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NCAA Championship Women's Tennis: NCAA Singles and Doubles - Printable Version

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RE: Women's Tennis: NCAA Singles and Doubles - ColoradoTree - 05-24-2018

(05-24-2018, 11:01 AM)2006alum Wrote:  Whew! I can't imagine how exhausted the players are. I'm exhausted just trying to follow your live updates! So we now have three singles All-Americans, right? Gordon and Lord already were, and now Arbuthnott is too?

And it puts some of our past performances in perspective, specifically Liu and Gibbs winning the singles tournament the same year we won the whole thing (2004 and 2013, respectively), and when Barnes and Burdette(, Erin) and Barte and Burdette(, Lindsay) won the doubles in team-winning years (2005 and 2010, respectively). Particularly given how many gutsy 4-3 wins our team has pulled off to win those past championships, to turn right around and power through a singles and/or doubles draw really takes focus, guts, and conditioning.

Gordon already was by virtue of getting a seed, but Lord wasn't, at least not for this year, so it's just two singles All-Americans this year. (Lord was last year, but she likely needed to make the Round of 16 to secure it this year. While she's had some good wins in the team tournament, I don't think it'll be enough to get her in the final Top 20 of the year, which would be the other path. It's possible that happens, but with most of the seeds doing well, I don't think enough players will drop for her to climb that high.  Lord will be ranked in the top 20 in terms of UTR, for sure, but likely not in the ITA rankings.)

Stanford has routinely referred to Lord as their "lone All-American" this year, but she hadn't earned it for this season yet.

RE: Women's Tennis: NCAA Singles and Doubles - magnus - 05-24-2018

Overwhelmed in an impressed sort of way by the ColoradoTree coverage.  Amazing, and much thanks.

One thing that I'm a little confused about.  The term "deuce point".  Is that something new?  Is that different than just "deuce"?  And are there still "ad-ins" and "ad-outs"?  I haven't seen any of the latter two terms in any of the commentary and so I wonder if there's been some change to tennis that I've missed (played and closely followed tennis back in the 80s/90s but barely follow it these days).

Thanks

RE: Women's Tennis: NCAA Singles and Doubles - bbm233 - 05-24-2018

Deuce point is what we used to call "no-ad" back in the 80s. It's sudden death when you get to deuce - next point wins the game. The receiver gets to choose the side of the court to receive serve.

RE: Women's Tennis: NCAA Singles and Doubles - ColoradoTree - 05-24-2018

(05-24-2018, 11:20 AM)magnus Wrote:  Overwhelmed in an impressed sort of way by the ColoradoTree coverage.  Amazing, and much thanks.

One thing that I'm a little confused about.  The term "deuce point".  Is that something new?  Is that different than just "deuce"?  And are there still "ad-ins" and "ad-outs"?  I haven't seen any of the latter two terms in any of the commentary and so I wonder if there's been some change to tennis that I've missed (played and closely followed tennis back in the 80s/90s but barely follow it these days).

Thanks

A couple of years ago, the NCAA moved to no-ad scoring in an attempt to speed up matches, make them of a more predictable length, and add some excitement, presumably to make it more of a potential draw for TV.  So, while the pro and junior tours still use ad scoring (i.e., you still have to win by two, so ad-in and ad-out still feature), when it's deuce at the college level, whoever wins the next point wins the game.  It's certainly exciting, and those deuce points near the end of Lord's match vs. Contreras just about made my heart stop, but I feel winning by two in each game was fundamental to the sport.

Arbuthnott/Gordon are playing the #15 team in the country on their home courts, so this should be a tough one.  They'll play two sets, and if they split, they'll play a 10-point "supertiebreaker" or "match tiebreaker" in which the first to ten points (have to win by two) is the winner.  Arbuthnott/Gordon's current ranking depends in large part on their run to the title at the ITA Fall National Championships, in which they won match tiebreakers in three of their five wins.  

FYI, Arbuthnott/Gordon didn't even qualify for that tournament in the fall, but because both were there for singles, they were added as an alternate when one of the teams dropped out. 
Doubles on court now (Leighton 4), and they're down a break early, at 2-4.

RE: Women's Tennis: NCAA Singles and Doubles - ColoradoTree - 05-24-2018

And they drop the first set, 6-3. Gordon played well, but Arbuthnott wasn't terribly sharp.  We were down a break early in the second, broke back for 2-2, and were broken again for 2-3. Need to turn it around!
Broken again, and Wake Forest will serve for the match up 5-2....
Up 5-2, 40-30, Wake can't finish it, as Stanford gets the break! Gordon will now serve, down 5-3, to stay in the match.
Sigh. And that's that, as Wake Forest knocks off #3 Arbuthnott/Gordon 6-3, 6-3. Gordon's season is now over, while Arbuthnott is still alive (for now) in singles.

RE: Women's Tennis: NCAA Singles and Doubles - ColoradoTree - 05-25-2018

An early start for Arbuthnott today in what could (should, really) be the last match of the year for a member of this team.  Sharma just took the first set 6-2 and broke Arbuthnott in the first game of the second set, but Emily broke right back to level at 1-1 before holding to 2-1.  The match is on Leighton Court 3 if you want to catch some of it.  

