NCAA Regionals: A Recap

I feel like I say this every weekend, but what an amazing weekend for DIII Tennis.  If you didn’t think this weekend was exciting, I have serious doubts as to why you even read this blog.  Just kidding, I love you all.  This weekend saw a couple blockbuster matches, a few scares here and there, a big upset, and overall a ton of live stats and tweeting from my fellow bloggers.  They do a great job and they deserve some kudos for that.  Also, big ups to all of the moms out there!  We wouldn’t be here without some great parenting (even though my mom doesn’t even know I blog…).  Everyday should be Mother’s Day in my book, but hey a little recognition is still pretty cool too.  Anyways, back to the tennis – you guys aren’t here to read a Hallmark Card, I assume.  I’m going to go region by region and give some of my thoughts on the teams that played in that region, with big emphasis on the teams that are in the top 30 for obvious reasons.  Let’s get to it!

CMS Region

The CMS Region was really the only region that a lot of people believed was an absolute sure thing.  However, we did learn a few things about almost every team from the region and maybe even a little about our NCAA favorite as well.  In the so-called “Region of Death,” two pretty damn solid teams got knocked out in the Round of 32.  For UC Santa Cruz, I must say this was a nice performance for them.  They unfortunately got the Stags in the first round, but they were able to make it decently competitive and really big ups to Max Littlejohn and Kyle Richter for a great win over the Ojai champions.  It was great to see this Slug team really go out there and compete with no fear against the Stags.  Not only did it provide them some hope for next year, but it also gave us some great tennis to watch as well.  Great job and very good season to the Slugs this year, who have been given somewhat of a raw deal in terms of top 30 teams.  If you haven’t read the article about them, please go back in the archives and read about the situation happening in UC Cruz.  Moving onto UT-Tyler, this was a bit of a disappointing performance from them I think.  After Pomona Pitzer got up on them in doubles, the Sagehens essentially smoked the Patriots really quickly.  The score was on the way to a 7-2 or 6-3 match without much doubt.  I know it’s tough for the Patriots to keep up a great team based on other circumstances, but this year was a step back from a great UT-Tyler year last year.  Hopefully the Patriots can reload and Coach Bizot can work his Bizot magic as he seems to do almost every season.

Moving onto the big guns, the CMS/Pomona match made for a pretty interesting result if you look under the covers.  We’ve touted the CMS lineup all year this year and that is definitely for good reason.  People have consistently brought up their struggles in nationals but let’s be honest, it’s hard to win a freaking championship.  What we saw this weekend is that CMS isn’t totally unstoppable.  They’re only “likely unstoppable.”  First, we saw the win from Cruz’s #2 team in a thriller in the first round.  Then, we got to see Pomona’s big guns give the top of the CMS lineup a little bit of trouble.  With a win at #1 doubles and sets at #1 and #2 singles, Pomona was able to show the rest of the DIII landscape that this is a team that can be beat.  However, you need probably 5-6 guys to play their best tennis on the same day that CMS is probably not bringing their best tennis.  With all the discussion about “best team ever,” I actually think this has made CMS’s opponents much more confident and loose out on the court.  With essentially nothing to lose, they are coming out with a lot of heart and it was a pleasure to watch some awesome tennis from CMS and Pomona on Saturday.  Also, it was definitely a real pleasure to get the commentary of Dante Quazzo, who’s always a good reason to watch some CMS broadcasting.  I might tune into some CMS Field Hockey if he’s commentating it.  Division3fieldhockey.com, anyone?  I really liked that Pomona gave CMS some trouble because this just makes the tournament more interesting from here on out.  CMS is a team on a mission, but let’s see if they can finish the job.  For the Sagehens, another year and another disappointing but encouraging end to the season.  It sucks to be always put in the CMS region, but it definitely drives the Hens to continue to work.  They came into this year re-loaded and will finish the year at the #10 spot.  They will qualify for Indoor Nationals next year, and will have a team that is mostly coming back.  Big shoutout to senior Chris Weichert, who went out with a bang by taking a set off of Joe Dorn in what will be his final team match ever.  Great career for Mr. Weichert and good luck to you in the future.

