2017 Season Preview: Caltech

California Institute of Technology

Coach: Mandy Gamble (14^th year)

Location: Pasadena, CA

ITA Ranking: UR

Blog Power Ranking: UR (ranked #40 by D3Central!)

Twitter Handle: @CaltechTennis – very good with updates.  @CaltechBeavers also offers lots of tennis updates.

Overview:

Next up on the season preview slate, I shift from Waltham, MA across the country to Pasadena to talk about the Cal Tech Beavers!  Cal Tech is a team that, after years of mediocrity, is without a doubt on the rise.  Last year, they got their first nationally ranked win over Cal Lutheran (yes, Cal Lu was heavily depleted but a nationally ranked win is a nationally ranked win), got wins over Wabash, Chapman, and Occidental in season, and entered SCIAC’s as the #5 seed.  They ultimately finished 6^th after losses to Whittier and Chapman, but this was their best finish since 2005, a nice milestone for the Beavers.  The Beavers have graduated their #1 in Rushikesh Joshi, but have brought in the #19 recruiting class in D3 this year, the first time their class has ever been ranked by Tennis Recruiting!  This year, the #4 spot in the SCIAC is anyone’s to take, and the Beavers have as good a shot as anybody to take it.

Keys to the season:

• Develop the next #1

Rushikesh Joshi has played #1 for the Beavers for the last year and a half, and played a prominent role at #3/4 prior to that.  He’s a big loss, but the Beavers also have 3 talented freshmen coming in, along with Andre Liu, who moved up to #2 at the end of last season.

• Learn from the seniors

The Beavers have two brothers in Ruthwick and Sathwick Pathireddy who have played a ton of matches for the Beavers ranging at pretty much all the spots in the lineup.  They’ve been on this team when the Beavers were by far the worst in the SCIAC and are now on the team with the Beavers on the cusp of a national ranking.  The young freshmen and sophomores (there are no juniors on the Beavers roster) can learn a lot from these guys, along with senior Morgan Lebby, who has played a ton of matches himself.

• Stress the depth

Cal Tech, on the surface, looks like they should be the deepest team in the #4-8 range in the SCIAC.  The Pathireddy brothers, sophomore Derik Nguyen (#4 last year), and sophomore Zixiao Li (#5/6) all provided good depth last year for the Beavers and should continue to thrive.  Li in particular had a fantastic freshman year, going 11-4 at positions #4-6 with wins over Whittier (Troy Chavez), Redlands (Cooper Lacetera), Chapman (Josh Sarsfield), Wabash (Mazin Hakim), and Cal Lu (Chris Hartman).

Key Additions:

Karthik Nair (3 star from CA), Miha Valencic (3 star from TX), Connor Soohoo (2 star from CA), Tine Valencic (TX)
Key Departures:

Rushikesh Joshi (#1 singles and doubles)

Projected Lineup:

Honestly, I have no clue what the Beavers lineup is going to look like this year.  Neither Pathireddy played at ITA’s, where the Beavers played 2 of their freshmen, a senior in Morgan Lebby, and sophomores in Derik Nguyen and Zixiao Li.  The Beavers actually have two freshmen brothers in Miha and Tine Valencic, and while Miha was a much higher ranked junior (96 vs. 622), Tine was the one who played in ITA’s, unless there was one heck of a typo on the draw.  Fellow freshman Karthik Nair (ranked 311 in the 2016 class) also did not play in ITA’s, so who knows where these guys will play in the lineup.  The Pathireddy bros have played and could play anywhere in the lineup, and sophomores Derik Nguyen, Zizxiao Li, and senior Morgan Lebby should get time in there as well.  Basically, I have no idea what to expect and am not going to try to guess.

Just to prove my point even more, check out the top 8 UTR’s on the roster:

• Miha Valencic – 11.64
• Connor Soohoo – 10.55
• Ruthwick Pathireddy – 10.50
• Derick Nguyen – 10.31
• Karthik Nair – 10.21
• Zixiao Li – 10.13
• Tine Valencic – 10.07
• Andre Liu – 10.04

After that, we also have seniors Sathwick Pathireddy and Morgan Lebby who certainly have the match experience to get chances in the lineup this year.  This is an extremely tight lineup, which means everybody should get the chance to step up!

Schedule Analysis:

Schedule located here: http://gocaltech.com/sports/mten/2016-17/schedule

The Cal Tech schedule, like the other SCIAC schools, consists mostly of conference matches and home matches against schools traveling out west on their spring break.  In fact, Cal Tech does not play a single road match against a non-conference opponent.  Must be nice!

The improvement that Cal Tech has shown the past couple of years has resulted in a much better out of conference schedule than in years past.  For a lot of schools traveling out west, they would always have Chapman or Occidental in their schedule.  However, with Cal Tech now looking like they could very well be better than both these schools (and already better than Oxy), Pasadena is looking like a better and better place to head out to.

The best Cal Tech out of conference matches last year consisted of Linfield, Wabash, Pacific (OR), and St. Lawrence.  This year, they have Brandeis, Mary Washington, Vassar, Colby, Sewanee, and Santa Cruz.  That is such a big improvement and will give the Beavers way more chances to take down either a nationally or regionally ranked team.  All of these matches are winnable and present great opportunities for the Beavers to not only get nationally ranked, but also just further develop and grow the program.  I think every single one of these matches has a good chance to be tight.  Look for the Beavers to be slight underdogs against Brandeis, Mary Wash, Sewanee, and Santa Cruz, about even against Colby, and slight favorites over Vassar.  In an ideal world, Cal Tech wins at least one of the first set of matches and takes out both Colby and Vassar.

Aside from the out of conference festivities, Cal Tech should focus on their matches against Whittier, Chapman, Cal Lu, and Oxy.  If the Beavers come out of the pack as the best of those five teams, then this season will have been a huge step forward, and will certainly set them up for success down the road.