Karmic Justice and Pomona-Pitzer’s No Good Very Bad Day

Now, a couple of you readers out there are probably saying, “Hmmm, I wonder what he means by ‘Karmic justice’?”. It’s almost like I included that in the title of the post as a hook, and now you’re about to find out how big of an asshole I really am (hint: not that big of an asshole but an asshole nonetheless).

This day was all about karmic justice for two reasons. One, any time I write something like, “I’m not really sure why this one is on the schedule,” I really deserve to get burned. Thank you, MIT, for doing just that. Secondly, after spending the off-season pointing out the fact that they got jobbed out of the NCAA tournament because they “destroyed Hopkins” and that “it didn’t even matter that Hersh was out because the final score was 7-2,” they will now have to spend the rest of this season trying to undermine their MIT loss because Crampton wasn’t in this one. To be perfectly clear, I think the Bobcats do win if Crampton is in. Just look at the scores at 2 and 3; I think having him in turns at least two matches. I also think Bates did get jobbed out of last year’s NCAA tournament, but I did find it a little irksome the way they bragged about their Hopkins win without ever acknowledging that Hersh would’ve made a pretty big difference. The irony is palpable.

This loss will really put a damper on Bates’ Pool C hopes, but Pomona-Pitzer is the team that’s really screwed. Not only did they lose to an NCW team that’s tougher than anyone could’ve reasonably expected, but they also ended up entirely behind the 8-ball in terms of Pool C by Bates’ loss. If it comes down to Bates vs. Pomona-Pitzer for the 7th pool C spot at the end of the season, we know who’s going to get it. In all honesty, however, P-P has a lot of work to do before they can even get to that point. They succeeded last year because they could pretty much count on a 2-1 lead heading into singles. Just look at how much that would’ve helped them tonight. The Hens still have the pieces and the coaching to make a very effective doubles lineup; they just haven’t year. Fatalists can calm down, though, because they still have a beast of a schedule ahead of them:

#23 Mary Washington, #13 Whitman, #11 UC Santa Cruz, #20 UT-Tyler, #5 Bowdoin (and the rest of the Stag-Hen), #3 Williams, #27 Whittier, #6 Cal Lu, #28 Wisconsin-Whitewater, #14 Middlebury, #4 CMS, #21 GAC, #17 Redlands, and the SCIAC tournament. One big win, and this all pretty much goes away, though they do have plenty of chances to pick up more damaging losses. It’s too early to be talking about this, but I’m talking about it anyways.

Congratulations to MIT! They’ve pretty much locked up a year-end national ranking. Assuming the rankings committee doesn’t reward them too much for their one victory, they’ve got nowhere to go but up with matches against Bowdoin and Amherst on their schedule. Still, we probably won’t be talking about them much until they turn up as a very dangerous team in the tournament.