Van Zee’s Vault: A look back at the 2013 recruiting rankings

Welcome everyone to the newest addition of Van Zee’s Vault. My How to Build a Winning Program series is now complete and I will be hitting on random topics throughout the rest of the year. This week’s topic was a suggestion by one of our commenters so I am all for giving the people what they want. I am going to be looking at this year’s senior class and re-ranking the recruiting class of 2013. My new rankings are going to be based off two things. The first and foremost is talent. Talent is how the first set of rankings are evaluated and this will be no different. Secondly, I will look at impact. By impact, I mean how much influence has this particular class had on their team. For example, if all seniors are playing 1, 2, and 3 singles, then their impact would be relatively high. While I am not in the business of bashing on players who didn’t live up to their potential, there will be a few teams with quite a bit of drop. I don’t plan on discussing specific players who didn’t live up to their junior tennis career. I leaned on my fellow bloggers a bit for information, but this ultimately is my own opinion and list. Here is the link to review the tennisrecruiting.net article on the 2013 recruiting class: http://www.tennisrecruiting.net/article.asp?id=1447

I will provide a short synopsis for each team and include their previous ranking in parenthesis. Without further ado, here are the top 10 teams in my opinion.

1. CMS (2): I am sure it is a shock to no one that CMS tops another one of our lists. They had a little competition from their neighbors at #2, but there’s no denying how important this class has been to their success in the past few seasons and will be this year. Morkovine and Hull will both be in the top 3 singles spots this season and maybe even 1 and 2. If my memory serves me correctly, Mork has started each of the last 3 seasons and worked his way up the lineup also while being a stud at doubles. Hull has also been a staple in the lineup and featured on a few national championship finals rosters. Max Macey got his first sniff of a consistent lineup spot last season and will likely feature in the top 5 again this year. In the end, all three of these guys weren’t the studs of the team as freshmen, but have grown to be a huge part of the success in a powerhouse program.
2. Pomona (9): If you want to talk about a senior heavy team, look no further than Pomona. All 5 guys on the recruiting ranking list are now starters in the lineup for the Sage Hens. If it weren’t for CMS’s dominance over Pomona over the last few years, they would have easily been #1 on the new rankings. Maassen and Yasgoor have been top singles guys in the region consistently (barring injuries) while the other three have featured many times at the bottom half of the lineup and more importantly in doubles. I didn’t realize how senior heavy this team was until I looked at this list and the bloggers never forget how important seniors can be in the success of a team. Look out for Pomona this year.
3. Wash U (3): There is undoubtedly a big gap between the top 2 and the rest of this list, but I am going to buck the trend of the other bloggers and pick Wash U as my third team ahead of Emory. I will explain why in the next blurb. Let’s forget about the sophomore slump of Mr. Carswell for a minute. The bottom line is this guy went undefeated in the regular season as a freshman at #2 singles and had a decent year as a junior climbing back to the top spot. He was shafted on a nationals bid last year, but I expect him to make it this year. Jeremy Bush has been a huge contributor to the lineup as well in the middle as well as a doubles stud. These two freshman year’s alone should give them an edge on this list. They both went undefeated at National Indoors that year and basically won the championship for Wash U. I expect a bit of a resurgence for Carswell and Bush in their final year.
4. Emory (8): All of the other bloggers put Emory ahead of Wash U in their lists and justifiably might be right. Manji’s fall is the likely reason and that is why I am waiting a bit on him. If I were to redo this list after May, Emory might have the edge, but I still need a full season of Manji at #1 or #2 singles to do so. He has been a beast the last few years at #3 and #4 so I expect his rise to continue. Josh Goodman seems to fly under the radar each year, but anyone playing the back half of the Eagles lineup is quite the rock solid player. Again, in 3 months, these seniors might prove to me that they should be above Wash U. Let’s chalk this one up to Central region bias for now.
