Steph Curry with the shot, boi. We have heaps of NCAA coverage coming to you for the next week on the Blog, but we decided to take the past couple of days slow because there’s a lot to come. I hope you understand. Anyways, we’ll start off quarterfinals NCAA coverage with our weekly dose of Power Rankings, brought to you by the one and only Men’s bloggers. Shoutout to twitter coverage. You all know the latest results (if you don’t, I have no idea why you follow this site) so let’s just get to the damn rankings.
Power Rankings
| New Ranking | School | Previous Rank | D3AS | D3West | D3NE | D3 Central | D3Regional |
| 1 | CMS | 1 | CMS | CMS | CMS | CMS | CMS |
| 2 | Amherst | 2 | Amherst | Amherst | Amherst | Amherst | Amherst |
| 3 | Middlebury | 3 | Trinity TX | Trinity TX | Middlebury | Middlebury | Middlebury |
| 4 | Trinity TX | 4 | Middlebury | Middlebury | Trinity TX | Emory | Trinity TX |
| 5 | Emory | 5 | Emory | Emory | Emory | Chicago | Pomona |
| 6 | Chicago | 8 | Chicago | Wash U | Wash U | Pomona | Emory |
| 7 | Wash U | 7 | Wash U | Chicago | Chicago | Trinity TX | Wash U |
| 8 | Pomona | 6 | Pomona | Pomona | Pomona | Wash U | Chicago |
| 9 | Johns Hopkins | 17 | Johns Hopkins | Bowdoin | Johns Hopkins | Johns Hopkins | Johns Hopkins |
| 10 | Bowdoin | 10 | Kenyon | Carnegie Mellon | Bowdoin | Bowdoin | Kenyon |
| 11 | Kenyon | 9 | Bowdoin | Case Western | Kenyon | Kenyon | Carnegie Mellon |
| 12 | Carnegie Mellon | 11 | Carnegie Mellon | Johns Hopkins | Carnegie Mellon | Carnegie Mellon | Bowdoin |
| 13 | Case Western | 13 | Case Western | Kenyon | Williams | Case Western | Mary Washington |
| 14 | Williams | 12 | Whitman | Williams | Case Western | Williams | Redlands |
| 15 | Whitman | 15 | Williams | Whitman | Whitman | Whitman | Case Western |
| 16 | Redlands | 14 | Redlands | Redlands | Redlands | Gustavus Adolphus | Williams |
| 17 | Gustavus Adolphus | 16 | Gustavus Adolphus | Mary Washington | Gustavus Adolphus | Redlands | Gustavus Adolphus |
| 18 | Mary Washington | 19 | NC Wesleyan | Gustavus Adolphus | Mary Washington | NC Wesleyan | Whitman |
| 19 | NC Wesleyan | 18 | Mary Washington | NC Wesleyan | NC Wesleyan | Mary Washington | NC Wesleyan |
| 20 | Tufts | 20 | Tufts | Tufts | Tufts | Tufts | Trinity CT |
| 21 | Trinity CT | 21 | Trinity CT | Trinity CT | Trinity CT | Trinity CT | Tufts |
| 22 | Bates | 23 | Skidmore | Skidmore | Bates | Bates | Bates |
| 23 | Skidmore | 28 | Stevens | Stevens | Skidmore | Skidmore | Wesleyan |
| 24 | Stevens | 22 | UT-Tyler | Bates | Stevens | Stevens | UT-Tyler |
| 25 | UT-Tyler | 27 | Bates | UW-Whitewater | UT-Tyler | UT-Tyler | UCSC |
| 26 | Wesleyan | 24 | Wesleyan | UT-Tyler | Wesleyan | Wesleyan | Stevens |
| 27 | UCSC | 25 | UCSC | Wesleyan | UW-Whitewater | UCSC | UW-Whitewater |
| 28 | UW-Whitewater | 26 | UW-Whitewater | UCSC | UCSC | UW-Whitewater | Skidmore |
| 29 | Cal Lutheran | 29 | Cal Lutheran | Cal Lutheran | Cal Lutheran | Cal Lutheran | Cal Lutheran |
| 30 | Brandeis | 30 | Brandeis | Brandeis | Brandeis | Brandeis | Brandeis |
| 31 | Swarthmore | 31 | Swarthmore | Swarthmore | Swarthmore | Swarthmore | Swarthmore |
| 32 | DePauw | 32 | DePauw | Depauw | Depauw | DePauw | Sewanee |
| 33 | Sewanee | 33 | Sewanee | Sewanee | Sewanee | Sewanee | Washington & Lee |
| 34 | Washington & Lee | 34 | Washington & Lee | Washington & Lee | Denison | Washington & Lee | DePauw |
| 35 | Denison | 35 | Denison | Coe | Coe | Denison | Coe |
| 36 | Coe | 36 | Coe | Denison | Washington & Lee | Coe | Denison |
| 37 | Chapman | 37 | Chapman | Chapman | Chapman | Chapman | Pacific |
| 38 | Pacific | 38 | Pacific | Pacific | TCNJ | MIT | Chapman |
| 39 | MIT | 39 | MIT | MIT | Pacific | Babson | MIT |
| 40 | TCNJ | 41 | Babson | TCNJ | MIT | TCNJ | TCNJ |
| 41 | Babson | 40 | |||||
| 42 | RPI | 42 |
Quick Thoughts