Hopkins Region

The Hopkins region was the region people were least looking forward to as determined by the polls and it certainly lived down to its billing.  This was a Hopkins domination and they really lucked out with their draw despite being the #8 seed.  Under the covers, there was a little bit of a story, kind of like how the CMS region went.  I’ll get into that a bit later.  There are only two real teams that I need to cover in this section so I will go through Mary Washington first.  The Eagles got to host the NCAA regionals again, which was great, and were able to make a Sweet 16 which obviously is an accomplishment.  They’ve been rewarded for a solid year this year and the Sweet 16 berth was deserving.  I had thought that they would give Hopkins some challenge in doubles, especially at the #1 spot, but I was wrong.  This was a meh performance when they needed an outstanding performance to win, because as we all know “you play to win the game.”  Once the sweep happened, it was basically a race to the finish for Hopkins because everyone knew that Mary Wash wouldn’t come back from the 3-0 deficit.  I’d like to shoutout Brandon Griffin, Stratton Gilmore, and L-J for fighting and making their matches competitive despite the low chances of winning.  That’s great competitiveness and I didn’t expect anything less from those 3.  Mary Washington ends this year with their expected result and I think this season was better than expected for the Eagles.

For Hopkins, they get to make their second elite 8 in three years, but it comes with an asterisk.  They needed a dominating performance from their region to convince anyone that they could potentially challenge CMS, but they didn’t really dominate like they should’ve.  The doubles was there and they showed up in that aspect which is a great sign.  I have no idea what’s going on with Erik Lim this year,  but my once favorite player has now looked extremely human at the bottom spots in the lineup.  Oh, and I forgot to mention that Hopkins has Weissler in at #6 for NCAAs and Lim at #5.  With the struggles of Lim and Brown at their spots, one has to really question if Hopkins can put it together enough to challenge the Stags in the Elite 8.  My gut tells me no, but they have a week and a half to train and a competitive match would do a lot for these guys and their experience.  Experience is extremely valuable at this stage in the game, which you’ll see me harp on a bit later when I get to the other regions.  Overall, Hopkins came away with what they wanted and it’s great that their freshmen came out with a big win at the #1 doubles spot in their first NCAA tournament.  Hopkins has a bright future and I will be looking forward to their match against CMS in a week or so.

Middlebury Region

The Middlebury region was picked in our polls as the region that people were MOST looking forward to.  This was a product of them having the defending champions, Williams, in the region, as well as an upstart Skidmore team that had just pulled an upset of those said Ephs about three weeks prior.  It’s a good region when there is a round of 32 match that people can look forward to and it certainly did not disappoint.  The Thoroughbreds and the Ephs went into a barn-burner on Friday afternoon that was very reminiscent of the last time they played.  It was going to be a 5-4 match no matter what and I think this is where the Williams experience and coaching came through in the clutch.  Despite Williams struggles this year, they are still a team that everyone has a lot of respect for and for good reason.  They seem to bring out clutch moments every time in NCAAs and this year was no different.  Despite being on a lower scale, Mr. Jose Raventos pulled through with a nail-biting three-set win to send the Ephs into the sweet 16.  Williams was able to dodge the bullet and will keep their #12 ranking moving into next year, which is important.  For Skidmore, this was a potential program changer considering they could have made the Sweet 16 for what I believe would have been the first time ever.  Thing is, they might have maxed out for the program because this is Loutsenko’s final year.  Skidmore really needed this one as a program-defining win to attract another player of Oliver’s caliber to the program.  I hope that this doesn’t mean the end of a huge drop for Skidmore, because we saw what happened when they lost their best player earlier in the year.  They took a loss to RPI and were getting challenged by anyone who was sniffing around at the top 30.  Good tournament for Skidmore but unfortunately, it probably needed to be better.

