Central Rules Everything Around Me: Issue 4

Thursday. October 17, 2019.

Central Rules Everything Around Me: With It or ON IT! (Issue 4)

tl;dr: Case Western is back and (possibly) better than ever.

Singles Breakdown:

Main Draw Champion: James Hopper (Case)def. (2) Jake Zalenski (Kenyon) 7-5, 6-4

Back Draw Champion: Kenyon–Finalists Pascal Lee & Luis Andres Platas

The frontpage story from the Kalamazoo ITA is how unseeded first-year James Hopper stormed through the singles draw and coupled with Matthew Chen to end Tyler Raclin’s reign of terror over the Doubles tournament. Sticking with singles in this section though. Hopper had to come out of the “Quarter of Death” featuring himself, Austin Diehl, and Sachin Das (Sachin, who I picked before getting this text update, “Serves righty hits lefty, volleys righty, hits overheads with either hand.”) Hopper defeated Das in three before meeting his first seed (9) Cianciola. Denison’s 1 put up a good fight, but the Spartan won in straights before lining up against the defending champion Ethan Hillis. Hopper again dropped the first set before coming back to upset Wash U’s 1. The semis teed up another UAA opponent for Hopper as he played Wash U’s breakout 3 from last year, Daniel Li. The sleeve copped an L to Hopper who blasted past his elder dropping five games. Hopper had to go through both the 1 and 2 seed to take this title, and he completed the run defeating Jake Zalenski with some slapping returns and swinging volleys.

So, what does Hopper’s run tell us, if anything? It shows us that Case has a legitimate *ahem* case for one of the best 1-2 punches in the UAA (Chen also made the semis of the singles draw though he only defeated Denison’s 2 and Wash U’s 4 on the way). It also shows us that Coach Wojo has finally found ‘The Guy” to replace CJ Krimbill. And it’s currently showing us that Hopper has a case for one of the best starts to a D3 career in recent memory. The first-year has gone 23-0 in his college career – 14 of those coming in singles.

If the frontpage story is Hopper’s Run, the page 4 story would be how U Chicago failed to get one player in the semis (J. Xu was points away), and only had three in the round of 16. Maybe that’s a bigger indication on where our expectations for Chicago in the Fall reside than on the state of their team going forward. We’re used to Chicago littering the later rounds with their newcomers and veterans alike combined with a legitimate expectation that finals could be played back in the Southside of Chicago. If that’s the bar then Chicago fell far short of it for this tournament.

Wash U didn’t walk away with any hardware but after Case they probably had the best tournament in the singles draw – Hillis, Li, and van der Sman led the Bears effort and together made Wash U the most represented team in the QFs this year (3-Wash U, 2-Case, 1-Principia, Kenyon, and Chicago). Speaking of Principia, I’d like to give props to Daniel Felipe Gomez Espinel for carrying the small, regional team flag all the way to the quarters. DFGE ultimately fell to Wash U’s Daniel Li but highlighted his weekend with wins over Oberlin, Lake Forest, and a WAR with Case’s Aduru Chaitanya who he defeated 7-6(9) in the third set.

The backdraw was wildly NCAC with Wooster (1) and Kenyon (3) filling the four semifinalist spots. While Kenyon had both finalists, the most exciting runs in the backdraw were unlordly. Abos (Wooster), Balsera Suarez (North Central), and Wall (Otterbein). All three players had to deal with the despair of a round 1 loss but were able to bounce back and win multiple matches to finish their weekends. Deep runs in the backdraw lead to great things in the Spring, so I’m looking at Abos, Wall, and Balsera-Suarez to go off this season. (I have no evidence to substantiate this claim).

Doubles Breakdown:

Main Draw Champions: (5) James Hopper & Matt Chen (Case)def. (3) Tyler Raclin & Joshua Xu (Chicago) 6-4, 3-6, 10-5

Back Draw Champions: Pascal Lee & Luis Andres Platas (Kenyon & back draw singles finalists) def. (5) Jack Bulger & Tim Cianciola (Denison) 8-7(3)

Oh wow, I find myself writing about Case again…better put on my coaching khakis. Chen & Hopper were able to upset and end Raclin’s reign as the Central’s ITA representative to the ITA Cup. Raclin didn’t pair up with his regular running mate Yuan this tournament but was still able to make it within a 10-pt from the title with Chicago’s super-sophomore Josh Xu.

Looking at a glance, the doubles draw reeks of the volatility of pro-set doubles. There were very few tiebreakers with most matches being decided by two breaks or more. I try not to put too much stock into Fall singles results, and I care even less for doubles results – They don’t tell us ANYTHING. Coaches are willing (and able) to split and make teams at their leisure to play at specific spots in the lineup, I’m not going to pretend that the Fall ITA reveals anything about the doubles status quo in the Central. Additionally, the ITA format isn’t conducive to going deep in both events as players will tire from their double duty – though Hopper’s double double sort of blew that notion out of the water.

Case won the doubles draw overall as well by having two semifinalist teams, but the second-best “team-showing” is less conclusive with Wash U and Chicago having two teams in the quarters, Case with their two, and Kenyon and Grinnell each getting one team to the QFs.

That’s it for this update on the Kalamazoo ITA from last week – The ITA Cup has been chugging along all day today, but I’ll leave reactions and analysis of that for later articles. As always, any comments, questions, and concerns can be sent to me email (newd3central@gmail.com) or slide into my DMs.