Crazy what a few wins in the NCAA can do for you. Look to none other than the Johns Hopkins Jays, who moved back into the top 10 with their win over Kenyon. Always known as a talented team, it looks like JHU brought the goods when it counted most. This was a surprise to me as I thought Kenyon would stick to their workmanlike style and be able to grind out a win. I was wrong. Dead wrong. Another team that benefited from a nice NCAA win was the Skidmore Thoroughbreds, who ended Stevens dream season as a #2 seed in the Round of 32. Skidmore has always been a solid team and it’s important to note the wonderful job of coaching that Coach Simms has done over there with a team that doesn’t necessarily have all the best talent. Great run in the tournament and overall a pretty solid season.
Anyways, that’s all for power rankings this week – this is essentially the final one before we move onto really early 2015-16 Power Rankings after NCAAs are over! ASouth, OUT.
Appreciate the love for chapman!
Regarding the Yeshiva coach; I am disappointed in the way you are representing the school to this audience. For those who don’t know, Yeshiva is a highly religious Jewish institution, where students engage in rigorous Jewish in addition to secular education that takes up almost the entire day. The fact that their students have time to play tennis at all in that environment is admirable. That said, Yeshiva players can’t have the same relationship to the sport as players at the nationally ranked schools(nor can they recruit starred players who play tournaments on the Sabbath). Therefore, while the team has clearly been successful relative to their constraints, this blog, which covers nationally ranked teams, is not the place for it to receive recognition. Their hypothetical ability to compete with national ranked teams is likely not of interest to anyone here. More importantly though, for the coach to engage in petty disputes via the blog devalues the specific efforts of their players, who are pursuing much different goals than their peers at other schools. The program should be satisfied with their relative success and not search for petty external shoutouts. This behavior makes Yeshiva look like other groups that troll the blog(Washington College), when in reality Yeshiva is a much different school, and at least should be a much different program.
By the way, love the blog, y’all are awesome
I am graduating from Yeshiva this May after spending four years, and being lucky enough to play and start each of those four years.
I want to post this in the hopes that this will be the last post about a team that has already been eliminated from the tournament, mainly because it’s taking away attention from the absolutely flat out ridicuolously amazing eight teams left. First and foremost, the focus should be on them, the champions.
Yeshiva is a very strange place, let me rephrase: A VERY STRANGE PLACE. #DanGilbert #ALLCAPS
What was posted above is completely and entirely true, that students here are usually in class from 9 AM until 7 PM every Monday-Thursday, and that doesn’t include time outside of class dedicated to religious or secular studying. Combine that with practices or matches at least 4 times a week, and it’s pretty safe to say that most of us are working more hours than a 1st year Investment banking servant. #10YearLordPlan.
Outside of the top 3 guys on our team (Papis, Mostkov, Lebedyev) tennis is about as unnatural to us, as Talmudic discourse may be for Michael Solimano, or as foreign of a climate as the icy runs were to the bobsledding Jamaicans, and while that’s obviously an exaggeration, it’s not as big as you think. I started playing tennis when I was 14, never had a lesson, nothing. And I started 4 years in a row (albeit at 6th singles). I love playing, but I know what I am, as do all the guys on our team.
It’s actually hilarious to see “Yeshiva” being mentioned on twitter by popular d3 tennis bloggers, because if you guys had any idea what kind of school this was…then you’d understand why it’s so hilarious. But the thing is, you don’t, and admittedly it isn’t your fault, how could you possibly understand?
Though this post is overly ambiguous and probably a side effect of a 48 hour span of sleeplessness and sparse binge eating, I just want to be clear on one thing. More than you don’t know our school, or our players, or our opponents, or anything really related to Yeshiva at all, you really really don’t know my coach.
