UT-Dallas def. #11 UT-Tyler 5-2
In a season that had been mostly bereft of on-court drama, we finally got some thrills this past weekend in the conference tournaments. Nothing could top Wash U’s victory over Emory in terms of suspense and calibre of play, but I think the biggest surprise of the season came in, fittingly, the most unlikely of places: Belton, TX.
In my State-of-the-Region address, I gave UT-Dallas a little love, but berated the Comets for failing to put together an adequate schedule. This whole season, they’ve had the nucleus of a good team. They have senior leadership from Foster and Davis, while Foster and junior Casey Clark proved that the Comets at least belonged in the conversation with their run in the Texas ITA Regional doubles tournament. While the Comets don’t have a true #1 singles play, they do have basically four good #3 players, which made them a perfect matchup for the Ybarra-less Patriots. If you’re wondering about their loss to the Ozarks, it happened because they got caught in a split-squad, and we’ll see how the rankings committee punishes them for their insolence on Thursday. I would love to see the Comets go out east and play someone like Stevens, Vassar, Skidmore, or MIT, but they will probably be relegated to an beating at the hands of Redlands in the Clusterf*** region.
This weekend also exposed the atrocity that is UT-Tyler’s depth. This season’s UT-Tyler team (and I say was just because Coach Bizot is convinced their season is over) was basically a poor man’s version of Cal Lu. If you took away Ballou, Cal Lu would be very mediocre. You take away Ybarra, and Tyler falls apart. We saw that from their 5-4 result with McMurry earlier this season. Coach Bizot will have to find a way to get a few more transfers next year, or the Pats will have a hard time competing without him.
The fact that UT-Dallas has earned an AQ, and Tyler is now likely out of the tournament throws a bit of a wrench into the previous bracketology attempt by the prodigal son, d3tennis. I would like to throw my hat into the bracketology ring with a setup that would allow for a little more West region representation since all of our teams pretty much oust each other in one region.
Region 1: CMS*, Cal Lutheran, UC Santa Cruz, Redlands
Region 2: Kenyon, Gustavus, Whitewater*, Baldwin-Wallace, Grinnell, Concordia (WI)
Region 3: Amherst*, MIT, Stevens, Nichols, Marywood, Farmingdale St.
Region 4: Williams*, Vassar, TCNJ, Drew, Wilkes, UMass Dartmouth
Region 5: Wash U*, Case Western, Earlham, Coe, Kalamazoo
Region 6: Emory, Carnegie Mellon, Washington & Lee*, Mary Washington, Elizabethtown, Grove City
Region 7: Trinity (TX)*, Whitman, UT-Dallas, Farmingdale St (Whatever the geographically least convenient scrub team from the East is)
Region 8: Johns Hopkins*, Middlebury, NC Wesleyan, PSU-Behrend, PSU-Harrisburg, Baruch
I didn’t do any research as far as who actually won the lesser-known scholarships for this, and indeed just moved around the teams that d3tennis had originally used (substituting Vassar for Skidmore even though I think Skidmore might still get in because one commenter said they are still in Pool B for some reason). Anyways, assuming these ARE the teams that are in the tournament, I think this is now a feasible estimation of how the draw could end up:
1. Top two seeds and regions stay the same.
2. Amherst and Williams move ahead of Emory and take the 3 and 4 seeds. Both are rewarded with easy regions, as they always seem to be.
3. Wash U earns themselves a #1 seed, and is no longer forced to face Trinity to get to the Elite Eight. Instead, they get a rubber match with Case Western. The rubber match is kind of a down side to this one because it’s less intriguing, but I really don’t think the NCAA cares that much about intrigue in the DIII men’s tennis tournament.
4. Emory’s region stays the same. They’re still a #1 seed, but now they’re a lower #1 seed, which could make their life more difficult assuming they get to the Elite Eight.
5. Trinity finally gets to host! Whitman and some scrub team from the East coast fly in to make it a decent region. The major reason this could happen is because a) Trinity and Whitman are natural #1 and #2 seeds, and b) BY DOING THIS THE NCAA MANAGES TO FLY TWO INSTEAD OF THREE TEAMS. Did the Capslock indicate to you how important this is to the NCAA? I hope so.