5. Brandeis (17): The other team in this top 15 list that clearly has shown the most impact is Brandeis. Granoff, Arguello, and Bunis should all be playing in the top 3 this season. Arguello had an impressive run this fall and hopes to keep that up this spring. All three have shared the top spot at some point in their careers and Granoff was a national qualifier as a freshman. In the Northeast, that’s nothing to scoff at. Bunis has probably improved the most of the three and if all of these guys can click on the right day, they might surprise some of the NESCAC teams in their region or the UAA conference opponents.
6. Case Western (14): In the time that I have started this article, I have already moved Case Western up 3 spots. Fojtasek will be at #1 this season and has been in the lineup since his freshman year including an epic clincher over CMU in the post season. The jury is still out on how he will do playing at the top especially after a DNP fall season, but wins over Wu from last season shows he has the goods to get it done. Dughi is the guy that no one wants to play at #5 singles because he won’t ever miss. He probably is the best human ball machine in D3. The lesser heralded guys like Kevin Dong and Philip Gruber may not blow you away, but Dong has played a good singles role the past few seasons and Gruber will undoubtedly be a big contributor in doubles this year.
7. Carnegie Mellon (5): After their freshman year, this squad might have been in the top 3, but overall they have had diminishing returns. I might be a bit harsh having them all the way down at #7 and originally had them above both Brandeis and Case, but in the end I am happy with my choice. Kirkov, Wadwani, and Zheng has never played in the top 2 on the team which is part of the reason they fell a bit in my eyes. Again, as seniors, I expect a bit of a resurgence, but CMU will undoubtedly go as far as their younger players will take them this year.
8. Wesleyan (7): Mike Liu for Wesleyan was a big surprise and continues to be one of the best players in the Northeast. He wasn’t the most touted player of this class, but has had the best results. Jake Roberts has been a starter all 3 seasons thus far and if I remember correctly played #1 for awhile as a freshman. He is going to fight for a singles spot this season, but I could see him playing #6 and having quite a bit of success. This was one of the beginning classes for a resurgence of the Wesleyan program.
9. Chicago (6): I know the other bloggers will disagree with me here as some even had Chicago in the top 5. This was the first class that Coach Tee recruited I think. Sven is probably my favorite player in all of D3, but the bottom line is, he might play #3 one day, #6 the next, or not at all (obviously within the lineup rules). He is such a utility guy and can get results anywhere. Max Hawkins has a funky game for singles, but is a crazy good doubles player including an All-American nod this fall as Chicago’s fourth best team heading into the ITA tournament. The reason why the Maroons fell on my list is at no fault of their own. Coach Tee has simply out recruited this class with top 100 talent (Chua, Liu, Leung, Tsai, Pei, Kerrigan, Kumar, need I go on?!?). This class was the beginning though and a lot can be said for that. One could even argue that they don’t belong in the top 10, but I wouldn’t go that far.
10. Everyone else: I first thought I was going to do a list of the top 15, but they are all so close that it’s hard to decide who should be here. So instead, I put them together. You could pick the likes of Johns Hopkins, Redlands or Bates with solid performers in the middle of the lineup and go a bit heavy on how much a single player can affect a team for four years. Amherst (Zykov), Kalamazoo (Metzler), Colby (Reid), Sewanee (Schober), or Skidmore (Leung) have all been program changers in the past 3 seasons. Even a team like Trinity TX who wasn’t even on the original top 25 has had some good results of guys who were previously not big time recruits.

After looking at this class of seniors pretty closely, a few things become very apparent. Don’t underestimate what a four year contributor can do. They can be program changers and a few of these schools have seen that. This list also shows that development of junior players can also show big time results. Finally, the most noticeable thing to me throughout this review really has to do with all the new talent that has come into D3 over the last 3 years. This class only had one top 100 recruit and even he isn’t even playing anymore for Williams. The boom of D3 tennis recruiting has officially arrived and a class like Brandeis’s seniors might not even crack the top 15 in three years. As the recruiting wars get stronger, so does D3 tennis and that is never a bad thing.

Hopefully I didn’t miss anyone and feel free to add your comments. The blog has a ton of love for senior players and I look forward to all of these guys doing some serious damage this season.