The All Inclusive ASouth ITA Recap!

Hello everyone, RegASouth here featuring real ASouth! As we wrap up the non traditional season and head into fall nationals, we begin to get an early indication of how teams will do in the upcoming spring. There were studs, duds and interesting storylines to follow in the Berry and Mary Washington ITAs and we covered pretty much all of them in this recap! Below is a link to the final draws from the past couple of weekends if you want to check it out.

Berry ITA Singles:

http://www.r2sports.com/website/bracket.asp?TID=29720&divID=27771&combinedID=0&print=&fromPage=&leftFrame=&highlightMatchNum=&drawVar=&message=

Berry ITA Doubles:

http://www.r2sports.com/website/bracket.asp?TID=29720&divID=27811&combinedID=0&print=&fromPage=&leftFrame=&highlightMatchNum=&drawVar=&message=

Mary Washington ITA Singles:

http://www.r2sports.com/website/bracket.asp?TID=29547&divID=27705&combinedID=0&print=&fromPage=&leftFrame=&highlightMatchNum=&drawVar=&message=

Mary Washington ITA Doubles:

http://www.r2sports.com/website/bracket.asp?TID=29547&divID=27707&combinedID=0&print=&fromPage=&leftFrame=&highlightMatchNum=&drawVar=&message=

Studs:

Emory – Claiming all four semifinal spots in doubles as well as three out of the four semifinal singles spots is pretty damn impressive, which goes to show that once again, this team is freaking loaded and will be a national championship contender once again. Jemison took home the gold in singles and doubles and will now contend for a fall individual championship. Bouchet has also proved himself as one of the top doubles players in the country, qualifying for fall nationals for a second straight year.

Carnegie Mellon – While not quite as impressive as Emory’s ITA dominance, the Tartans still had

themselves a pretty darn good weekend with the two singles finalist and two out of the four doubles semifinalists. While Daniel Levine might one of the best Tartans to play the game (besides SHEK), this weekend was highlighted by Chaz “Reinhold” Downing’s titles in singles and doubles. In the finals Downing defeated Levine in three sets and partnered with him to take down the unexpected Salisbury team of Williamson/Siew in the finals. Carnegie will be a tough UAA team this season, especially with the return of Arora.

Ritwik Chatterjee – The only non Emory semifinalist had a great run in the Rome ITA taking down several worthy competitors including, Ioannis Brokakis of NC Wesleyan and Jordan Brewer of Sewanee. The Lynx took major strides in the right direction if the Lynx want to threaten Sewanee for the SAA title.

Leonid Sorkin – I am assuming Leonid is related to Boris (congrats on the championship dawg) and both players made statements this weekend. I hyped up Leonid in my kick off article and I am very pleased that he didn’t disappoint. The younger Sorkin brother made a name for himself by making it all the way to the semifinals of the Mary Washington ITA. I think Sorkin is the key for the Dickinson Red Devil’s success this season.

Austin Gu – Who? Austin Gu. The Johns Hopkins junior was the bright spot for the Blue Jays this weekend with a run to the semifinals of singles and doubles. Gu went from being a solid lower lineup guy to hanging with the best of the best this weekend. I would not be surprised to see him atop the Jay’s lineup in the spring and if not, he’s going to be a damn good 2.

Duds:

W&L’s Singles – It was a rough outing for the Generals in singles with only Mitchell Thomas making it out the first round. Yes you could argue that they had some tough draws, but I was hoping for a little bit more from this up and coming team. Shepherd, Thomas, and Neuner all lost in three sets to Hopkins’ players, and if they want to push for a higher regional ranking they will need to turn those third set losses into victories. The good news is that W&L showed that it can be dangerous, especially if they put in the work this off season. I am excited to see what is to come this spring.

Swarthmore – I’ll let real ASouth address this a little bit more, but phew was it a tough weekend for the Garnet. There will always be some growing pains with new coaches, young teams and loss of senior leadership (s/o to Marky Mark Fallati), but I was expecting more from Swat. The good news is that this is a young and presumably hungry team that could make strides in the off season and challenge a depleted Hopkins team.

Christopher Newport – I was hoping that the Captains would step it up and bring some solid results, but they just didn’t. I won’t put too much weight into these results because it is the fall, but if I were CNU, I’d be on the court and in the weight room every day this winter. #GAINS

Storylines to follow:

Williamson/Siew – The Salisbury duo made an improbable run to the finals of the Mary Washington ITA, so Kudos to them. I was very close to including them in the “stud” category, but it’s the fall and it’s doubles so, yeah. Anyways, this team put themselves in a very favorable position moving forward and with matches against Dickinson, Hopkins, Mary Washington and Christopher Newport, they could have a similar run to McAuley and Reifeis of Wabash if they run the table and qualify for individual nationals.

NC Wesleyan – I hyped up this team a lot in my initial article and I’m not quite sure where they fall. Ioannis Brokakis had himself a solid tournament, but how good can he be? Is he a true one? This is an incredibly young team that is going to be a wildcard going into most matches so I am very curious to follow what happens.

Tank or Tree: The Johns Hopkins Story – The classic tale of underachieving and over performing is embodied by the Blue Jays. This team could be incredibly dangerous this year, but could also fall to Swarthmore if they aren’t careful. ASouth seems to think this team is on the decline and will be a “tank” team, so I’m going to let him elaborate a little more. The results for Hopkins were kind of all over the place for a formerly “elite” team so time will tell which team we will see in the spring.