Of course, I can’t forget Middlebury in this region recap.  This was a mixed bag for Midd.  We know that Williams is always a pest when it comes to nationals but it would have been nice for Middlebury to put down a sick performance and crush the Ephs.  They are the more talented team and they are a team that people say have national championship aspirations.  Well, the Hansen-coached Panthers went down 2-1 after doubles, which was extremely surprising.  You can chalk that up to Coach Greenberg and Williams knowing where they had to win and really going for it, but the fact of the matter is that Middlebury needs to up their doubles game.  They are going to play a doubles-oriented team in Case Western and if they move on, the Stags.  You’re going to need some good doubles to beat those teams.  I’m a believer in this Panthers team (somewhat) and I think they will play much better when they get to that California sun.  Who knows, maybe Hansen gets some type of crazy power when he goes out there.  Whatever “weak” performances there were in doubles were quickly erased by a dominant performance in singles.  This is what I wanted to see from the Panthers and they did not disappoint at all.  Their singles from #2-#6 was comprehensive as they only lost a set at the bottom and they ended any upset chances fairly quickly. This was a match on upset watch after doubles that quickly turned into a snoozer and Middlebury notched the first Elite 8 berth.  Overall, this was a performance with some questions and some answers for the Panthers, which is what I’d expect from a regional NCAA bracket.  The next step is the big boys, and that’s where we’ll get our real answers.

Carnegie/Case Region

This to me was the region that should’ve won the polls.  Case, as I’ve mentioned a billion times over, was the only #2 seed that we could realistically count as an equal to their #1 seed.  This was a region that features a budding rivalry between the two schools of Carnegie and Case and we were not disappointed today as this was the match of the tournament so far.  I’m only going to talk about this match and about Case/CMU in this paragraph because the other schools shouldn’t take priority at this level in the game.  If you haven’t checked out the boxscore for this match, you definitely should.  This was a true roller-coaster match and I was delighted to follow this thing on live stats with all of you.  I’ll talk a little about Case first, considering they are the winner of this region and have truly earned their spot in the Elite 8.  This team plays the “nobody believes in us” card better than no other team in DIII.  I’ve seen the tweets they post all season and it’s amazing to see a whole team bought in to the Case tennis team.  They set a goal to make the Elite 8 this year and they came up with a huge performance today to get there.  The first thing I want to point out is the experience of this team.  They lost to Kenyon last year 5-4 in this round, which seems to be the pre-cursor for something big next year.  Seriously, check it out.  Teams continue to improve on their NCAA losses – it’s happened to Bowdoin, Kenyon, Case, CMU, Williams, and a ton of other teams in the past 5 years.  That’s why it’s important to have seniors that have been there, done that.  Look at today’s boxscore and you see guys with experience stepping up big time.  Healey, the senior captain, wins two matches at #2 doubles and #6 singles to propel the Spartans to the Elite 8.  A team with experience comes back from 6-4 down at #3 doubles to take that match.  Drougas, who apparently served underhand the whole tournament (? Can someone confirm), beating Heaney-Secord in a second set tiebreaker was one of the turning points of the match.  It’s amazing to see this program continue to take steps forward to become a top 8 team like they are today and will inevitably be in the end of season rankings.  I say this over and over, but this is a team that had their whole team quit in 2007 because their coach sucked.  They bring in Coach Todd, buy into a plan, and now they are where they are now.  Sports man, f*cking sports.  Congratulations to Case and their first ever Elite 8 berth.  I think they have a legit shot at Middlebury especially with the doubles struggle that the Panthers had this past weekend.  That’ll be one of the most exciting matches of the tournament as well, so keep a lookout for some fireworks there.

For Carnegie, I think they can take everything I just said in the last paragraph and find a glimmer of hope.  This team started at #19 this year (or something) and made it all the way up to #5.  They were 2^nd in the UAA tournament and beat Emory, Bowdoin, Case, Kenyon, and other great programs along the way.  This was truly a banner year for the Tartans and they happened to get the bad draw of Case in their regional.  It sucks living in Pennsylvania, I guess.  Like I said in the earlier paragraph, there are a ton of teams that lose heart-breakers in the sweet 16 that come back the next year and take a next step.  It’s all about the next step for these guys and I’m sure they can look back at this loss and think to themselves that this was valuable for their development.  Congratulations to CMU for a great season that we’ve never seen from them and hopefully more progress in the future.  The ASouth needs more top teams up in hurr.

