Well, well, well. What a day we had on the first day of Indoor Nationals. I must say that the matches lived up to the hype, especially the ones that began at 1PM. As always, we had one major upset at Indoors and two other good matches that came down to the wire and a third set clinch. Indoors is officially upon us and I can’t wait for the next two days. Also, DraftKings is going seamlessly and somehow, D3NE is in the lead. Who did his team for him? We’ll go match by match for a quick recap session.
#8 Case Western def. #1 Wash U 6-3
D3Greek: I think I speak for the blog when I say, “Sorry, Spartans.” Everyone predicted the Bears to take this match, and nobody thought it would’ve been closer than 6-3 in favor of Wash U. Doubles wasn’t overly surprising to me. In my preview, I said the score could be anything from 2-1 Case to 3-0 Wash U. Remember, CJ Krimbill and Louis Stuerke were favored to win at No. 1 while Jeremy Bush and Konrad Kozlowski were favored to win at No. 2, so no surprises at those two spots. I was most curious about No. 3, and that big match experience of James Fojtasek, along with the home crowd, paid off for the Spartans. Again, even with a 2-1 lead heading into singles, I didn’t anticipate an upset in the making.
Many people, including myself, were surprised that Shaun Berman was slotted in at No. 6 singles instead of Konrad Kozlowski, and unfortunately, Case clinched on that court. Josh Dughi’s grinding was too much for Berman. In my preview, I mentioned that the singles matches to play close attention to were 1, 3, and 4. Having watched the No. 1 match, Bush, today, was a very good all-around player but lacked a certain weapon (ya know, the Geier forehand, Krimbill serve, Chua backhand) that was needed to beat the Spartan senior. But credit should be given to CJ; he played as we expected him to. While I’m not pleased about the result at No. 4 for DraftKings (I have Stuerke on my team), Carswell proved to us that he is still a dominate player, even if it is at a lower spot, and will need to continue his dominance if Wash U wants to rebound this season. Looking at the score alone for the No. 2 match doesn’t tell the whole story. Yes, it was a tough loss for Kratky (especially considering his earlier loss to Rose-Hulman), but I believe the entire 3rd set was played after Case clinched, which had to be demoralizing for the Wash U senior. Kudos to Dong on rebounding after a tough going last season.
Case had TWTW, and it was exciting to follow the victory.
D3Regional: Wow, just wow! What a performance from the Spartans. I thought that the only way that Case could ever take this match would be a doubles sweep. When Case took a 2-1 lead, the bloggers for the most part agreed that we couldn’t find three singles matches that Case could possibly win. However, they’ve always been a team that just grinds insanely well in singles, and that’s exactly what they did. Krimbill basically blew Bush off the court with his forehand, but the rest of the matches were just really gritty efforts from the Spartans, which I’m sure Coach Todd absolutely loved. Stroup over Kratky was a fantastic results from the freshman who had some questions about his mental toughness. Kratky is a guy who makes his opponents hit thousands of balls, and I know his fitness has been a little suspect before, but Stroup just outlasted him.
D3Greek goes into it above so I won’t harp on it too much, but Berman at 6 was a huge surprise, especially for the 16 people who drafted Mr. Kozlowski to their Draft Kings lineup, myself included. Dughi took out Berman very routinely, and between him and Dong, the Spartan depth was just too much for the Bears. It’ll certainly be interesting to see if Coach Follmer switches it up tomorrow, either with Koz or with Jason Haugen, who had such a nice freshman year. The only bright spot for the Bears was Carswell getting the easy win over Louis Stuerke. I know that Carswell was favored going into this one, but it really is a great start to the year for the junior, who will play a huge part of that Wash U singles lineup this year, especially with questions surrounding pretty much every other part of the lineup, except for Johnny Wu.
Congrats to Case on a great win! If they can bring that same doubles effort against Chicago, anything could happen!
