run at Fall ITA’s can’t be forgotten here, but he has done nothing of note yet in the Spring and he certainly shouldn’t get into the tournament by default.  He’s been moved down in the lineup to #3 so I doubt he gets many chances to move back up.  Tough sledding for the young talent.
11. Michael Holt (W&L) – Holt is here by virtue of beating Gilmore of UMW.  He lost in three sets to Hwang, which really hurts his chances of making the tournament but he also has a win over Duncan Miller over Methodist.  That keeps all you Methodist fans out of this one.
12. Taylor Shamshiri (W&L) – He actually doesn’t have any in-region wins other than Christopher Newport’s #1 player. 
13. Stratton Gilmore (UMW) – Also not an impressive season, but he’s somewhere around here.
14. Anthony Collard (Swat)
15. Luis Acaba (HAV)

Doubles Rankings

1. Charles/Carey (UMW) – wins over Holt/Shamshiri (W&L), Heaney-Secord/Duncan (CMU).  That gives them an indirect win over Buxbaum/Walsh of Hopkins as well.
2. Heaney–Secord/Duncan (CMU) – win over former ITA champ Buxbaum/Walsh.  A number of solid wins across Spring Break as well.
3. Buxbaum/Walsh (Hop) – the ITA champion has struggled with two losses against the top 2 teams. However, they were able to take down Holt/Shamshiri, both times in tiebreakers, to get their key regional win and keep themselves at #3.
4. Ruderman/Wagner (Emory) – This was a tough one to pick as neither this team nor the W&L team has any real significant wins in the region.  However, Ruderman/Wagner have a win against the Bowdoin #1 team and the Sewanee #1 team.  More than W&L can really say.
5. Holt/Shamshiri (W&L) – they only have one big win and that’s dating back to Fall ITA’s over Charles/Carey, who are ironically the #1 team in the region right now.  Too bad they got beaten by them in the most recent matchup.  This team was able to beat Newport and Methodist to keep some of the vultures away.

That’s all I’ve got.  I hope you enjoyed the in-depth look at my region and I hope I didn’t leave too much out.  The Atlantic South is a fun region to be in but it is certainly top-heavy which causes some interesting things to happen in the individual rankings.  I’ve seen three Emory players get in before on multiple occasions, and that’s not because of who’s doing the rankings.  They were legit rankings and I agreed with the selections.  I hope I’m not surprised tomorrow with 3 Emory players being in, because Rafe Mosetick has had a pretty rough spring so far.