6. The previous bracketology had four “New England” region. This one has three. Middlebury, which would have been a #1 seed, gets relegated to #2 seed status by Wash U’s ascendancy, and they are greeted with a familiar match with Hopkins. The four “New England” regions condense to three. The rest of the teams are spread out so there are 6 teams per regions (You can pretty much just throw anyone anywhere at this point, right? I mean that whole side of the country is about half the size of Texas).
Point is, with Case making it out of the Midwest and Wash U becoming a #1 seed, the NCAA no longer needs to fly a team there to keep those two regionals fair. Because Emory doesn’t seem to be hosting this year, they can make a fair “Southern” region without having to fly anyone there. This way, the NCAA makes a decently fair bracket and saves themselves the cost of 9 people’s plane tickets.
Anyways…
The Ojai
Singles
Bulleted lists are my favorite, so here we go…
– Ballou is probably the best player in the country. Before I ragged on Cal Lu as a non-realistic national championship contender because they were too reliant on Ballou, and that he was bound to lose a match eventually. Well, apparently that’s not the case. He has lost one doubles match this year to Trinity, and that was in a match that his team won. Going up against Cal Lu, other teams basically know they’re starting in a 0-2 hole and have to win 5 of the remaining 7 matches. Unfortunately for Cal Lu, CMS has the goods to say, “we’ll win 3-6 singles in straight sets and find at least one more match somewhere no problem.”
-Speaking of CMS, the rest of the nation should be very scared. This weekend was Lane’s breakthrough result. The guy used to be one of the best players in DIII, and he’s been playing an OK #4 singles this year. If he can play like that for the rest of the year, he’s pretty much an automatic 2 points at 3 dubs and 4 singles as well. Even with Dorn losing to Littlejohn, the Stags got 5 players in the quarters including Butts, their #5 singles player who beat two of the best #2’s in the nation in Halabi and Worley, and Marino, their #3 singles player who beat two of the better #1’s in Koenig and Seneviratne.
-I know he lost to Lane, but can we get Lipscomb in the NCAA tournament already? The Bulldog is currently sitting at #11 in the West behind Dorn, Malesovas, Wong, and Brown. That’s ridiculous. Dorn should be docked for losing to Littlejohn, and Wong is on his way down the rankings. Lipscomb has the exact same regional wins as Malesovas with fewer losses and some great wins out of the region: Meyer, Drougas, Bragg, and Johnston. We shouldn’t let archaic regional rankings criteria prevent us from putting someone who has obviously had the better season in the tournament.
-Whittier and P-P are still dangerous. The Poets got their top 2 into the Round of 16 of the singles and a team into the quarters of the doubles. Additionally, their hot #2 team came within a whisker of beating Butts and Kotrappa. The Hens had an even better tournament. They got two teams into the quarters of the doubles, with Allinson and Sabel coming through a nightmare draw to get within two holds from a victory over Worley and Ballou. Sabel and Weichert also got to the Round of 16, each with an impressive victory as Weichert continues to round into form. Both could pose a threat to the Bulldogs in a potential SCIAC 3rd place match.
I know this would take a while, but could you break the teams selected for nationals by each pool rather than region. I understand the logistics of the 500 mile rule and it is a bit of headache, but it is a little easier to understand each. Some of the teams selected in pool b (well really the 7th team) makes no sense. I understand it is likely a toss up between carnegie and utt, but I would have to say the edge goes to carnegie. they are much more of a darkhorse in my opinion. although if bates beats bowdoing today, they have a pretty good argument as well. in terms of pool b- it is UCSC, UW-whitewater, MIT, and then after that it is a bit of toss up, Skidmore and TCNJ are probably the next two in but after that, it looks pretty up the air between 3 teams in my opinions- vassar, babson and the univ of the south. vassar just beat skid, but they havent had a very good year and babson has a win over wesleyan who is ranked #26. univ. south won their conference but has not beaten any ranked teams so it seems like they are the odd ones out since they also haven’t had very many competitive matches when they played ranked teams. does that make sense?
sorry the carnegie and utt question was for a different pool.
A) there’s a comment about three people up that lists Pool B and Pool C as it has been presented.