(By the way, I’d like to note I almost called this match perfectly.  Only one I got wrong was the #5 matchup, which went 3 sets and decided the match. Vote ASouth!)

Trinity TX Region

Surprise!  Shoutout to Will Orrenbender (I didn’t spell that right, sorry Will) for correctly calling that this region would bring some fireworks that some people might not have expected.  Gustavus was a team really flying under the radar this year, which is a great thing for us.  People don’t pay enough attention to Gustavus or Trinity because of their abnormal locations (cue commenters calling for a “Midwest Bias” from the blog, lulz).  Before the main event, however, there was a pretty decent warmup event between UWW and Gustavus.  These two teams have historically played pretty close and it’s more of a friendly rivalry.  UWW has had a pretty down year this year, but they always bring a better effort against Gustavus just because they are so similar to that GAC team that it seems close.  This time was no different.  Most people would have expected that GAC would crush UWW in doubles because they haven’t been paying attention.  Well, every doubles match was close and GAC won all of them.  That’s normally what the better team does in NCAAs, they win those close matches and put the dagger in teams that just haven’t been there.  Another great example of experience coming up in the clutch for GAC as they came up clutch at every spot to basically end all of Whitewater’s hopes.  For UWW, it’s time to get the pieces back together and really move back to that workmanlike mindset.  This year came off the rails because I feel like this team lost it’s identity and went out there trying to out-talent their opponents.  That doesn’t happen anymore at UWW so they need to work their asses off to get back to where they need to be.

Moving onto the Gustavus/Trinity match, what a thriller.  We were one close set away from GAC potentially winning this damn thing, but alas, it was not in the cards on this day.  Big ups to Paxton Deuel for pulling out the clutch-time 7-6, 7-6 victory to keep Gustavus at bay.  I’ll start with what this means for Gustavus and my general thoughts on the match.  This was a match that a lot of people, including myself, thought could get a bit hairy.  D3West loves touting Trinity TX, but they aren’t #3 in the nation material.  We all know that, and there are times when they definitely look vulnerable.  This match was yet another case of experience playing a key part in the outcome of the match.  Trinity TX has been there over and over again, and that showed.  There were four tiebreakers played in this match, one of them being the decider in doubles.  Trinity TX came out with three of them.  Jordan Mayer and Greg Haugen put in a 7-0 effort against the GAC team to give TU the lead moving into the singles.  Those two are upper classmen who have been to multiple Elite 8s.  When the going gets close, upperclassmen with experience will step up.  I will go to the grave with that sentiment.  For Gustavus, this was disappointing because they were essentially a Chu tiebreaker away from potentially going to California.  Smith-Dennis was on the verge of winning and it would have brought the match to an epic 4-4 #1 singles match.  That being said, outstanding performance from the Gusties in this match and I wish they were graduating a shit ton of people this year.  It will be interesting to see how they perform next year with all the graduates and if they can keep up their program momentum.  It’s too bad that most of the guys gaining experience in a close NCAA match won’t really be benefitting from it, unless they plan on playing 3 setters as a full-time job.  Congrats to GAC on a great season and a thrilling finish.

For Trinity, I’m not really sure what this means.  They are absolutely vulnerable, but they’ve been here so many times that I know they will step up.  The knock on them is that they can’t beat the top teams and they have yet another chance to get them by playing Wash U.  Unfortunately for them, Wash U has been through the ringer more times than they have and are a very determined team right now.  TU will need to step their game up to another level if they want to take that Elite 8 match.  History tells us they will falter, but who knows.  Something crazy always seems to happen in the Elite 8.  Their season officially begins now, because it was almost an assumption that they’d make an Elite 8.  That’s how their seasons have gone and they proved it again in this region.