She's playing hard and aggressively, though, even more than I usually see from her.  (As we've discussed before, Arbuthnott's matches often take forever because while she uses the whole court and gets her opponent moving, she knows that she doesn't need to go for the kill shot too early in the point, because she can grind down her opponents in a battle of attrition.)  And that's as it should be.  When you should lose, then playing a safe and controlled match isn't what's going to let you pull the upset.

RE: Women's Tennis: NCAA Singles and Doubles - qwerty49 - 05-25-2018

In earlier singles matches this week I saw quite a few high-bouncing "moon balls" (first popularized by Andrea Jaeger back in the day).  Are there top pros who still use this approach successfully?  It definitely doesn't make for good TV.

RE: Women's Tennis: NCAA Singles and Doubles - ColoradoTree - 05-25-2018

Arbuthnott falls 6-2, 6-4, and that's a wrap on the women's tennis season.

UCLA's Ena Shibahara is the only Pac-12 player left in the singles draw, so I'm hoping she wins it all. If not her, then one of the Pepperdine players would be preferable. In doubles, only the Arizona State pair of John-Baptiste/Hattingh is still alive from the conference.
Scratch that, Shibahara just lost to Pepperdine's Ashley Lahey, meaning that three Pepperdine players are through to the final eight, so there are still decent odds that the individual title doesn't end up in SEC or ACC hands.

I cannot comprehend how a team with that much individual talent didn't beat Georgia Tech, but you start to wonder about team culture and coaching at that point. How is it that Stanford overperforms its seed every year when Pepperdine (who is also criminally underrated) doesn't? There is a self-belief that animates these Stanford teams that just doesn't seem to be present down in Malibu in the postseason. It's curious.

Anyway, here's the complete list of Pac-12 singles and doubles All-Americans, pending additions from next week's final rankings:

Singles:

Emily Arbuthnott (due to reaching R16 at NCAAs)
Stacey Fung, UW (due to seed)
Michaela Gordon (due to seed)
Ena Shibahara, UCLA (due to seed/reaching R16)

Doubles:

Arbuthnott/Gordon (due to seed)
Fleming/Hart, UCLA (due to seed)
John-Baptiste/Hattingh, ASU (due to reaching quarterfinals at NCAAs)

RE: Women's Tennis: NCAA Singles and Doubles - 2006alum - 05-25-2018

(05-25-2018, 08:39 AM)ColoradoTree Wrote:  Arbuthnott falls 6-2, 6-4, and that's a wrap on the women's tennis season.

UCLA's Ena Shibahara is the only Pac-12 player left in the singles draw, so I'm hoping she wins it all. If not her, then one of the Pepperdine players would be preferable.  In doubles, only the Arizona State pair of John-Baptiste/Hattingh is still alive from the conference.

At this point the players' body clocks are probably adjusted to EDT, but it's funny how much earlier the start times are for singles and doubles than for team play. At the margins, that can't help West Coast teams, right?

RE: Women's Tennis: NCAA Singles and Doubles - ColoradoTree - 05-29-2018

(05-25-2018, 10:09 AM)2006alum Wrote:  
(05-25-2018, 08:39 AM)ColoradoTree Wrote:  Arbuthnott falls 6-2, 6-4, and that's a wrap on the women's tennis season.

UCLA's Ena Shibahara is the only Pac-12 player left in the singles draw, so I'm hoping she wins it all. If not her, then one of the Pepperdine players would be preferable.  In doubles, only the Arizona State pair of John-Baptiste/Hattingh is still alive from the conference.

At this point the players' body clocks are probably adjusted to EDT, but it's funny how much earlier the start times are for singles and doubles than for team play. At the margins, that can't help West Coast teams, right?

I wouldn't think it would help, no.  The organizers were kind to Stanford and Vanderbilt in putting together start times, but I'm not sure if that kindness extended to West Coast teams other than Stanford.  

In the end, the Pac-12 added the men's doubles title (UCLA) to the women's team title.  The SEC took home both the women's singles (Ole Miss's Arianne Hartono) and women's doubles (LSU, in a surprise), and the ACC added men's singles (Wake Forest) to its men's team title.  Hartono had the unique experience of having to beat a Pepperdine player in the quarterfinals, another Pepperdine player in the semifinals, and a third Pepperdine player in the final, two of which went three sets--had the third-set tiebreaker in her semifinal gone the other way, it would have been an all-Pepperdine singles final.  FYI, because both the men's and women's singles champions hail from other countries, they don't get a wild card into the U.S. Open that American NCAA champions (like Nicole Gibbs, most recently for Stanford) do.

(For those of you that read my preview posts this season, I made no bones about being terrified about Pepperdine. I'm delighted that our match with them got rained out when Lord was injured, as it saved us from another loss, and I'm glad we didn't have to face them in the NCAAs, though they underperformed expectations there, if not their seed.  They lose their #3 and #5 players to graduation, but they should get former USC #1 Jessica Failla back from injury. They might be just a bit worse, but they'll still be one of the favorites next year.)