Studs & Duds: 2019 Indoors Recap

D3AtlanticSouth

What a weekend of DIII Tennis. As a man named CHB mentioned in the Blog group chat, Indoors Weeks is one of our favorite weeks as it really kicks off the start of the DIII Season. And we at the Blog are happy to be the caterers of DIII Tennis information. This weekend again proved to be quite an exciting one, as Indoors Weekends almost always are. I feel like we go into the tournament sometimes with lower expectations. Things like “it’s just a glorified UAA Tournament” and “Emory is going to win again” are said and then proven wrong (or sometimes right). But for the UAA to get to play on the national stage with a few other teams is honestly pretty damn awesome anyways. Also, there’s no other weekend where we run our Draftkings fantasy game and that adds a bit more fuel to the fire. The Blog will have our normal recaps, roundtables, and articles out in the next few days. I am here to write my own personal favorite from Indoors, the annual “Studs and Duds” article. While I hope that there are more Studs than Duds, it will really depend on how my Monday morning meetings go at work. Hopefully for all of you, they go well.  I’ve got a lot to get through so let’s get freaking started.

Stud: Case, ITA, and the General Indoors Tournament

I’m admittedly a very harsh critic when it comes to the logistics of these tournaments. I think there is a certain privilege involved with hosting a tournament as big as Indoors and there is certainly a level of accountability we should hold the ITA to. This past weekend, all the boxes were checked. Live stats were on point (crazy how this Google Doc trend has taken off), the video was mostly if not always smooth for my stream, and I heard of 0 timing issues as well. All can be summed up in this tweet. Great job to the CWRU Athletics Dept, Coach Todd, Case Western Men’s Tennis, the ITA, and anyone involved with the logistics (maybe UAA Tennis?). Probably the best run Indoors that I’ve seen.

Stud: The Overall Competition

Indoors is well-known for a good first round upset and this weekend was chock full of upsets even outside of the first day. The first day gave us two 5-4 matches off the bat between Wash U/CMU and GAC/PP. PP came away with the upset of GAC, despite coming into the tournament with a loss to Brandeis on their home courts. But, the match of the first round and possibly the year (already!) was Wash U/CMU. With CMU up 2-1 after doubles, the two teams went back and forth with CMU leading 3-2 and FOUR three setters left to go. I’ll leave the generic recapping to other sites, but literally 3 matches went to third set tiebreakers where Wash U’s Daniel Li finished Ray Boppana to clinch the match for the Bears.

Oh, that was just round 1. The semifinals featured another great match between Wash U and Chicago, which again ended in 5-4. I will get into individual heroics later on in this article so don’t you worry. There were some that thought Wash U could come up with the upset going into the match and I’d say they were validated (I was one of those people). In the back draw, we got our classic “home team loses but pulls an upset in the back draw” scenario where Case Western, the lowest ranked team in the tournament, turned the tables on their rival CMU for an upset that none of us saw coming. Again, the match was decided at #3 singles in a third set, and ended with a 5-4 finish. Kudos to Case for the big one here.

And of course, the FINALS. Chicago came into this as an underdog, despite being the #1 seed, mostly because of the Emory hype train. Well, that changed quite quickly and I am sure the Chicago players were happy to throw some of my words back at me. In what was a close match but still somewhat of a surprise, the Maroons took the Finals by the score of 5-3.

Every single day of this tournament brought a couple of tight matches that deserved extreme coverage. DIII Tennis, what a great thing.

Stud: Joshua Xu and Chicago’s Depth

One thing that we’ve always known is that Chicago is going to bring the depth to every match they play. That’s the beauty of having a great number of recruits and a pretty solid retention rate amongst them. This weekend, Joshua Xu embodied that depth. With 2 wins in doubles at the #3 spot and a straight sweep at #6 singles without giving up more than two games in a set, the man I am going to call the “XuKeeper” made it known – he is the best #6 in the nation. It’s hard enough to beat Chicago and you already know that they’ll have some spots that are close to guarantees, but #6 singles was one where they have struggled in the past. It will be interesting to see if Xu stays at #6 singles all year or if Coach Tee will move him up and down the lineup. Either way, this weekend was a testament to Chicago’s depth and hats off to Josh Xu.

Neutral: Emory’s Depth/Freshmen

This was one of the first year’s that Emory had so much freshmen presence in their Indoors lineup and probably uncoincidentally led to a 2nd place finish for them at the end of the day. Freshmen are going to go through their lumps. Emory had an extremely easy first two rounds (both by the score of 9-0) and no one was really tested. Well, Chicago came at them like a drunk frat bro at 3AM when you walk past his house and look at him the wrong way. Raina got blitzed by the aforementioned Xu and Alex Guzvha took out Andrew Esses at #5 in a swing match in three sets. Funny enough, Antonio Mora was about to take the third set against Rodriguez of Chicago AND won his doubles match, so it’s not like Emory freshmen are to blame for their loss. This was a good learning experience for the young Eagles and time will tell if they can mature for the Jemison/Bouchet/Spaulding final championship run.