Wash U Region

The Wash U region actually had some nice smaller storylines in it that didn’t have to do with the Bears.  First off, congratulations to the Sewanee Tigers for notching their first NCAA tournament win in a long time.  They also qualified Avery Schober to the Indviduals, and he stepped up his game this weekend with a nice slate of matches.  They played Elmhurst in the first round, which actually made for a solid matchup between two aspiring schools.  This gave Sewanee a nice challenge to earn their first tournament win, instead of throttling some school like Messiah in the first round.  They gave a great overall effort and won this match by the score of 5-2 (can’t find the boxscore anywhere).  They then played Whitman, which I knew they didn’t really have a chance to win, but gave another good effort and Schober was able to take a set off of Malesovas before the match was called.  To those of you that said “you like Sewanee’s chances,” I have no idea what you were smoking that day.  By the way, I still have no idea of Conor Williamson actually played and Winkler didn’t play.

Moving onto Whitman, this was a “banner year” in terms of NCAA tournament performance.  They got the win that they’ve always wanted in NCAA’s and gave Wash U a bit of a challenge in the Sweet 16.  They seem to always get a tough draw because they have to fly to random places to play their matches, which is tough on them.  Whitman’s #1 team was able to notch an impressive win over Putterman/Bush, who are considered one of the best in the nation.  Unfortunately, Whitman was overpowered by the Wash U strengths at #2 and #3 singles and it was just counting down the minutes until they ended up losing their match.  Malesovas had a nice weekend as he demolished Putterman, which had to have been nice considering he’s been struggling for most of the year at the top spot.  Whitman did what they wanted to do at the tournament and they are desperately hoping they get to go to Indoor Nationals next year.  Here’s to the Squirrels and I hope they get the luck of the draw and get in.  By the way, to that commenter in the beginning of the year that guaranteed Whitman wouldn’t finish #12 in the country?  They’re #12 in the country.  Sick prediction, bro.

Last but not least, the Wash U Bears took care of business.  There was never any doubt that they would advance.  They strike me as the San Antonio Spurs of DIII Tennis in that they consistently get the job done despite what people may say about their chances.  They bring people into the system and they buy in.  They’re also led by a great coach who doesn’t really say all that much (he also seems to hate Twitter) and just goes about his business.  This was the warm-up act for Wash U and they passed it pretty easily.  This was more of the same for Wash U and I am certainly not going to doubt them when it comes to the Elite 8.  That’s really all I have to say about this team.  Looking forward is the only way to go about this Bears season.

Amherst Region

Yuck. I was not a fan of this region as we’ve seen all of these matches before.  I’ll start off by saying congratulations to Stevens Tech for winning a round, something that was probably a goal of theirs going into the season.  Go Matt Heinrich!  That’s all I’ll say about the Ducks.  Moving onto the MIT/Bowdoin match, this was pretty hilarious to me.  This is exactly why on the top of the site it says “Let the rackets do the talking.”  I seem to hear a lot of bustle about MIT’s rankings on twitter and in comments, and I simply do not know why.  People were kind of looking forward to this match because MIT was able to make it 5-4 last time with the benefit of a doubles sweep.  Well this time, Bowdoin won 2 doubles and then 3 singles matches to end this thing.  MIT was only able to get 2 sets in the singles play.  What is there to complain about?  This was an opportunity draw for the Engineers and they got beat handily.  I don’t want to hear the rumbling about getting shafted by rankings committees until you actually do something.  That is all.

Moving on to the Polar Bears, this was the end of a disappointing season.  A season marked with a ton of ups and downs and an eventual “show up and accept defeat” loss to the Lord Jeffs.  I’m not saying that Bowdoin did that because they definitely didn’t, but it must have been tough to think that they could beat Amherst even on the perfect day.  Great job by the #2 doubles team to take a point there, but in the end Amherst was able to take three quick singles matches to finish the Polar Bears off.  This one could have ended at 6-3 if Bowdoin finished out the match but that’s just window dressing.  Bowdoin will say goodbye to senior captain Sam King this offseason as well as Chris Lord, so hopefully they can find a couple of recruits to take those important spots.  I’m hoping for a Polar Bear resurgence next year but I’m not convinced that it’ll happen overnight.

