I’m restarting this article on 11/29/2016, because you haven’t heard from us in probably two months now. Let’s go through a quick questionnaire on why this has happened.
WHEN: Yes, it has been two months since our last article.
WHY: The team needed a break. We (surprisingly) actually did a lot of stuff this past summer in terms of setup, but we fell off the wagon a bit. I personally have been watching a lot of Westworld, The Crown, and Black Mirror. NE has been eating cereal at his parent’s apartment. Central has been actually keeping us in check. West has been, well, I don’t really know. Regional has been rooting for his favorite team, the Cleveland Browns. And the new guys have been waiting on me to tell them to do something.
WHAT: the f*ck?! Yeah, we know. We’re sorry. But I’m declaring us back now.
WHO: Everyone is back. Guess what. We’re meeting tomorrow to do our Fall Power Rankings which we will publish sometime soon.
WHERE: www.division3tennis.com,. Bruh.
INTRO:
Anyways, I promised one of you commenters that I would be doing the ASouth ITA Recaps. I will not back down from that promise. We are going to get one, right now, right here. First off comes the Mary Wash ITA, where I had a few initial thoughts written down before going totally MIA and watching re-runs of Shark Tank in my free time. Get into the entrepreneurial spirit people. Enough chatter, time to get to some quick analysis. Trust me, many people have told me that I’m slacking this year. Sad!
Initial Thoughts
First off, I would like to mention that most of the tournament was played indoors. I’d also like to point out that the first couple rounds were played with a super tiebreaker instead of a third set, which really hurt a certain powerhouse team. That being said, the tournament featured a lot of different players showing us what they can (or can’t) do. I fully expected Hopkins and CMU to dominate this tournament like they do almost every year. But, there were definitely a couple of wild cards that threw some of the Tartans and Jays for a loop. Anyways, at the end of the day, the Jays owned the doubles while the singles was a bit more of a balanced equation. There were a few notable performances, especially on the singles side. Let’s get some standout performances below, good and bad.
Michael Rozenvasser – The CMU freshman is the clear standout in this tournament as well as a standout at Fall Nationals. By winning this tournament, the big lefty instantly becomes a key cog for the Tartans season. He’ll go into the spring ranked in the top 5 in the nation, with a ton of swag and a really big game. He actually had eventual champ Aman Manji on the ropes in the second set. He’s a bit raw, but with his big serve and groundstrokes he poses a big problem for anyone in the nation. Michael took out Leung of Skidmore at Nationals, validating his ability and showing us all that he’s the real effing deal.
Courtney (Jaycen) Murphy – Murphy came out of literally nowhere to make the finals of the ITA for none other than WIlkes College. I don’t have much knowledge about Murphy, but I did have a long conversation with many Wilkes players online as well as with Nicholas Garcia about how Murphy didn’t come “out of nowhere.” The dude used to be good in the juniors, but we haven’t heard anything out of him past couple years. I was surprised. And still am. However, kudos to Murphy for making the finals of the tournament behind some big serves and forehands. I’m interested to see how Murphy does in the Spring when he most likely will not have the benefit of the indoor courts, but we’ll get to that when we get to it. Also, look out for a potential interview with Murphy from our very own D3Central, if we can get to it!
UMW Top Dogs (Miles, Griffin) – I was really bearish on the UMW Eagles going into this tournament and was slightly proven wrong. Brandon Griffin, who will be the incumbent #1 singles player for Coach Helbing, was able to hold serve and make the QF of the tournament. Griffin knocked out up and coming Hopkins player David Perez in three sets before falling to Rozenvasser in the quarterfinals. A good showing off the bat for Brandon as he lets us know he still has the goods from last year. Other than that, the Eagles have to be pleased with Matt Miles, who came into the year looking like an average #3 player at best. Well, he smoked #5 seed David Reed of CNU and made the quarterfinals of the tournament as well. While he got routined by MVP Buxbaum, having two quarterfinalists is always a good accomplishment for the Eagles. Miles could slot in at #2 for UMW which would really give them a big boost to their soft middle of the lineup.