#7 CMU def. #2 Pomona-Pitzer 5-4
D3AS:
West is going to comment on the matches but I want to comment from a bigger perspective. CMU came ready to play today and took their first shot at Pomona right off the bat. There was a point where they were up breaks on all three courts in doubles. For a team that has historically faltered in big moments, CMU did the exact opposite here today. It’s how you start and how you finish in these matches, not the middle part. As all good teams do, Pomona had a run in the beginning of singles that made Tartans fans extremely nervous, but a cold-blooded Kenny Zheng took out JK in three sets for the victory. While CMU can look at the performance of their freshmen as a very encouraging sign moving forward, one has to also worry about the performance of Alla at #1 singles. How does a guy go from winning the ITA Regional to losing 0 and 0 in 45 minutes at Indoors? It’s crazy. I’m hoping that he just had a really, really bad off day, which tends to hurt Shek’s game more than most. I also would love to comment on the cheering of Kunal Wadwani, who apparently rolled his ankle last weekend in practice. As D3ASW told me, “Wadwani is cheering louder than the whole Pomona team right now.” Someone give that man the credit he deserves for sticking with his team despite not being able to play. I truly believe he had an effect on the match. All in all, a season-defining win for CMU and they will be playing with house money tomorrow at 1PM.
D3West:
Well, outside of CMU getting the doubles lead, this match pretty much went how I expected it to, unfortunately for me and my West colleagues.
In doubles, I was very impressed by the play of the two CMU freshmen, Levine and Arora, who absolutely blitzed a very good doubles team in Kim/Maassen. The big disappointment for the Hens has to be the Bello/Yaz line at three who somehow failed to break Shek throughout the entire match. Simonides and Mandic came up absolutely huge in doubles to keep them in it, saving two match points after Mandic unfortunately hit the net at 4-5 in the tiebreaker. I gotta think the one-handed return is going to be a liability going forward for that team, but Simonides’ serve is just so massive that it hardly matters.
In singles, the Hens threw a wrench in things right before the match by announcing that Malech wouldn’t play, but I don’t think it really factored into the result, as P-P won both five and six singles in straight sets (close sets). One of the big stories is the play of the CMU freshmen again. Levine and Arora both came through in tight matches to lift a team that has notoriously underperformed in clutch situations. Ultimately, it obviously comes down to the two three setters that they lost. Arora was the winner in one of them that we couldn’t watch, so it’s really hard to comment on that one. The Kim/Zheng match was very fun to watch, and I know JK will be kicking himself for getting off to a poor start to his service game at 5-3. Both players hit some really clutch shots, but Zheng’s solid returns were ultimately a little too much. Great match. As a side note, Josh Gearou got his team career off to a promising start by winning two tiebreakers after the match was decided. He looks like exactly the kind of guy who could be very successful at #6 singles (all day).
#3 Emory def. #6 Kenyon 8-1
D3AS:
This was the only match that I got right in terms of scoring, mostly because it was the easiest one. As I called in the match by match preview, Emory swept the weak Kenyon doubles and made it easy from there. Emory was just the better team top to bottom and they came out looking pretty sharp. The #2 team of Mosetick/Jemison is pretty amazing in the middle and the #3 team looked pretty damn good too. Emory is going to fight for their doubles points this year and today was a solid start. In singles, Jemison looks to be as good as advertised and he cruised through Michael Liu. At the bottom of the lineup, Goodman and Harrington expectedly cruised as well. It’s at #3 and #4 where Emory shows some signs of weakness, although I would like it to be known that Aman Manji had to battle against the ref today for some god knows what reason. Manji was coded twice for saying “dangit,” which would be reasonable if… if nothing, it’s not reasonable at all. Bouchet went 3 against the big serving Paloucci, but outdoors he probably takes that in straights. Last but not least, Rafe just ran into a streaking Sam Geier indoors. That entity could probably beat anyone in the country. Mosetick can’t hang his head (and he won’t) because Geier simply played great today. Hats off to you, Sammy. Emory is looking fresh going into tomorrow’s match and they should be a solid favorite.
D3 Regional: The morning matches were less exciting than the afternoon ones, and this match was the most routine of any of them by far. Emory is so deep in singles, the only way that Kenyon could compete in this match would be to sweep doubles, or at least win 2 of 3. Unfortunately (for Kenyon, not for Emory), the Eagles dominated doubles, sweeping them all and winning very easily at 2 and 3. In singles, Goodman and Jemison both won quickly, clinching the match before I got out of my 10am meeting. For the Eagles, the performances from the freshman Jemison and the sophomore Harrington are great signs for them. If they face Chicago, they’ll need their depth, and Harrington will be huge. Also, Jemison has to be favored at this point over Sven Kranz, and this is probably the one spot that the Eagles can count on the most. Right now, however, the focus is on CMU!
