The Spice is Right: RegionalNEC
It’s getting cold outside, boys and girls, so how about a little spice to heat up your life? We’ve gathered the blogger roundtable for one final time in 2018 to do a little crystal ball gazing and fiery hot take…ing for you. Each blogger has given a hot take about the upcoming spring season, and all of the other bloggers are here to sample the spice, and give their reviews. Was the take too spicy? Not spicy enough? Just right? We’ll be heading into winter mode pretty shortly, but we’ll try to start hitting up season previews beginning next month, and running a couple per week until teams are back from Winter Break. NOTE: We started this with the plan to simply post once, but everybody had good responses so we’re turning it into a series! Each blogger will give their hot take over the next week or two and the other bloggers will react. As always, thank you for reading, and if you’re so inclined there is a little donate button on the left side (hit the three horizontal lines in the top left corner if you’re on your phone) of our homepage (http://www.division3tennis.com/blog/). Bring on the heat, RegionalNEC!
RegNEC’s (aka Spice-T’s) hot take:
There are only about a dozen teams (maximum) that can ever win a national championship from this point forward unless there’s a major change in the college tennis landscape. All other schools don’t have the academic prestige or resources to go all the way.
NewCentral: This take avoids being hot and spicy on its merits because it’s accurate: Middlebury, Emory, Bowdoin, Williams, CMS, Chicago, Amherst, Carnegie, Wash U, Pomona, and Wesleyan create the #HendecagonOfTruth that may win a national championship under our current system. This Hendecagon of Truth is an oasis of milk quietly hidden amidst the chaos of spice. (Response from D3RegionalNEC: I would actually add Kenyon to this list, and (somewhat reluctantly) MIT as well. I am going back and forth on Swarthmore, but F it, throw them in there too!) (Response to D3RegionalNEC: I would separate Kenyon from Swat and MIT (but concede that all three could reasonably be added to expand the hendecagon) because they’ve been there before (see 2012) and have exceptional athletic resources – all three have the requisite academic prestige to successfully attract recruits but on that note MIT and Swat are just on another level from Kenyon.)
AVZ: This take is about as spicy as ketchup. I completely agree with the current landscape it would be difficult. In the past you had the powers of Santa Cruz and Gustavus that somewhat broke the mold. Now the interesting thing I see coming out of this is that there are teams outside of the proverbial twelve that RegNEC doesn’t name that do have the academic prestige and potentially resources to make a run (albeit a long process getting there). Kenyon, Swarthmore, Oberlin are three teams that come to mind. You could include Cal Tech, MIT, and Skidmore as well. They all have the academic pull that a D3 school needs to get the top student athletes. Is it likely? Probably not, but with a motivated young coach who knows how to recruit, raise money from a strong alumni base, and develop the talent, anything is possible. Consider this my cover letter when the next coaching job like this opens up. You can’t buy academic prestige, but you can surely make the case to put more monetary support into a program.
NewRegional: This is the meal that you wish it were a little spicier, and it’s just lacking that little bit of kick. In the current climate, it’s really hard to break into that upper echelon of teams, even if you’re getting top recruits (MIT). As mentioned above, it looks like Brandeis may have the best chance to break into the Pool C discussion, and even they are a long ways away from being true title contenders.
D3AS: 0 spice in this. This is like when you get mild at a Thai place because your name is Michael Goldstein and you haven’t had a wing without blue cheese in your life. Leave it up to RegionalNEC to be totally boring. THIS IS LIKE WHITE SAUCE AT CHICKEN & RICE. @ ME IF YOU A TRUE NEW YORKER. If this list was whittled down to like 7 teams, like I think it should be, then we’d be talking. (Middlebury, CMS, Chicago, Emory, Bowdoin, Williams, Amherst). I’m not confident at all in anyone else winning a ship (Wesleyan, CMU, Wash U, Pomona, meh).
DIIIWest: Zero spice here. A penne arrabiata spicy that is really just penne marinara with a fancy Italian name. A team outside the top 12 (I won’t list all 12 teams here right now) WILL NOT win a National Championship unless a major shift occurs within the college tennis landscape. There is a reason the same 6 or 7 teams make the quarters each and every year and if a team happens to make a breakthrough into the quarters (i.e., a Whitman from 2018), well, good luck winning three straight matches against top 5 teams. You’ve got teams unranked making Nationals every year and on the flip side, you’ve got teams ranked inside the top 15 that don’t. By having top teams playing teams that no offense have zero chance of pulling off the upset, that gives these 6 or 7 teams cakewalks into the quarters each and every year. If teams that are ranked 12-17 do receive berths into Nationals (well because they deserve to, THEY’RE FREAKIN RANKED 14 IN THE COUNTRY!), upsets against top tier teams are more likely to happen and a surprise cinderella run would most definitely then occur one of these years.
RegAS: While I love to root for the underdog, I reluctantly have to agree with most of the other bloggers that this take is Chipotle’s corn salsa spicy at best. Resources and academic prestige are two of the biggest recruiting tools and there are really only a few select institution that boast enough to draw in the top tier recruits. Of course you’ll have once in a lifetime studs that can take a relatively unknown unranked team and propel them into the national conversation, but the reality of the situation is that you need a team of studs to win a championship and the smaller schools just won’t be able to get THAT many of them. This is where the little guys print out this, put it on their BULLETIN BOARD and get to work in the off season to prove us wrong.
D3NE: Props to NewCentral, because the Hendecagon of Truth is incredible, but I agree that this take is lukewarm at best. That being said, I also hate this take. Not because it’s wrong, but because it’s likely right, and that saddens me. HOWEVER, since most people feel that way, let’s play devil’s advocate for a moment. Just a few years ago Wesleyan wasn’t ranked, and just before that Chicago was barely ranked. Both of those teams have been taken by new and aspiring coaches into the top 10 and have achieved new program heights. I was almost laughed off the Blog for saying Wesleyan would be a national championship contender, and now they are in the Hendecagon of Truth! Depending on whether you follow Forbes, U.S. News, Niche, or whatever (really, don’t follow any of these, c’mon people, you’re better than that), there are plenty of other top-15 liberal arts schools who have money like Carleton and Haverford, and even top-15 academic schools with stronger tennis histories like Washington & Lee and Bates. I’d like to think that given the right situation, one of those teams could make some sort of run…
Alrighty then, we’ll be back tomorrow with another hot take, this time from D3AS so you know it will be incendiary.
changing my Instagram handle to hendecagon of truth