B) Babson has a pretty legitimate claim to a pool B spot. People have been saying that Elmhust will get in, though I’m not sure what their strength is. You can’t deny Vassar a Pool B bid after they beat Skidmore. At the very least, I would say, Cruz, UW-W, MIT, Skidmore, TCNJ, and Vassar are Pool B locks. Hard to see Sewanee getting in with that loss to George Fox on their resume.
sorry missed the earlier comment. thanks for the clarification.
skidmore doesn’t technically have a ranked win anymore even though they beat someone who was ranked earlier in the year and vassar only has a win over skidmore and they are no longer ranked.
ranking committee is in finals mode, screw dates
Worse work is showing Caltech won the Northwest Conference championship when they are not even in that conference (and are probably at the bottom of their true conference). At least Ohio Wesleyan is in the NCAC.
well apparently ohio wesleyan won the NCAC, and not kenyon….ha ha ha, good work NCAA
http://www.ncaa.com/news/tennis-men/article/2013-04-14/2013-division-iii-mens-tennis-conference-championship-central
How about:
Region 1: CMS*, Cal Lu, Cruz, Redlands
Region 2: Kenyon*, Carnegie Mellon, Earlham, Coe, Kalamazoo, Marywood
Region 3: Amherst*, MIT, Skidmore, Stevens, Nichols, Farmingdale St.
Region 4: Williams, Mary Washington, Vassar, TCNJ, Drew, UMass-Dartmouth
Region 5: Wash U, Gustavus, Whitewater*, Bowdin-Ballace, Grinnell, Concordia
Region 6: Emory, Case Western, Washington and Lee*, Elizabethtwon, Grove
Region 7: Trinity*, Whitman, UT-Dallas, PSU-Harrisburg
Region 8: Hopkins*, Middlebury, NCW, Wilkes, PSU-Behrend, Baruch
There. Now Kenyon’s hostin and Wash U is not. Each region has one of the top 9 teams as a #1 seed (unfortunately, Cal Lu is stuck). Each region (except for Wash U, as usual) has a top 20 team as a #2 seed. The lower #1 seeds face the higher #2 seeds (except for the obvious exception of the California region).
Again, two teams fly as opposed to three. Any suggestion that has Trinity flying anywhere leads to three flights. I’m guessing that preventing another team from flying is a little more important to the NCAA than a small increase in parity (though I don’t pretend to be able to read into the collective mind of a monolithic organization).
I’m sure this setup has some little flaws. You could switch CMU and Mary Washington, for instance, but the point I’m making is that a “fair” draw can be made that involves just two teams flying instead of three. Such a draw necessitates that Trinity stays still and Whitman goes there, basically guaranteeing that two West region teams get to the Elite Eight. That’s what I’m getting at.
Gustavus is top-20…..
My bad. In my head they had dropped to 22 after losing to P-P. Still a dangerous team, no doubt, especially indoors, but aside from their performance at Indoors (win over Cruz, 5-4 with Hop), they’ve played like a 23-27 team all season.
Pool B is back up to 7 bids this year. (Still 7 bids for pool C as well). Add Elmhurst to your brackets.
Soooo…
Pool B: Cruz, MIT, UW-W, Skidmore, TCNJ, Vassar, Elmherst
Pool C: Cal Lu, Emory, Williams/Midd/Amherst, Williams/Midd/Amherst, Redlands, Case, CMU/Whittier/Bates/Tyler
Sound about right?
Could easily be wrong, but Mary Washington was ranked #25 in the last poll and comes from a league (Capital Ath. Inc.) that, from my information, has six teams in it. D3tennisguy says that a league with less than seven teams is a Pool B league. If so, and unless that league was recently a Pool A league (i.e. seven or more) but there is a year or so delay in switching pools (like the reverse delay in switching the Liberty League from a Pool B league to a Pool A league), why isn’t Mary Washington in your Pool B list? Note that Mary Washington doesn’t have any bad losses since the April 11 rankings.
Additionally, why is Trinity (TX), in the five-team Southern Col. Ath. league, not on your Pool B list?
Below is my source for the leagues in DIII tennis and which teams are in each (from tennis recruiting.net, though it could be outdated)
http://www.tennisrecruiting.net/teams/directory.asp?division=3
both Mary Washington and Trinity play in leagues that had previously been in Pool A and have recently changed
False. If you look in the D3 men’s tennis pre-Championship manual, it lists the CAC (Mary Washington) and the SCAC (Trinity) as receiving automatic bids this year. The Trinity website also mentions that they received an automatic bid for winning their conference championship.
Right, so they would be in the one-year transition period in which they receive that Pool A bid despite being in a “non Pool A” conference. My bad, my wording wasn’t clear. Thanks for the callout.