Dud: Daniel Levine

I’ve long been a proud and staunch supporter of Daniel Levine and his candidacy for CMU GOAT, but this weekend was a definite step back for the CMU leader. With a key loss in doubles against Case Western (up 7-5) and another key loss against Hillis of Wash U (later mentioned), as well as close matches vs. Chen (CWRU) and Kirsch (Whitman), this weekend was far from the best we’ve seen from the senior. CMU counts on Levine for automatic points against lesser teams with 0 drama. They did not get this out of the senior and quite simply, they need better. The flow of the matches matter. I remember when it was quite beneficial for me to see my best player go out there and put the beatdown on the opposing player. There’s a certain responsibility that comes with playing #1 singles, especially as a senior, and Levine did not hold up his end of the bargain this weekend.

Stud: Gritty Teams

Not much was expected of the bottom 3 teams + GAC this weekend. Thought to be in a different talent class, there was a lot of focus on Emory, Chicago, Wash U, and CMU, admittedly. Well, GAC and Case Western, two of our most workmanlike and proud teams, decided to put a bit of a spoiler on that number. The Central is a place of blue-collar work and it was proven once again this weekend. You don’t just go into someone’s house and beat them on talent. Chicago learned this as they got down 2-1 in doubles before fighting their way to a win. CMU learned this when Case swept them and battled the Tartans down to a 5-4 upset. For GAC, it was quite incredible to see them take such a heart-breaking loss to Pomona and come back the next day to beat a fiesty Whitman team that probably knew that was their best chance of getting a ranked win here. Not to mention, GAC doing what CMU could not do the day before and SWEEPING Case Western on their home floor before blanking them to win 5th place. It was almost as if GAC was exacting revenge on the Spartans for taking their hosting rights to Indoors. What a weekend for both these teams and we are lucky to have them. The world would be way less exciting if we were just watching the same teams out-talent each other over and over.

I would like to end this paragraph by saying once Case lost to GAC they ran lines for an hour. Becaue GRIT.

GRITTY RULES ALL

Stud: Doubles Sweeps

One of the main things that makes DIII Tennis so different than the rest of college tennis (and why it should be covered by it’s own dedicated site) is the fact that doubles sweeps exist. Teams that have a vastly lower “talent level” or whatever you want to call it can take out teams that they have “no business” beating. With Case’s sweep of CMU, we got this case in point (not intended, seriously). Even with the doubles sweep, Case won by an extremely small margin (5-4, last match in the third set), and that just kind of proves to you what can happen when doubles is worth 3 points. Funny thing is that Case got the doubles sweep treatment in the next match, as GAC came out and surprised the Spartans on a day they were probably feeling pretty damn good about themselves. Again, I thought GAC didn’t have much of a shot against Case after the Spartans beat CMU, but they utilized a doubles sweep and parlayed that into a quick 5-0 bum rush. Shout-out to doubles sweeps, may you live forever in our great sport.

Stud: DRAFTKINGS

This will be a stud year after year until we stop doing it. With 52 submissions this year, our yearly draftkings tournament was a hit once again. We had families battling against each other, bloggers trash talking in the chat, and alumni submitting teams blindly with the hopes of hitting it big. At the end of the day, “Winging It” came out of nowhere and put up an all time high Draftkings submission. I guess I made the pricing too easy this year. Thank you all for joining Draftkings again this year and I can’t wait to play again next year. I need my vengeance over AVZ and D3NE, after all. Now let’s pan to Brad Entwistle complaining about his DRAFTKINGS lineup.

Dud (but kind of Stud): See Below

Lol. Hooks happen but they are even better when we get them on video. Hope this was just a one time thing and I will not make any accusations until we see proof otherwise.

Stud: Puns & Aaron Umen:

https://athletics.case.edu/sports/mten/2018-19/releases/20190223sgnqsz

First off, this is a great pun to make me click on an article. I usually never click on articles written by SIDs because they are just generic articles telling me what happened in a match that I already knew about, but I clicked on this one. Of course, I was greeted with a generic match summary, but that’s all you really need to be thanked these days by coaches. Isn’t that right, @CrackedRacquets? JK they followed the whole damn tournament  on Instagram. Shouts to them, a good follow for ant tennis enthusiast. Anyways Umen of Case didn’t have a fantastic weekend but he clinched the one big win that the Spartans were looking for. For a freshman (first year lol NewCentral) to step up and beat a guy that was “better” than him according to UTR for a huge upset is what dreams are made of. I see a bright future for the young Spartan.

