2020 Season Preview: POOL B!!!

Seasons Greetings, everyone. Not sure who out there is thinking about D3 Tennis right now, but I hope you’re ready for what I am confident is the most confusing season preview of the year. Whether your team is directly involved in this or not, I recommend giving this post a skim, as there are potential NCAA tournament implications far and wide. Rather than preview any one team, I’m going to do a deep dive into the Pool B situation and the teams that are involved, which should be extra exciting considering we have a number of changes this year. Good luck trying to follow all of this! You’re more than welcome to comment below with questions (or answers).

For 2020, THERE ARE FOUR POOL B SPOTS. It’s been 1 or 2 in recent years, so this is obviously a pretty decent sized change. Also, the teams in the mix include the usual suspects like UW-Whitewater, UC-Santa Cruz, and The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) but also Mary Washington, Christopher Newport, and Salisbury. Wait, what?
     Yes, you read that correctly. Because the Capital Athletic Conference now has only six teams (Penn State-Harrisburg moved to the NEAC and Frostburg State moved to Division II), the conference is no longer eligible for a Pool A bid (it requires 7 teams, which is why the NJAC is banding together all those schools…see below). So, what does that mean for 2020 Pool B?

• I don’t know exactly how or why (has to do with NCAA ratios), but this change is definitely part of why there are now 4 Pool B spots. I also think we can expect that number to go down again once the NJAC gets the autobid. 
• Mary Washington is clearly the strongest team in this mix, and I’m confident in saying that they will be safely IN come selection time.
• That leaves three more spots, with the following teams at least somewhat realistically in the mix:
  • Christopher Newport, Salisbury, UW-Whitewater, TCNJ, UW-Eau Claire, UC-Santa Cruz
• Basically, three of those seven teams will make NCAAs (unless I’m forgetting a team). That part is simple. However, it gets very tricky because these teams do not have many crossover matches at all.  Last year, UCSC traveled to play a key match against UW-Whitewater, but that’s not happening this year. Obviously the CAC teams will play and the UW teams will play, and we’ll likely get TCNJ vs UW-Whitewater as well, but I think it could end up being very tough comparing, for example, the resumes of the 2nd place team in the CAC (Salisbury or CNU) with the second place team in the NJAC (TCNJ or UW-Whitewater) with UCSC. It could get messy, or it could be totally straightforward depending on results. But it definitely adds some significant weight to matches that were not quite as meaningful in the past. 

You still with me? Here’s the tl;dr version up to now:

• There are 4 Pool B spots in 2020. The teams to watch that are eligible are Mary Washington, TCNJ, UW-Whitewater, UCSC, Christopher Newport, Salisbury, and UW-Eau Claire. 

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So, about the NJAC, the “new” conference that is also an important part of the story that you should know about.  The New Jersey Athletic Conference is sponsoring men’s tennis again for the first time in 20+ years and now has eight teams, divided into East and West regions, which could be more accurately described as “New Jersey” and “Not New Jersey.”  All of these teams were either previously independent, or members of a conference that didn’t have enough teams for a Pool A bid, so they have all been Pool B eligible teams in recent history. The teams are: 

EAST
TCNJ
Ramapo
Rutgers-Camden
Rutgers-Newark
New Jersey City University (new program that will gain varsity status next season)

WEST
SUNY-Oneonta
UW-Whitewater
UW-Eau Claire
UW-La Crosse

The way this is going to work is that starting this year, all the East teams play each other and all the West teams will play each other, with the winners of the two regions playing each other for the conference championship (most likely TCNJ vs UW-Whitewater). A couple things to note:

• For the first two years, all these teams are still in Pool B—the Pool A automatic bid doesn’t kick in until 2022, at which point things will be much more straightforward, and there will be much more on the line. This year, there’s a chance the conference championship match won’t matter that much, as both teams may get in.
• It’s very interesting that all of these schools are making this work. It’s going to require SUNY Oneonta to take a trip to Wisconsin every year, which is pretty unheard of on it’s own, even more so when considering it’s a public school and likely has a very limited budget for tennis (true for all of these schools more or less).
• For the first two years, the East region winner (which will be TCNJ for sure) hosts the conference championship match, but in 2022, when it really starts to matter even more because of the Pool A bid, the West winner will host (meaning TCNJ is going to have to fly to Wisconsin in early May for their biggest match of the year).
• The more I think about it, though, it seems very likely that the conference final is going to be a de facto “win and you’re in” match in 2020, just given the rest of the teams in the Pool B picture. There’s a chance the loser could get in as well, but I don’t see any way that the winner doesn’t snag one of the four Pool B spots.
• Basically, all of this is pretty wonky and quite unique in D3 Tennis. I absolutely love it.

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Okay, so I guess I should talk a little bit about all these Pool B teams. Emphasis on “little” because I’m not qualified to talk in much detail about all of them, nor do I have the desire to dig deep and research them right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• Like I said above, Mary Washington is the best team in this mix and should comfortably make NCAAs, as usual.
• Salisbury and CNU are RegionalASouth teams that I know little about, but it looks like they had a tight 5-4 match (won by Salisbury) last year, so they should be competitive again. It’s too bad Salisbury isn’t playing TCNJ this year like they have in the past, as that would be a key matchup. 
  • That actually leads me to a question I’m wondering about (coaches, feel free to chime in): How much of all this are the coaches aware of? When did they find all of this out? I would imagine that all of this info would have an impact on how these coaches wanted to build their schedule. As RegionalNEW pointed out to me, Salisbury is playing two matches on spring break against Central teams Grinnell and Coe that could have implications, as those are common opponents with the Wisconsin teams. Coincidence, or was Coach Halfpap one step ahead of the game?
• Last year, UW-Whitewater beat UW-Eau Claire 6-3, and UWEC beat UW-La Crosse 7-2. UWL has no new players on the roster, so I’m going to count them out. UWW still has the edge, but UWEC is good enough to be relevant this year. I don’t think they are good enough to get one of the Pool B spots, but it’s not out of the question. For the Warhawks, I’m particularly intrigued with freshman Danila Borovykh, a Russian by way of Florida. For a team that is predominantly made up of Wisconsinites, I’m fascinated to know the story behind Danila going there. I also expect him to have a significant impact anywhere in the 1-4 range in the lineup.  

• TCNJ is coming off a solid fall highlighted by Matt Michibata making the ITA Cup, and I think they should be among the four teams to make Pool B. They have plenty of matches against ASouth teams that will be key for crossover with the CAC teams. A direct win over UMW would be the easiest way in, but that’s unlikely. I’m not exactly sure what their path is to building a good enough resume besides maybe beating UWW in May (assuming they play for the NJAC title), but I fully expect TCNJ to be dancing.
• I have no idea about UCSC. They are behind the 8 ball as they have hardly any crossover with these other teams. They have a solid schedule with many opportunities for good resume wins, but assuming they don’t get a signature win over a team like GAC, Williams, CMS (lol), or to a lesser extent Redlands or George Fox, it’s hard to see how they get in. Not impossible though—I just really don’t know enough about the West to say for certain.

Okay, got all that? There’s a reasonable chance that I am incorrect on something here, so please let me know if you see anything that is wrong. Otherwise, bookmark this page and use it as your reference once we start getting some results! Can you believe we’re only about a month away from the first matches of the season? 

Happy Holidays everyone! Talk to you in 2020!!!