Got it, I thought that in your earlier brief reply you were suggesting that M.W and Trinity were pool B this year, but looks like you knew about the waiting period. Actually, is it not a two year waiting period? Or is that for schools that are going from Pool B to Pool A?
Two interesting things to see in Thursday’s rankings:
1. How far will Tyler fall and where will Dallas show up? It seems as though the committee almost always has dropped teams down close to or below teams to which they have most recently lost.
2. Where does Emory go in this thing now and how are the top 8 seeds affected? (and what does Amherst’s win over Williams/Middlebury mean for the teams that beat Amherst in the fall – a win is a win and does Hopkins get any bounce from that one?)
Regarding your comment about Johns Hopkins, aren’t later in the season wins given more weight, and aren’t fall wins are almost ancient history at this point? Not sure weighting wins and losses based upon when they occur is a formal rule (but are there any formal rules on deciding who gets into the tournament?). Maybe d3tennisguy can weigh in on this subject.
If Hopkins gets a bounce, it will be only up one region, as they lost to Trinity (TX), who is now ranked right above them. Emory perhaps may drop out of the top eight, allowing Hopkins to move up one. but moving up one should hardly make any difference in terms of how easy it will be to win a region. Other factors, such as where the host sites are, which seems to affect which teams are assigned to each region, are probably more important than the region number a top seed gets assigned to. The rankings that come out tomorrow, though not binding, will help answer your question.
Emory won’t drop from the top 8
I believe the mileage calculator is mapquest and is used campus to campus.
Anonymous,
I use Mapquest a lot and just went to the site to see if there is an “as the crow flies” mileage calculator on it as well as a driving calculator. I didn’t see an “as the crow flies” calculation on it and I believe that that is the distance calculation that is used to calculate the 500 mile rule, but I am not absolutely positive about that. I agree that Mapquest could easily be used to determine distance campus to campus using campus addresses but, again, that is driving distance, which I don’t think is relevant. If you could, please go to Mapquest and see if you can do an “as the crow flies” calculation on it and let me know (and if it does do that, check to see what the distance is between Cleveland and St. Louis).
By the way, here’s a second “as the crow flies” distance calculator that also shows airline flight distance (not relevant) as well as as the crow flies distance. It shows airline distance between Cleveland and St. Louis as being 562 miles, with the as the crow flies distance being 492.418 miles.
http://www.distance.to/Cleveland-OH_St-Louis-MO
Here’s my original as the crow flies distance calculator I used, showing the same 492 mile distance between Cleveland and St. Louis — http://tjpeiffer.com/crowflies.html
http://www.ncaa.com/news/tennis-men/article/2013-04-29/vassar-takes-down-skidmore-garner-liberty-league-championship-tit
The last paragraph addresses vassar & skidmore bids
Vassar beat skid on their home indoor surface which is absolutely brutal, basically a gym basketball surface
as the 2 team in the country, kenyon should definitely host over wash u. With wash u as a 1 seed now, they can travel to whitewater, as can gustavus. Send case to hopkins, and fly trinity tx to middlebury. Then send carnegie, washington and lee or mary washington to kenyon. This makes the most sense to me
Your comment makes a ton of sense. The highest ranked teams should be rewarded for their top level performance during the season by hosting if their tennis facilities (don’t know if that includes indoor courts as well as outdoor courts) are in good condition and are large enough to host a regional.
Kenyon is also one of best locations in the country to host because they are within 500 miles of a high percentage of midwestern and eastern D3 teams, thus providing a great deal of flexibility in terms of who can be assigned to play there and not be more than 500 miles away. To give you a taste of that, here’s a short list of the as the crow flies mileage from Gambier, OH to the towns and cities where a few D3 schools have their campuses.
From Kenyon to Mary Washington (Fredericksburg, VA) — 300 miles
From Kenyon to Washington University (St. Louis, MO) — 433 miles
From Kenyon to Emory (Atlanta, GA) — 471 miles
From Kenyon to Skidmore (Saratoga Springs, NY) — 474 miles
From Kenyon to Amherst (Amherst, MA) — 531 miles
From Kenyon to Middlebury (Middlebury, VT) — 535 miles
From Kenyon to Bowdoin (Brunswick, ME) — 682 miles
Trinity flying to play middlebury as their two seed would be stupid
I don’t think Case can go to Wash U.