Hopkins Depth – At first glance, Hopkins didn’t have a great tourney. They only had one quarterfinalist in MVP Buxbaum, but Dubin, Perez, and others all did not make it. However, look under the covers and you see the potential of a team that could repeat it’s Elite 8 performance last year. Dubin lost in three tight sets to my champion pick, Mark Fallati of Swarthmore. Perez lost in three sets to UMW #1 Brandon Griffin. And probably most encouraging, freshman Carey took the first set off eventual champion and #2 player Rozenvasser. Even Justin Kang got in on the action, falling in three sets to Justin Cerny, who projects to be CNU’s #1 player. Hopkins should be very strong from #3-6 singles, assuming they continue what we saw at ITAs.
Everything Swarthmore – Swarthmore is always overlooked this tournament and I wanted to make sure they weren’t this time around. Mark Fallati was my champion pick and although he fell short, he gave Murphy of Wilkes a run for his money. He probably played a factor in the finals match, draining Murphy of whatever energy he had left to play the final. Swarthmore had some other results that stood out to me that I will get to in my quick thoughts section.
Trouble in W&L? – Poor tournament for the Generals. Krasner got wiped by Austin Gu of JHU, a freshman and the Generals had no one advance past the Round of 32. This is still a potentially solid team, but they might be looking at similar results to last year given the fact that their talent level seems about the same. They probably won’t have enough stud positions to pull off upsets within the top 25. I’m not going to base everything off an individual tournament, but the Gennies needed to convince me that they were worth my time this tournament and fell way short. Let’s see in the fall.
Some Other Quick Thoughts
- Super tiebreakers played a really big part in the first few rounds, as it decided a ton of matches. Some key players that lost in super tiebreakers in the first two rounds were mostly from CMU, as Kenny Zheng, Vayum Arora, and Michael Calzolano all lost in three. Emerson Walsh (JHU) also took the super breaker bug as he lost in three as well.
- John Larkin of Swarthmore has some bad luck, and potentially some practicing to do. This is the second straight year Larkin has had a disappointing ITA. Last year was not a great year for the former top dog of the Garnet. Swat really needs Larkin to be a force at #2 otherwise they’ll be relying on a lot of inexperience down below.
- Doubles went pretty much as expected, and Buxbaum/Walsh came out on top for their FOURTH doubles title in a row. If they aren’t at #1 doubles all year I’m going to go nuts. Levine/Arora showed fight in the finals and they look like a legit #1 team as well. UMW has to worry about their doubles, especially since they don’t have the singles strength to cover it…. CMU has to be happy with the performance of their top two teams.
- Courtney Murphy didn’t even play in the doubles portion of the tournament, potentially having an effect on the singles side. Fresher legs are always a positive.
- Remember that the ITA has never been a good indicator of what’s going to happen throughout the year. However, because we love lists – this is how I’d power rank the teams in the tournament…
- CMU
- Hopkins (close 2nd, if not tied with CMU)
- Swarthmore
- UMW
- Newport (tie)
- W&L (tie)
CONCLUSION:
There’s my Mary Wash ITA Recap. Should I do an Emory one? Probably. However, we have an Emory preview on the schedule for next week, so I may just move it to the season preview section. Below is a tentative schedule of what’s to come on the Blog in the coming weeks, so please continue to check back. We appreciate your support through this lull period. We promise we’ll be back with a vengeance.
THIS WEEK – Power Rankings to be posted by end of week.
NEXT WEEK – Season Previews will begin. First teams on the list are as follows, in no order but we will try and do 1 per day:
Wash U
Emory
Trinity TX
Brandeis
Coe
Sewanee
It’s good to be back boys and girls. We missed you as much as you missed us. Happy Holidays. ASouth, OUT.