Again, this region basically went as expected.  Amherst blew through the region but they do have a few things they should be concerned about.  There always seems to be this aura that Amherst has to show up on any given day to tap into their talent.  In this region, we saw Yaraghi struggle at #5 when he’s been a lock all year.  This was really strange to me because it’s not like Wolstencroft is one of the best #5s.  Amherst needs to take advantage of those bottom spots because that is there supposed strength.  This performance against Bowdoin makes me more confident about CMS’s eventual chances to win it all, not to mention a possible upset of the Lord Jeffs before the finals.  Amherst typically shows up in NCAAs so this might be another “but Williams struggled with Nichols!!” situations which I know I hate.  By the way, Nichols lost 5-0 to MIT this year.  Why didn’t MIT win it all?  I’m never going to let the readers off the hook for that insanity last year.

Emory Region

Last but not least, the Emory region.  This region presented us with 2 potentially awesome matches and we were given 1 awesome match.  Not a bad turnout.  I was extremely worried about Kenyon coming into the tournament because all year it seemed like they were literally hanging by a thread.  They were going to play a tougher than they look Washington and Lee team at home, and there was definitely a possibility that they lost this match.  Well, Kenyon grew up real fast in this region and they are now looking much better headed to next year.  The random #3 team of Roberts/Kaye pulled off a thrilling win at #3 doubles and gained a shitton of experience in NCAA play, as we’ll see later on.  Player to Watch Tim Rosensteel pummeled his way to a good win against Chris Hu, and surprisingly another amazing win over Rafe Mosetick.  This team turned it on when it came to the NCAA tournament which is what they ALWAYS do.  They avoid upsets, no matter how shitty it looks, and we have to give kudos to Coach Thielke and the staff for ending the year on a positive note.  As for W&L, this was more of the same for a team that hangs in that mid 20s range.  They are a young team that has some talent, but they need the players to really take their games to the next level if they want that top 20 ranking once again.  They need their top guys to take control of the team and really push if they want the next step.  It’s happened with teams worse than them and it can certainly happen with this team.  The Gennies have great facilities and a quality location, but this was a disheartening performance against the Lords.

The big match and a great way to end this article was the Kenyon/Emory match.  This was our second thriller of the day and was even closer than it looked.  Kenyon won the first two doubles fairly easily, and they were at first leading at #3 doubles.  From what I hear, Emory stepped up big time down there and took it to the young Kenyon #3 team.  It’s those kind of matches that define a season and this was fitting for these two teams.  Valuable experience for the #3 team again but Halpern and Simon just brought their experience to the table.  In singles, Emory flexed their muscles at the bottom of the lineup, but there were a few hiccups along the way.  Szczurek got surprised in the second set against Fiaschetti, who was playing lights out, and Rosensteel absolutely shellacked Mosetick in what was the most surprising result of the tournament.  I named him in my POTW, but Eric Halpern continues to be the rock for this team along with Ruderman.  Heerboth and Geier are great players, but Ruderman and Halpern just win.  Ruderman is either the best or second best #1 in the country right now.  I don’t remember the last time that kid lost.  Emory has to feel a little shaky moving into their match against Amherst, who obviously will bring a lot more firepower than Kenyon.  They need to figure out their doubles instead of relying on heroics from their best players if they are going to have a shot at the big boys.  This is a team that has to put it together on the right day and I’m not sure if we’ve seen their best yet this year (other than when they killed Hopkins).  This was a great match to end the region and the last thing I will say is that Kenyon should feel okay about themselves going into a next year.  They are glad that this year is over I’m sure and I’d like to see a couple people step up for them.

Final Thoughts

Not going to go too in depth about Final Thoughts because this article is like 500x the length of a drunk D3Central article, but overall this was a surprisingly awesome weekend at NCAA’s.  You can sense the parity in DIII right now and that’s causing a lot of great matches.  Additionally, I’m going to go ahead and ask the NCAA why they don’t have the freaking boxscores on the site.  Really, do you think anyone wants to read your stupid recap that I could write in 2 minutes?  Jeez.  Looking forward to the Elite 8 and Dante Quazzo the NCAA commentating.  After reading this massive article, you should definitely go to the top left of the site and vote for me as your favorite writer.  I bring the goods.  You know what time it is.  ASouth, OUT.