Yes, tennisjon, #Tennisjon.
You guys can call it unprofessional, you can call it cheap, petty, all things which it very well may be, but he’s cut from a different mold, and here’s how I mean:
After 4 years on the team I’ve had 3 different coaches including Ira Miller last year, who some of you may know as a more reputable, established, traditional coach (and winner). Ira probably doesn’t know this website exists, and if he does he definitely never posts. The reason tennisjon is so different, in my opinion, coach may very well disagree, is because he feels there is an uninformed bias levied against unknown teams, and whether the bias is correct or not is besides the point. Because the truth is, I can’t think of any sport, including the old BCS #BYU #TCU, where it is feasible to have the best team in the country, BY FAR, and somehow get zero recognition for it, again totally hypothetical.
Yes, talk is cheap, but uninformed speculation is even cheaper.
Most likely, Yeshiva just completed what will forever be it’s best season ever, (again tennisjon I welcome you to disagree) the best season ever in Yeshiva sports. And there’s no chance we could have done it with Jon as our leader, and it just pains me a little bit to see people on this blog, which otherwise is one of the more impressively run websites I’ve ever been to, perceiving him to be a character he clearly is not.
I mean obviously Yeshiva beats Skidmore this year
#CoolRunnings
I realize you want to make this the last post about Yeshiva so I will make this quick.
I personally am aware of the stigma of Yeshiva. I have not visited, but I realize this is a school that puts school first and foremost unless it comes to one other thing, religion. I’d imagine the stereotype about your school is somewhat true – a school driven by religion and academics, and therefore, not necessarily the best athletic student body. I’d imagine this is why us mentioning you is so funny.
In regards to #TennisJon, I do not know the guy. You are correct. He may be a great guy, he may be a good coach as well. That’s fine and I accept that. I made no judgments on him regarding either of those two factors. I run a DIII Tennis Blog, and he chose to post about Yeshiva on the comments. I usually respond to comments on the blog, as you know. His comments become the only reflection on him that I have. His comments also have given me the impression that he believes Yeshiva does NOT get enough recognition on the national scene, which is contradictory to what you said. It sounds like you think we shouldn’t be mentioning Yeshiva because “tennis is unnatural to you (I realize this was a semi-joke but there is some truth).” Well, when your coach brought you to the national spotlight, he will get some attention until we decide to trash his comments, if we ever do.
All in all, we go off the evidence we have. I admit I don’t know that much about Yeshiva. My team and I write off of results. My team and I also have formed an opinion of your coach based on comments he has made. What else is there to go off of? If you are not representing yourself the way you want to, don’t represent yourself. The bloggers and I are not crazy or the same person – yet we all seem to have a similar impression of your coach. Take a moment to think about that for a second. I have no reason to dislike Yeshiva at all. Yet, for some reason, a small part of me kind of does. Who’s fault is that?
Unfortunately, I just spent about 2 hours going through all the comments of all the different articles and control ‘f’ing tennisjon.
He just likes talking, debating, thinking, proposing, questioning. I didn’t really see anything in his comments, unless I missed something, that would lead to a unanimous disliking of Yeshiva tennis amongst the bloggers. If anything, the points he makes are actually quite valid and true. When we were healthy this year our 1st doubles team most likely competes with any d3 dubs team in the country.
Anyways, I’m graduating tomorrow, but I appreciate the feedback and response. If anything deserves more credit it’s honestly the people that maintain this website. #Grantland #ThrowingShade
In response to the Yeshiva coach, again, words are cheap. Very cheap.
I think it’s rough that regardless of how a team did in their season, they will most likely be placed outside of the top 8 because they didn’t get past their region. Referring specifically to Pomona-Pitzer, they have beaten 4 of the 8 remaining teams in the tournament with their only bad loss coming from Redlands while Amherst remains at #2 even though they lost to Williams but are still in the tournament. Is there no possible way a team can make it into the top 5 without making it past regionals?
If you’re referring to NCAA or ITA rankings, I agree it’s a raw deal. But if you’re referring to our Power Rankings, I think the bloggers all dropped Pomona due to Yasgoor’s extended injury and the Hens’ close match with UT-Tyler. These rankings aren’t a “who would win if both teams are at full health” thing. At least in my mind, they’re a “who is the best team right now” sort of thing. If Yaz had played, and PP had challenged CMS, I feel confident that most of us would have kept Pomona in the top-5. Probably even higher. But perhaps the other writers should chime in as well?