Per the As The Crow Flies distance calculator website, copied below, the distance between Cleveland and St. Louis is 492 miles. That measurement is just between cities and does not compute the actual distance between the Case Western and Washington University campuses, but I doubt that a campus to campus distance is used to apply the 500 miles rule because it is doubtful it can be calculated on an “as the crow flies” basis. But if anyone else has a different interpretation of the 500 mile rule, please chime in.
http://tjpeiffer.com/crowflies.html
A very interesting article, covering three very good topics.
A few points on the latest proposed brackets —
Not sure whether the NCAA cares, but based upon the latest rankings, which i acknowledge are a bit “stale” and may not be close to what they currently should be (although the upcoming rankings will not be out before draws are announced, so these rankings are the best formal ones that can be referred to now), Region 3 currently only has two ranked teams, Region 4 only has one, while Region 6 has four.
A possible small tweak to the proposed brackets to equalize them a bit would be to move Mary Washington out of Region 6, with four ranked teams, into Regions 3 or 4 and move a team from the region MW is moved into to Region 6, as long as the changes comply with the 500 mile rule. MW is within the 500 mile “as the crow flies rule” for both Regions 3 and 4 host teams (try the calculator in the link below) and probably most teams in Regions 3 and 4 are within 500 miles from Region 6 host Washington & Lee (I checked a few to see if that was true). But movement of Mary Washington to a different region would make them have to travel a lot farther compared to traveling to nearby Washington & Lee, and it also likely the travel distance for a Region 3 or 4 team would be much farther if they had to travel to Region 6 host Washington & Lee rather than their current Region 3 or 4 host team. Don’t know what is most important, slightly improved parity between regions or convenience in travel. As much as I am in favor of parity, travel convenience most likely trumps it, but people could disagree on this point.
http://tjpeiffer.com/crowflies.html
Region 1: CMS*, Cal Lutheran, UC Santa Cruz, Redlands, UT-Dallas
Region 8: Trinity (TX), Gustavus*, Whitewater, Coe, Grinnell
Region 4: Williams*, Vassar, TCNJ, Drew, Wilkes, UMass Dartmouth
Region 5: Wash U*, Whitman, Earlham, Concordia (WI)
Region 3: Amherst*, MIT, Nichols, Marywood, Farmingdale St.
Region 6: Emory, Carnegie Mellon, Washington & Lee*, Mary Washington, Elizabethtown, Grove
Region 2: Kenyon*, Case Western, Stevens, Kalamazoo, Baldwin-Wallace
Region 7: Johns Hopkins*, Middlebury, NC Wesleyan, PSU-Behrend, PSU-Harrisburg, Baruch
This setup has three flights
Whitman goes to Texas with Tyler, Dallas and Trinity. Then the NCAA can do the tournament with just one flight. That will happen if Tyler gets in.
One thing to ponder D3West. Although Coach Bizot is convinced that his team will not make NCAAs, think about this. If Tyler makes it, then the Texas region will presumably have Trinity, Whitman, Tyler, and UT Dallas. All other teams can drive wherever. So, ONE team makes the flight.
If CMU makes it, the scenario above (or something like it) occurs. Although this would be an EXTREMELY unfair way of deciding who gets in, could it be a factor?
Overall, the best case scenario is probably Bates/Whitter/PP knocks out Tyler/CMU. Also, I’m unsure as to why everyone is all of a sudden down on CMU’s bid for NCAAs after Tyler’s loss. If Tyler doesn’t make it as Coach Bizot says, CMU has the same resume they did before, against the same teams. Crazy how events change peoples perspectives.
I was always down on CMU’s bid. Their Spring resume consists of wins over Washington and Lee, Chicago, and Mary Washington, and THATS IT. Compare that to the 6th Pool C team at the moment, which is Case Western – wins over CMU, Wash U, Whittier, UW-W, Mary Washington, Swat and NCW – or the 5th team in Pool C, which is Redlands – wins over Case Western, Mary Washington, Whittier, P-P, Swat, and GAC. Right now, only 6 teams have done anything to really earn a Pool C spot, and the only thing keeping CMU in right now is their Fall win over Amherst.
Granted, neither Whittier or Bates has done more to earn that 7th spot than CMU, but right now, there’s a pretty steep drop off after 6 teams.
definitely not debating CMU’s strength this year. However, I was more talking about their “chances” of getting into NCAAs. Looks to me like they have the same chances, everyone just has a different perspective.