What’s up fellow d3 tennis enthusiasts. It’s been a wild week in the d3 tennis world, as Indoors produced some fantastic tennis and some surprising results, Kenyon scored 5-4 wins over Mary Washington and Sewanee, Sewanee beat Mary Washington 5-4, and NC Wesleyan beat Christopher Newport and upset Hopkins just two weeks after losing to Mary Washington. In addition to Indoors and the Mary Washington Invitational, it was also Brandeis’ spring break! As you all know, I’m ALL ABOARD the Brandeis Hype Train as the Judges look to make a push towards a Pool C bid. Brandeis visited sunny Southern California to take on Caltech, Pomona-Pitzer, Redlands and CMS this week. I’ll start with a quick recap of those four matches before highlighting a couple great individual performances. Check out box score for the matches here.
#21 Brandeis vs. #32 Caltech: Brandeis started off their spring break trip against a young, upstart team in Caltech in a match that turned out to be anything but routine. I had expected Brandeis to win this one 6-3, and after a doubles sweep to start, in which Aizenberg/Coramutla scored a huge tiebreak win at #1 against Wei/Shanker, it looked like the Judges would win without too much sweat. And that’s when things got… (sorry about this) Deis-y. Caltech quickly swung the momentum, taking 4 first sets. After Shanker closed out Aizenberg at #1, Jeff Chen answered with a win at 5, making the score 4-1. Caltech then got wins at #2 and #4, with James Wei and Miha Valencic taking out Coramutla and Adam Tzeng, before Nikhil Das rallied from a set down at #3 against Matthew Gonzalgo to clinch the match 5-3 for Deis. An interesting match to start the trip, and I’ll admit that this one made me a little nervous heading into the Pomona match. All the credit to Caltech for an impressive performance after a sweep, but only taking 2/6 singles matches against the #32 team in the country certainly wasn’t a strong start when your next match is against the #12 team.
#21 Brandeis vs. #12 Pomona-Pitzer: The main event. The boss fight. Final Jeopardy. This was the big match on spring break. A win would avenge last year’s 5-4 loss and show that the Judges should be taken seriously in the Pool C conversation. A loss would all but kill Deis’ Pool C chances, and tamper expectations the rest of the way. Unlike last year when Brandeis came out hot and swept doubles, it was Pomona who came out strong, taking a 2-1 lead into singles, behind a 8-7(6) win at #1 doubles. Based on the singles results against Caltech, it looked like Pomona was a strong favorite at this point. I don’t know whether it was a #LamannaLecture or a #ChristoChat, but the Judges came out firing in singles, taking 5 first sets. Adam Tzeng turned in a great performance, taking out the always tricky Sam Gearou 6-3 6-1. After a tough 7-5 first set, Jeff Chen raced through his second set 6-1, and Coramutla followed that up with a win of his own at #2. This set the stage for Mr. David Aizenberg, who had a huge upset over Jed Kronenberg at #1, to clinch for Deis. A really impressive singles performance for the Judges, as I did not expect them to be able to come back from a 2-1 hole. Maybe Pomona isn’t as strong as we initially thought, but still, a huge win, and certainly a comeback to be proud of.
#21 Brandeis vs. Redlands: This was an interesting match as we hadn’t seen Redlands yet. This match had all the makings of a trap match, coming after a big win and before the match with CMS. However, Brandeis seemed energized after a couple of days off, sweeping the Dawgs and rolling to an 8-1 victory.
#21 Brandeis vs. #6 CMS: The final match of spring break was a good chance for Brandeis to test itself against one of the top teams in the country. Unfortunately, a stomach bug was going around and prevented Aizenberg from playing, and the shorthanded Judges fell 8-1. Brandeis picked up its one point at #1 doubles where Tzeng/Chen had a great win 8-6 over Parodi/Gordy. Outside of the top two singles spots, Brandeis kept things close, but CMS was too strong and the result was never really in doubt.
Top Performer: David Aizenberg: (#1 singles, #1 doubles) I’ve mentioned a couple times in previous articles how I thought Aizenberg would struggle this year and would be a vulnerable #1. After a loss to Shanker from Caltech, Aizenberg took out Jed Kronenberg on his own courts, and followed that up with a win over Chase Lipscomb. Those are two fantastic wins! While I would have loved to have seen him take a crack at Parodi, going 2-1 at the top spot is a great way to start his spring, and David should be returning to Waltham full of confidence.
Best Surprise: Jeff Chen/Adam Tzeng (#1/2 doubles) Wow, what a week for the freshmen doubles team! The pair went 4-0 on the weekend, and put on a particularly impressive returning display against CMS, when they stepped up to the #1 spot and took out a great team in Parodi/Gordy. They are going to be favored in almost all of their matches the rest of the year.
So what does all this mean? The end goals remain the same for Deis: top 5 seed at UAAs, Pool C contention, and a spot at Indoors next year. The win over Pomona has already aged nicely, as the Hens beat GAC at Indoors. Brandeis still has a daunting schedule ahead, with matches against Bates, Tufts, Midd, Bowdoin and MIT to come, but based on last week, this team isn’t going away anytime soon.
Also, shout-out to Deis for having live scoring and to whomever was doing the live scoring, makes things much easier to follow along!
Keep The Blog bookmarked as this week will be full of post-Indoors reactions and more, stay tuned!