For Kenyon, the good news is that they competed well at the middle of the lineup spots, where Emory was the weakest. Also, best of all, Sam Geier played a heck of a match, blowing Rafe off the courts, 4 and 2. He’s had a heck of a start to his season so far and it’s great to see that continue. I’m not concerned at all about Rafe and he’ll recover well against Alla. For Kenyon, they competed well at a few spots, and certainly fought, but they were clearly overmatched by the Eagles. They have had tough results so far this year, and they’ll be underdogs once again tomorrow against Pomona.
#4 Chicago def. #5 Trinity Texas 6-3
D3Greek: Everyone slated this as the match to watch, and boy, was it a fun one! Unfortunately for me, just like the Case/Wash U contest, my prediction was wrong.
I expected Chicago to lack a bit of energy to start off doubles, but the exact opposite was the case, and the Maroons came to play. The biggest takeaway I had from doubles was that Charlie Pei and Peter Leung are a strong combo at No. 2. They both had big serves, which made it difficult for the Tigers to break them, and they had the quietness of Pei balanced by the fire in Leung. Both played up to expectations.
The slow start in doubles translated to singles for Paxton Deuel. Early on, he had no answer to Chua’s backhand and was also broken his first two service games. However, when things seemed all but done, Deuel fought back (he was down a break at 5-4 in the second) and won in three. But, how about David Liu? We saw him do it in the Elite 8 last year at NCAAs, and he was back at it today. Much like Deuel, he was all but out, and then played possessed for the clinch. Right next to him, one match that I was interested in watching, was No. 6 singles. Max Liu has been hyped up, and he hits a huge ball but lacked a bit of consistency. Of course, I can’t overlook the individual performance of Pei and Leung. Against Pei, Wilson Lambeth came out swinging, and I thought he was going to take the match as the more powerful, yet consistent hitter, but the Chicago freshman countered for the routine win. While Leung didn’t play Matt Tyer on a court that had a live stream, the result is a bit surprising in that I expected Tyer to come closer.
As we have said many times, it’s unfortunate that a team had to lose this match, but Trinity is a team to keep an out on come NCAAs.
D3West: Here’s another match that pretty much went the way that I expected it to, again to the detriment of my region. My only comment is how ridiculously impressed I was by the Chicago return games. At #1 and #3, Trinity could hardly even get their footing because even their first serves were coming back about as fast as they were sent. I would have loved to see Trinity change formations or mix in a few changeup first serves, anything to take Chicago out of the rhythm they were in, but perhaps the matches were essentially decided before there was time for a tactical adjustment.
Obviously, singles went exactly how I predicted with TU taking the top two and Chicago sweeping the bottom four, but it wasn’t nearly as simple as it sounds. Paxton looked dead in the water before Chua inexplicably let him back in it with some uncharacteristic errors. Chua alternately looked unstoppable and very beatable throughout the match, so credit Pax for staying mentally tough and picking up a big resume win. He saved at least one match point in that second set tiebreaker while running around every backhand in sight. Impressive fortitude. On the negative side of things, I’ve got nothing but love for Chas Mayer, but he will be ruing his loss from up a set and 4-1. I’m sure Liu played some phenomenal tennis, as he is known to do, but if Mayer had been able to hold on to that one, he would’ve put an incredible amount of pressure on the freshman Liu at #6, and perhaps things turn out differently. It was not to be. Instead, Trinity has a night to regroup for Wash U tomorrow. It’s crazy to think that one of these teams will be playing in the 7th place match, but Indoors always seems to have at least one big surprise every year.
There you have it folks. Our recap is finally done and posted, and we will have a preview for you in the next hour or so of the matches on Saturday. I would like to end this post by giving some kudos to the ITA for putting together great live video and a great tournament overall. It’s very much appreciated. Also, I would like to apologize to @UAATennis for getting a bit fiery today and overly criticizing the live stats. I realize that you guys put a lot of work into it and are doing your best. Of all people, I should know that comments like that are not welcome. While I do think there is room for some improvement, let’s make it a discussion instead of a battle. I blame it on my passion for the tennis that was being played. Anyways, on to the preview article that I know you are all waiting for. ASouth, OUT.