Just FYI, failing to make the Elite Eight by no means precludes you from finishing in the top 8 in the final rankings:
http://www.itatennis.com/AwardsAndRankings/Rankings/2012-13_ITA_Division_III_Men_s_Rankings/2012-13_DIII_Men_s_National_Rankings_-_Final.htm
http://www.itatennis.com/AwardsAndRankings/Rankings/2010-11_NCAA_Division_III_Men_s_Rankings/June_9__2011_-_Division_III_National_Men_Rankings.htm
http://www.itatennis.com/AwardsAndRankings/Rankings/2009-10_NCAA_Division_III_Men_s_Rankings/June_10__2010_-_DIII_National_Men_s_Rankings.htm
I’m sure it’s really frustrating to sit back and see 4 teams that you’ve beaten in the Elite Eight, while you had to face the one team you couldn’t beat all year just to get there. I would’ve loved to see them get the chance to play someone else. I think it’s likely that they finish 6th or 7th in the rankings this year, but if they don’t, it will be because of the perception that they got hot in the middle of the season and fizzled out (like the old Cal Lu teams), when in reality, they just couldn’t stay healthy
What? Yeshiva doesn’t crack the top 40 with a win at NCAAs? Haha. Was it because we ruined your perfect bracket?
I seriously hope this wasn’t a serious question.
No, joking. But we did make it further than Williams did.
I’m still loling. I’m surprised yeshiva even made it to the tourney. It’s because they won their powerhouse conference, right? LOL.
By no means is it one of the elite tennis conferences, but teams that have come out of the conference over the past decade have at least won a round every couple of years. The team we beat had a player who transferred from MIT, so there is talent there.
That we won a round without our 2nd singles was an accomplishment. Sweeping doubles against a deeper team certainly helped. They were arguably the best team we beat all season.
I know you guys don’t believe it, but I am telling you, that with a full lineup, we could be in that 40ish range. I have coached against teams at that level. We may not have their background or their depth, but we have enough talent and experience to win.
Silence is golden my friend. Continually digging yourself deeper and deeper. I love the faith in your team, but this blog’s motto is “Let the Rackets Do the Talking.” Beating Colby-Sawyer is about as loud as a pin dropping. Congrats on getting 10 games off Amherst in singles. Comparably, Amherst played against Champman this year who was #40 at the time. Chapman had some close matches because they have the talent to be ranked #40. You got crushed because you don’t with or without your #2.
You could say not that far off from what Skidmore did and they played their singles longer. We actually were without 2 starters, but obviously the #2 makes a bigger difference. Our first doubles was a lot more competitive and that was the first time they partnered together.
15 games. 15 total games won against Skidmore last year.
For reference – I think I have referenced it before as well, which is even more awesome.
http://www.yumacs.com/custompages/MTENN/2014/mt050814.htm
Amherst match
I’ve done a look through your lineup and it looks like you were missing Igal Mostkov this year. Judging by the results both this year and last year, I have no idea why you’d say that you deserve to be in the top 40. Chapman, meanwhile, earned its top 40 ranking with wins such as Whittier, Vassar, and Rochester. As well as 6-3 losses to Elite 8 teams like Middlebury. By the way, Middlebury won the NESCAC tournament.
http://www.chapmanathletics.com/sports/mten/2014-15/files/MID-CU.xtg
Why are you referencing a match from the year before when I wasn’t even coaching there. Yeshiva added a #1 and a #6 to the lineup while graduating a #4. Unfortunately, the #1 from last year (#2 this year) tore his ankle in the final match of the regular season. The #5 & 6 missed most of the season (including NCAAs with an injury as well). Meanwhile, Skidmore compared to last year is missing their top 5. Its comparing apples and oranges. Their depth and their coaching should be commended for being able to repeat as conference champions and make the round of 16 in spite of graduation and non-returners. Yeshiva does not have that depth, just two guys at the top who haven’t lost a match in D3 and a third who transferred from (and started) on a nationally ranked D2 team. Remove 5 players or even 3 and we don’t win our conference. That we were able to do it without 2 starters was an achievement. That we won a round at NCAA was a bigger achievement.
Are you essentially saying that you would beat Skidmore this year?
Absolutely not. With a full lineup, the scores wouldn’t be so lopsided and I think we take a few courts. You never know what pressure brings on both sides. Them being the favorites and us playing tough competition, but for sure we are competitive at the top and in doubles.
FLAME ON