Who will be the best in Virginia? – Mary Washington quietly had a very solid tournament and looks to be the frontrunner for this conversation. Washington and Lee looks to be solidly in second place, with Christopher Newport falling behind slightly, but plenty can change of the course of a season. We’ve seen the Eagles lose top players mid season and the Captains capitalizing on the opportunity. We’ve seen Harry Shepherd turn into one of the best players in the region after barely playing at Emory. While there’s no trophy for the title of best DIII in Virginia, there’s always a sense of pride that comes along with beating your in state rivals, so I’m very much looking forward to seeing how all of this plays out.

Haverford – Moskovitz made the quarterfinals in both singles and doubles, but do they have the supporting cast to fend off other Centennial teams like Dickinson and Slisbury or potentially threaten the top dogs of Hopkins and Swarthmore? That will be an interesting story to follow as the spring season ramps up.

ASouth Cameo

It seems as if RegAS has got this thing down pat, which I respect. Plus I don’t have much time right now so I will be giving my quick thoughts on how my four teams performed in their respective ITAs and maybe some other general observations as well. Overall, quite interesting to see that the two winners from my region were both not from surprising teams, unlike what’s been going on in other parts of the country (can anyone say Hobart and Hamline). Emory and CMU flexed their muscles as expected and this is status quo for the two powerhouses in the region.

Emory’s results are unsurprising, and the ITA always allows me to project out the Eagles lineup (mostly incorrectly) early in the season. Here’s my prediction as of now:

https://twitter.com/d3AtlanticSouth/status/1044248672077262850?s=19

Jack Gray seems to think I’m correct, so that’s something. Emory, as REGAS mentions earlier, is a top 3 contender for the title this year. The same formula of adding an impact freshman and relying on senior leadership holds true with two stud seniors in Jemison and Bouchet leading the way.

For CMU, this was a bit of a surprise but probably a welcome surprise at the end of the day. I’ll steer clear of the Levine for CMU GOAT debate and give some love to Chaz Downing. Three years ago we weren’t sure if he was going to be a competitor and thought he’d play bottom of the lineup for a while. This has changed in a big way. He’s got both the singles and doubles titles under his belt and CMU may hope that they have two bona-fide #1 singles players in their lineup. We all know beating Levine is no joke, and this is an encouraging start for a team that relies heavily on their top 3. Congrats to Mr. Downing, and thank you for showing that hard work pays off.

I will of course not forget my few other teams, and let’s start with Mary Wash. The always workmanlike team came into this with high hopes for Matt Miles, Patrick Hughes and Mike Fleming, all who are veterans of this tournament on their home courts. I’d say in classic Mary Wash fashion, the Eagles did what they needed to do. UMW is not the flashy team but they are consistent. Miles did his thing before losing to the eventual champ, while Hughes and Fleming both made solid runs in singles to their expected rounds. UMW had a fantastic year last year and it’s way too early to judge what they’ll do this year, but we know they’ll hang around the 15-20 range.

Hopkins. Looks like RegAS has got a little something about the tank and tree, but this storyline is slowly fading away into just the former. Hopkins is on the downtrend, presumably because of lack of general attention to the tennis team. Hopkins has barely taken a spring break the past two years and no longer boasts the best players in the country. Vish Joshi got eliminated early, and one of the Jays only bright spots was Austin Gu making the semis while beating Boppana of CMU in 3. Unfortunately as of right now, Hopkins does not have the horses to get back into the top 12 teams and will be relying on that Centennial Conference to get into the tournament.

Speaking of which, let’s move to the Swat Garnet with their newly minted head coach, Jason Box. This was a bit of a rude awakening for the Garnet as they only got one player to the round of 16. At least it was a guy named Jiung Jung. Both Verniers took losses in the second round, and while the Garnet definitely had some tougher draws, you’d hope that at least one of their 7 players in the tournament would break through. For now, you get a Garnet team with a gigantic hole at the top of the lineup that will affect their ability to compete with any top 15 team. My early reaction to this result is that Swat will find themselves in the 27-30 range, hoping for that ever elusive Jays upset in conference tournaments. Welcome to the ASouth, Coach Box. You don’t have the positive reinforcement of RegAS anymore. Now you just get me. Best of luck to ya.

As you should all know by now, I don’t mention doubles much during the fall, as per my general preference but I’ll give quick thoughts. Both the CMU and Emory teams are going to be forces, as they should be. Amy team with senior power like this needs to step up. Exciting for both to get to nationals where they will hopefully show that my region can actually play. I’d also like to quickly shoutout the fact that a Salisbury doubles team made the finals like the good old days, and Sorkin of Dickinson (related to Sorkin of Tufts who won the damn thing) had a fantastic ITA as well. Love when the little guy steps up once in a while.

Anyways, here is where I leave you, and I leave you with this. Always make sure your mean mug is on point when you’re playing your teammate. Lesson learned.

https://twitter.com/cmutennis/status/1046480677531787264?s=19

ASouth, out.

^ What he said. If you have any additional thoughts, comments, questions or whatever really, feel free to reach out! You know my email, twitter and all that good stuff. Happy offseason ladies and gentlemen, I’ll see you next time when the season previews begin to crank out! RegASouth, out.