Dud: Wade Heerboth

Wade Heerboth did not answer my tweet about his Draftkings team. Some people just don’t remember where they came from, huh?

Dud: Players with Cool Names

Well, this was mostly just Whitman guys, and unfortunately for the Blues, it wasn’t the most successful weekend for them. They are a team that is rebuilding after losing a ton of senior players, but this tournament was a good experience for them and I am sure they are not too upset about the results. Indoors is an invaluable tournament to be a part of and I believe this was Whitman’s first time playing it (unless they hosted it before, am I crazy for thinking that?). Whitman goes back to the drawing board and the hope is that they learned something from this tournament.

Dud: Jed Kronenberg

I’m coming at established #1 tennis players in this article and the Jedi Master is next on my list. This is a guy that was supposed to be a rock for Pomona in a sea of unknowns for the Sagehens. Well, Jed went 1-5 (as DIIIWest mentioned) which cannot sit well with the sophomore. Don’t say sophomore slump, because that’s what a generic website would call this. I’ll give the guy a pass because this was Indoors on the East Coast and he played Jemison and Hillis, but I wish the matches were a bit closer.

Stud: Metal Gearou Solid

The Gearou twins made this tournament worth it for the Sagehens. Reeling after a 5-4 loss to Brandeis on their home courts, Pomona needed a win against Gustavus to keep them in contention for a top 15 ranking. They got it on the backs of the Gearou twins, who just keep on confusing opponents with their weird games. You also won’t meet a nicer duo, so hats off to the Gearou boys for that as well. With Josh winning a close one at #2 singles over Chase Johnson and then Sam finishing off the 5-4 victory in a three setter at #4 singles, the Gearou brothers were the cream of the crop this weekend.

Stud: Nicholas Aney

I mean, I’d be remiss not to mention the 15 point man Nick Aney in this post. Who would have thought a player from Gustavus would be the only perfect player in Draftkings. Aney did his thing this weekend and deserves a ton of credit for GAC’s pretty solid weekend.

Dud: Emory’s Aura

I went into this tournament thinking that Emory was a class above the rest of the teams and potentially a class above the rest of the country. That thinking was clearly wrong. Chicago quite obviously beat them fair and square in the finals, with Jeremy Yuan outplaying his sophomore counterpart Hayden Cassone and taking the clincher in three sets. This was a full team effort and now, I will go about the season knowing that ANYBODY CAN BE BEAT (Shout-out to Bart Scott). Emory is still a national title contender with a lot of potential, but they are not a shoo-in for the Finals at all, especially with Middlebury/Amherst and the NESCAC squads lurking in the tall grass. This is going to be a fun year, gentlemen.

Stud: Our DIII Coverage

Going to take some time to pat ourselves on the back here. I’m lucky to “work” with a team of 8+ Men’s writers and 4 Women’s writers to bring you the only place to get legit DIII Tennis coverage. We are thankful to all those that throw their hats into the ring and provide supplemental coverage (this weekend, it was @CrackedRacquets) but this weekend also showed me that we still got it going on. We already are averaging a ton more views per day than last year and I think that a moment should be taken to recognize the blogger performance this past week. I will admittedly say that my personal coverage has not been up to my usual standard, but thankfully we have a ton more experts to back me up. Looking forward to our first ever Women’s Indoors coverage this week as well. Again, we do have a donation button on the top left of the site if you are interested in helping our cause, and we are thankful either way with all the support you give us. Even a big thank you goes a long way.

Stud: Well, Chicago

Took me long enough in this article (although I did mention Josh Xu) to mention the Chicago team and their coach. Obviously, this is a first for the Chicago program and it was good to see a lot of alumni supporting them on twitter and otherwise. I know many were streaming on the live stream and some communication was to be had as well. Good to see that even with major graduations that the Maroons are still a force to be reckoned with. Coach Tee must be happy to get his first Indoors and there’s a nice writeup in Tennis Recruiting that you can find here.

Let’s hope that Chicago’s coach actually bought them drinks at Chipotle after this big win.

Conclusion

I could go on and on about this tournament for days but I think it’s time to post this bad boy on the internet. I’m here all week until I go back into hibernation (kidding), but feel free to post your personal Studs and Duds in the comments below. I am sure I missed some and if you think that someone deserves to be called out for outstanding performance, please do so. Even if you think it’s your family therapy dog who supported the team or the guy behind the Subway counter who gave the team a free cookie for your huge order, I’d love to hear about it. Until next time, folks. ASouth, OUT.

One thought on “Studs & Duds: 2019 Indoors Recap”

  1. MidwestSentinel
    February 27, 2019 at 8:37 am

    Great read.

    Reply

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