Open Weekend Rapid Reax + Brief Season Previews

What better way to spend a Monday night than watching the Bach, drinking a glass of wine and writing a blog article. On a quick side note, Victoria F is the worst and you can’t convince me otherwise. We all know that there were some amazing matches at Indoors this weekend, but there were also some great matches in my region too! We’ll do a quick recap of some things that happened around the RegASouth, before moving into my brief blurb season previews of NC Wesleyan, CNU and the Centennial Conference. I wish I could have written full previews, but matches were getting started and I needed to start cranking out content! Let’s get into this beautiful wall of text.

Mary Washington Invite results – Sewanee def. Stevens (7-2), Mary Wash def. Sewanee (5-4), Johns Hopkins def. Sewanee (7-2), Mary Wash def. Stevens (2-7), Johns Hopkins def. Stevens (7-2)

Obviously the RegASouth did not represent well in this invitational, which tells me a few things: Sewanee is good, but not great, Stevens is still a quality recruiting class or two off from being a top 25 team, Hopkins might be better than we thought and Mary Wash is still Mary Wash. Sewanee is still a top 30 team in my opinion, but not a top 20 team as shown by the loss to Mary Washington. The Tigers’ Achilles heel this season might be their doubles. I am glad to see Brewer and Carro stepping up at the top. I thought they would have the depth to compete with most teams, but their performance against Hopkins has me concerned. Yes, it was their 3rd match in as many days, but it’ll be something to keep an eye on.

Stevens on the other hand unfortunately wasn’t as competitive as I would have thought. The matches, just by looking at the box scores weren’t super close. The bright spot for the Ducks was Keegan Morris, who had a respectable showing at #2 singles. I’m not sure what is going on with Feliu to start the season with some fairly lopsided losses, but if the Ducks want to find regional and national success they will need their top dog to pick it up. On a side note, I think Hopkins is a better team than we expected and should dominate the conference, but I’ll let Real ASouth touch on that more.

NC Wesleyan, Christopher Newport and Washington & Lee Results – NC Wes def. CNU (5-4), NC Wes def W&L (5-4), Mary Washington def. NC Wes (6-3), W&L def. CNU (7-2), W&L def. Salisbury (Currently 5-3, will probably be 6-3)

My initial thoughts are as follows: NC Wesleyan is probably the best team that I cover, don’t sleep on Washington and Lee and CNU has the talent, but not the consistency. NC Wesleyan is once again a team that pretty much has the same player from 1-6 and they are all pretty darn good. While it’s tough that they don’t have a “lock” per-say at any one spot, the fact that they can win at any position makes them incredibly dangerous. I am reaaaaaaally hoping for a Sewanee/NC Wes match up at NCAAs.

Washington and Lee came to play this season. I know, I know, it’s only been 3 Division III matches, HOWEVER, last season they lost 4-5 to CNU and were able to turn it around in a big time way this year. Also, Mr. Harry Shepherd is on fire to start this season, and if he keeps that up, this team will have a chance in any close matches. I would keep a close eye on their matches this week against Pomona and Redlands. It could be interesting! My only concern is the acclimation to the weather, but time will tell!

CNU is going to be a wild card in a lot of their matches this season. Just from these early results, they have the talent to compete with teams that, on paper, are much better than them, but also can come out and lay an egg. Lacombe had a tough start to the season with a couple of three set losses, but should bounce back this season. If not, the Captains are in trouble.

Brief Season Previews:

NC Wesleyan – Since we’ve already seen NC Wes in action, I won’t bore you with a lineup analysis. Like I mentioned earlier, this team is pretty much the same from #1-4 with a tiny drop off at 5 and 6. They should be able to compete with everyone in singles and if they can figure their doubles out, then the Bishops will be legit. I’m looking forward to their match against Hopkins, because other than that, we’re going to have to wait until NCAAs to see the Bishops play a team that is better than they are. The Conference USA is weak and I don’t know if there is anyone who will come close to taking them down. The Bishops should go 13-2 and earn themselves a 2 or 3 seed at NCAAs depending on where they go. Kudos to Coach Brice for reviving this program and I hope to see a little bit better scheduling in the future to maximize the opportunities for this team.

CNU – As a continuation of my statement earlier, this Captains team is certainly talented, but I don’t know if they have what it takes to compete on a consistent basis. The addition of Scotty Hunter will certainly help them, but my biggest concern will be their depth this season, as seen in their match against W&L. With that being said, if I were the Captains, I’d be pretty confident in getting 2 out of 3 points from Lacombe, Hunter and Macy at the top and if all three are firing on all cylinders, then they could hang with anyone. I’m not sure what to think of their doubles after getting swept by W&L, but taking 2 out of 3 against NC Wesleyan, so stay tuned for that. I think that’ll be the difference in big matches for them because if they can’t get 2 doubles, then they’ll struggle getting 5 points. The good news is that they should be good enough to qualify for a Pool B spot which RegNEC touched upon in this article.

The Centennial Conference – As you may know, this season Real ASouth will be covering Swarthmore, which means I have everyone from 3-10 in this conference, so I will be writing a quick sentence or two about the next four up. Haverford is the third best team in the conference, who has continued to recruit well. They will continue to play third fiddle to Hopkins and Swarthmore, and probably will once again this season. Franklin and Marshall has certainly gotten better over the years, but is still a class or two away from competing with Haverford for the 3rd spot. Dickinson has one of the better 1’s in the Centennial Conference, but unfortunately doesn’t seem to have the rest of the team to back it up despite some decent recruiting classes. Washington College rounds out the next four up, and could potentially be stronger than Dickson because of their depth. I look forward to that matchup this season.

Honorable Mention – I would like to write more about Salisbury and the other Pool B contenders, but unfortunately time will not allow me to tonight. With that being said, at some point this season I’m going to give a more in depth look into potential Pool B teams as well as an ODAC tournament preview/season recap since we’ve had some people asking about Hampden Sydney and others!

There you go folks! Thanks for reading once again. I am sorry that I haven’t been cranking out the coverage as frequently as I did in years past, but life happens and I just haven’t had as much time to write as I used to. If we’re being honest, I blame my dog. Anyways, please leave a comment, tweet @ me or send an email to discuss all things RegASouth! Until next time, RegASouth out.