This week, I am even more thankful to the bloggers than I have ever been in my whole entire blogging career. They really stepped up this year and covered for me this week, as I have been dealing with some other things in my alternate life. While the alternate life is fun, this life is fun as well, so it’s time for me to pay my dues and get you the only ASouth Regional Preview for NCAAs – the Emory/NCW/W&L region. Now, some of these matches may or may not be going on right now, but ignore that and bear with me as I try to do this thing as fast as possible. Because of blog synergy and market consumption, or whatever D3NE said I say all the time. Seriously, you listen to what that guy has to say?
I wanted to give you all some fun facts about Emory regionals, but there really is only one fact to give. Emory basically makes it out of their regional every single year. The Guru mentioned it in his article that Emory has made like 15 Elite 8s in a row or some crazy stat like that. Well, hint hint, that’s probably going to happen again. Let’s get to a short regional preview so you guys can go off and enjoy this beautiful Friday afternoon.
The Semi-Marquee Matchup
My semi-marquee matchup is none other than the host team, Washington and Lee, vs. a surprising #2 seed in NC Wesleyan. Not enough was made about NCW’s beatdown of Hopkins the other week and people are still saying that Hopkins is the most dangerous #2 seed. Well, don’t overlook NCW because they have seemingly found their games and are rounding into a very dangerous team. While the Hopkins result is the most recent thing that comes to mind, one must also keep in mind that NCW has already lost to Stevens, Depauw, and UMW on the year, which doesn’t necessarily mean they are all up to snuff. Luckily, they are playing a Generals team that has not had a good year either by any means. D3Regional could probably dish a bit more on this but the Battling Bishops are just more talented top to bottom against the Generals. It starts at the top with Kjellberg, who gives NCW some true star power and what looks like a really good chance at 2 wins right off the bat. W&L has two really solid players at #2 and #3 with Hu and Krasner, and those matches should be nice watches as W&L tries to steal a few. The Gennies need to win both of those matches to have a chance. The bottom of the NCW lineup is deeper and despite being inexperienced, they should be able to outplay the Generals bottom of the lineup. I predict the Battling Beeshops win, 8-1.
The Marquee Matchup
Wow! A preview with NC Wesleyan for me! This will be the first time all year that I preview any of the Bishops matches because Regional been on his game this year. It looks like NCW typically runs 5 deep in singles with their weak spots being at #6 and #2 and #3 against top opponents, but they really have some newfound depth at 4 and 5 to go with their stud, Robby K. These two teams actually played back in April, with Emory winning 6-3 despite not having Halpern in the lineup. One of the things I’m most interested in out of this match is what doubles lineup Emory puts out there. They made the last minute switch at UAAs to go with Mosetick and Omsky at #2, which worked out well for them at conference championships. This is a really interesting decision because they need the #3 team of Halpern/____ to step it up and get wins down there if they are going to elevate the difficulty of the Mosetick/Omsky team. They can’t afford to go down 2-1 to the quarterfinals teams and think they can dig out every single time. SO, that’s the interesting part of this match. They actually went down 2-1 after doubles in that match, without Halpern, so it will be interesting for sure.
In the singles play, Emory will have clear advantages at #2, #3, and #6, and slight advantages at the very least at #4 and #5. Wagner and Goodman are both playing fairly well (maybe Goodman better than Wagner at the moment) so in theory, this should be an 8-1 or 7-2 win for the Eagles. Ruderman has his hands full with Kjellberg who has been a beast so far this year. This could get interesting if NCW takes or sweeps the doubles, but I doubt that given the Eagles track record and they should advance fairly easily through this draw.
Other Thoughts
Congrats to my boys from Juniata and Coach Cohen, who I know works incredibly hard to get his guys in great shape and prepared for any match. This was a well-deserved win for Juniata, and they now get to play Emory. If anything, they should use this as a learning experience given it’s most of their first times in NCAAs and they will be playing a storied program. Learn what you can, Juniata!
That’s all folks, time for me to follow the matches. ASouth, OUT.