Location: Waltham, MA
Head Coach: Ben Lamanna, 11th year
Twitter Handle: @BrandeisTennis
2013 National Ranking: #24
2014 National Ranking: #23
2015 National Ranking: #28
2016 Pre-Season National Ranking: #28
Intro:
Welcome to our second women’s preview of the Northeast region and this time I will talk about the Brandeis Judges, coached by Ben Lamanna. Over the past few years Brandeis has established itself solidly in the #20-#30 range and this year they start off the year as the 28th ranked team in the nation. Their usual formula has been to have a decently strong and determined #1 (a la Carley Cooke, and before that, Rachel Rosman) followed by a solid string of players, all of them around the same ability. This year, it looks like their team will be fairly young, with the addition of 5 freshmen and a new assistant coach in Michael Kopelman (from Bentley!). It also looks like they will retain the feature of having a solid string of players in the #2-#6 spots (probably stronger than last year), but I don’t see a true #1 playing in that spot right now. Hopefully someone is working her tail off to be that player right now, we shall see when the spring season gets underway.
I believe this team needs a couple of years of experience before it can climb back up in the rankings. They do appear to be a little stronger at the bottom of the lineup but there are just too many good teams around them to go up the rankings without some more strength, experience, and confidence at the top of the lineup.
Lineup Analysis:
Let’s take a look at my projected lineups for Coach Lamanna’s Judges.
UTR Power6 Rating (the sum of the supposed top 6 players on a team): 40
#1/#2 Singles: Olivia Leavitt 7.85/Haley Cohen 7.04
Cohen had a reasonably good year last year at the #2 spot. Brandeis plays a pretty tough schedule, and she went 11-10. Leavitt, being a freshman, is an unknown quantity, but I expect these two players to play at the top 2 spots in the lineup. If they are even, I would give Cohen the nod as to avoid putting a freshman at #1 if at all possible. They will each take their lumps at the top 2 spots this year but fortunately they are young and they will be better for it next year.
#3-#6 Singles: Michele Lehat 6.57, Keren Khromchenko 6.47, Maya Vasser 6.14, Emily Eska 5.89
As I mentioned above, Brandeis has a fairly even lineup all the way down to #6, so I would expect these 4 players to round out the lineup. To give you an idea of their relative strength this year, last year Eska primarily played at #4 (record was 6-11) and Vasser played primarily at #5 (record was 10-10). Freshmen Lehat and Khromchenko don’t have any significant results from the fall so they may well start at #5 and #6.
Doubles:
Here are the teams that Brandeis put in for the NEWITT Tournament (which, by the way, looks like a really fun tournament): Leavitt/Cohen, Eska/He, Khromchenko/Vasser
They will probably stick with Leavitt/Cohen in the top spot, but teams may rotate as they often do with Coach Lamanna! Doubles is where a team like this can try to work on an upset by getting 2 of the 3 points and putting some pressure in singles. Won’t happen all the time but even once is great.
Schedule Analysis:
Brandeis plays in the UAA, which is arguably the second strongest conference in the nation for women’s tennis, with 6 out of their 8 women’s tennis teams ranked in the top 30. Here is Brandeis’ 2015-2016 schedule: http://www.brandeisjudges.com/sports/wten/2015-16/schedule
The ranked teams they play are:
3/17 at #34 Chapman
3/19 at #18 Redlands
3/20 at #4 CMS
4/12 at #31 Babson
4/16 #24 Tufts
4/17 #30 Trinity
4/22-4/24 UAAs
4/30 #17 Wesleyan
After a dual match against D1 Bryant University, Brandeis heads to SoCal for their Spring Break trip to face off against Chapman, Redlands, and CMS. I think they can get a well earned W in a close match against Chapman, but Redlands might be a little bit of a reach this year (but certainly not out of the question) and CMS is just too strong (but I love that they are playing them; they need that kind of experience to get better.) The next string of matches should be great. Babson has a strong team this year but the question is, can they put together a strong spring? Historically, Babo has put together great fall seasons but have been unable to get anything going in the spring. This year, if they can work to stay free of injuries, and work towards a goal of getting a Pool C spot (they lost their NEWMAC AQ to MIT in the fall), they have a talented enough team to be a legit 15-20 team. Unfortunately, their sparse spring schedule probably won’t allow for that to happen this year (they play zero teams ranked 10-20.) In any case, I’m going to take a chance and say that Babson will claim the ‘upset’ over Brandeis this year. They both have solid teams throughout the lineup but Babson is much stronger at the top. I’ll say 7-2 for Babson. Tufts looks to be a much stronger team this year, with the addition of some strong freshmen, and should move way up from 24. I don’t think Brandeis will be able to topple them, but their match against Trinity should be a 5-4 match either way, with Brandeis winning the points lower in the lineup and Trinity winning the points higher in the lineup. Whoever wins at #2 doubles will win that match. This is the type of match where one player can stage an obvious upset and be the hero.
Brandeis also plays in the Nor’Easter Tournament at the beginning of April but not sure who is in that other than Wellesley. If they do wind up playing Wellesley, that should be a heck of a match as well. Wellesley is another team that, although they don’t have a superstar #1, they have a solid, even lineup all the way to #6.
Next up after that are the UAAs at Altamonte Springs, Florida, which feature 6 nationally ranked teams in #2 Emory, #6 CMU, #13 WashU, #15 Chicago, #20 Case, and #28 Brandeis. The other teams are NYU and Rochester. For the past 9 years Brandeis has competed in the 5th/6th place match in the UAAs and I think 2016 will bring more of the same. For a number of those years they have come very close to being on the championship side of the bracket but I don’t think this will be one of those years.
They close out the year with a home match/senior day against Wesleyan. Wesleyan should make quick work of Brandeis; too many stars on Wesleyan’s side!
D3NEW’s 3 Keys to Brandeis’ Season:
#1. Gain experience and don’t get discouraged – This will indeed be a building year for Coach Lamanna’s young squad. With the tough schedule that they play, they won’t win a lot but they will gain a lot of great match experience. The players need to hang in there and take lessons from each match to be better players in the future. A bulk of that responsibility of keeping the team morale high will rest on the shoulders of seniors Sarita Biswas, Emily Eska, Hannah Marion, and Maya Vasser.
#2. Do some damage in doubles – Doubles is always precarious for the favored team because anything can happen in a proset. Brandeis can take advantage of this and try to score 2 points out of the 3 to build an upset. Being up 2-1 after doubles can loosen you up as the underdog, and on the other side, being down 1-2 as the favorites can tighten you up for singles.
#3. Get the win against Trinity and get the reach win against Babo. The Trinity match will rest squarely on the #2 doubles match. And Brandeis just might be able to take Babson if they can catch them flat footed!
And a Brandeis Burning Question: With the departure of long time Assistant Coach Pauri Pandian to be the Head Coach at Wheaton, what will new Assistant Coach Michael Kopelman bring to the mix? Time will tell!
As always, I welcome your comments, insights, and questions! You can leave them below or on twitter @D3NEWomens