D3RegionalNEC Sunday Night Regional Roundup

Just a quick Sunday night recap of some stuff that’s happened in the D3 Tennis world over the past few weeks. Let’s go:

RPI

Good news and bad news for this team so far. The good news? They beat both RIT and Rochester 9-0 to start the season. After losing to Rochester last year in a pretty big surprise that set the tone for a disappointing season, it must feel particularly good to get out on a much better foot. What’s interesting is that RPI came into this year’s meeting with their 2, 3, and 4 singles players from last year all no longer on the team (and none of them graduated). So on the one hand, that’s concerning from a morale standpoint, but on the other I give credit to the guys that stepped up and earned some revenge from last year.  More good news is that RPI has another very good recruiting class already lined up, with two 4-stars and two 3-stars committed for next year. To be fair though, the retention rate of solid recruits on this team has not been great in recent years. There are certainly exceptions, first and foremost being Sebastian Castillo-Sanchez, but go take a look at their Tennis Recruiting page and compare that to their roster. :/

Vassar

Big ups to Vassar for an impressive start to the year. The win over Rochester wasn’t a shock, but still a very nice solid win to put them firmly up in the regional rankings. This weekend, they nearly pulled off a major upset of Skidmore. See the box score here. I didn’t see any sort of close match there as a possibility, but Vassar seems to be a scrappy bunch, Skidmore is pretty young, and let’s be honest, Vassar’s indoor courts are one of the biggest home court advantages in the country. 

Skidmore

I’m not going to write too much into their one match, because if I did, it’d be mostly negative. Noah Williamson was nowhere to be found, and he’s a likely #1 doubles/#2-3 singles guy, so if he’s hurt that’s a big loss. Additionally, JT Wynne got smoked 6-2, 6-2 by the unproven David Gandham of Vassar. I don’t care what courts that match is played on, that’s an uninspiring result from the senior leader of Skidmore. I wrote in my season preview that I wasn’t sure how fired up Wynne was for his senior year, and that kind of result adds to my concern. Again, just one match so let’s not panic. On the bright side, congrats to Conor Biernat for the key win at #5 singles over Jeremy Auh to prevent the upset, 6-2, 5-7, 7-5.

Rochester

A quick word about Rochester, a team that I don’t anticipate writing much more about this year. They started with a tough 5-4 loss to Vassar in what has become an annual barnburner. While the 9-0 loss to RPI had several close matches, 9-0 is still 9-0. Losing their #1 Masaru Fujimaki to graduation was obviously going to be a tough loss, but his absence has so far completely reshaped this team, and not in a good way. Sahaj Somani, who won some key matches over the past few years, is also no longer on the roster (not to graduation), which leaves the Jackets missing some depth that helped them out massively last year. For Somani, it looks as though his career ends with an overrule on match point in the last match on of the seventh place match at UAAs last year. Quite a way to go out. 

UW-Whitewater

Good start to the year for the Warhawks. The best result so far is certainly their 5-4 win over Carleton, but this past weekend was very damn impressive as well, beating Wheaton IL and Grinnell on the same day, and then coming back and beating ARC champs Luther the next day. Against Grinnell, UWW fell behind 2-1 after doubles but stormed back to win 5 straight singles matches, including a few super breakers (ugh). So far, UWW has done everything they could’ve hoped for to put themselves in a good position for Pool B.

Carleton

I was pretty pumped about Carleton this year, but so far as a team, my excitement has died down significantly. The loss to UWW was tough, but not so horrible. Then I see they lost yesterday today UW-Eau Claire. While the Blugolds are low-key solid, Carleton should not be losing that match. This is a team that has the talent, on paper at least, to be competitive with Gustavus. One thing to note is that the box score is a little strange, with Carleton retiring at both 2 and 3 singles. Not sure what the deal is there. And how about this quote from Coach Zweifel: “Like a tuna sandwich that stayed in the sun too long, Will finally asserted himself in the second and third sets,” Gotta say, those jokes don’t stick quite as much after losses. Anyway, on the very much brighter side, I’m declaring Leo the best player in the country right now. He’s undefeated in singles and doubles this spring, including an absolute thrashing 6-3, 6-1 over Hillis from Wash U. 

Other Central teams

Time for bed, but some notable results from the central include Rose Hulman beating Coe 5-3, Coe topping Augustana 5-4, and Augie beating Rose 5-4. Love a good love triangle. Augie is probably still the favorite in the CCIW but Wheaton (and maybe Carthage and North Central?) seems to be in the mix as well (remember when I did a full CCIW preview lol). And with Luther having a rough start to the year with losses to UWW, Grinnell, and Wheaton, watch out for Coe to take back the conference title.  Just in general, it seems there are a lot of Central teams all at a pretty similar level and there are going to be lots of close matches. Glad I’m not on the ranking committee (or am I?), because it’s already getting messy and it’s only mid-February.

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