Women's Tennis: Fall Nationals

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Women's Tennis: Fall Nationals - ColoradoTree - 10-31-2022

Fall Nationals--also called the ITA National Fall Championships--start this week, and there's one more Card in the field than we expected. Yepifanova and Blake are in the 32-player field on the strength of making the finals at Northwest Regionals, but there were a handful of wild card/at-large spots available (two wild card spots were built into the draw, and then a couple other automatic qualifiers apparently bowed out, creating at-large selections based mostly on ranking), so Connie Ma joins them in the draw. And it might be four, as Alexis Blokhina is listed as the #3 alternate.

No draws yet, but play begins on Wednesday, November 2 and continues through Sunday the 6th.

Precisely why Ma is in the field is unclear--she's the #7 ranked player in the preseason rankings, but two players ranked ahead of her didn't automatically qualify either and aren't in the field. And Blokhina being the #3 alternate isn't clear, either. She's the #5 newcomer, but 6th-ranked newcomer Madison Sieg of USC didn't automatically qualify but is in the field. My suspicion is that Sieg got a wild card and the players above Ma passed, so the opportunity fell to Ma, while alternate status is established through some other undisclosed pecking order (or is just first-come, first-served or something).

Anyway, good luck to Connie, Sasha, and Angelica!

RE: Women's Tennis: Fall Nationals - ColoradoTree - 11-01-2022

Seeds and draws are out!

Singles Seeds:

1. Fiona Crawley (UNC)
2. Connie Ma
3. Abigail Forbes (UNC, a grad transfer from UCLA--she wanted to stay at UCLA to get her MBA, but couldn't get in there, so she transferred)
4. Madison Sieg (USC)
5-8. Carol Lee (GT)
5-8. Lea Ma (UGA)
5-8. Mary Stoiana (Texas A&M)
5-8. Carson Tanguilig (UNC)

Sieg, apparently, has had a heck of a fall season. She won the Milwaukee Tennis Classic with a couple of good wins over players ranked in the 80s, but she's seeded 4th here on the strength of her performance in the Fall Ranked Spotlight, where she knocked off preseason #3 Daria Frayman of Princeton and #28 Tanguilig before falling to Crawley in the final.

Stanford players could have entered both of those tournaments, but they didn't. They never do. Lele has always pursued a pretty light fall schedule, and more often than not, it works out just fine in the spring. But sometimes it's frustrating that our players don't get more high-quality matches throughout the year.

And here are our players' first round matches tomorrow and some quick analysis:

Wednesday, Nov. 2

9:00am: [2] Ma vs. #5 Chloe Beck (Duke)
11:30am: #14 Yepifanova vs. Taylor Melville (Denver)
11:30am: #105 Blake vs. [4] Madison Sieg (USC)

Draws: https://colleges.wearecollegetennis.com/Competitions/ITA/Tournaments/draws/1A3662A4-8C10-40BD-B598-8D470360390D/FE21A1FB-A3B7-498A-B3D7-1AEC3639B671

First Round Analysis:

Absolutely the best match of the first round, rankings-wise, pits #7 Connie Ma against #5 Chloe Beck. If chalk holds, the winner gets #35 Julia Adams of UVA, a grad transfer from Furman.

An easy enough start for Yepifanova, as she gets DU's Melville, one of the few players in the field who were unranked in the preseason, and who is here as a finalist from the weakest ITA region (Mountain). But looming in the second round is a potential matchup with top-seeded Fiona Crawley of UNC. Not that Yepifanova can't win that, of course--she is ranked 7 spots ahead of Crawley in the preseason rankings--but it'll be a heckuva challenge. Given how well Yepifanova has played so far, though, I'm optimistic.

Blake draws 4th-seeded and USC frosh Sieg, so I'm excited to see how she does there. Sieg could play fairly high in USC's lineup this year, though preseason #1 Eryn Cayetano, #65 Snow Han, and #85 Naomi Cheong will be tough to dislodge. In any event, you could see a Blake-Sieg matchup in the regular season, and just because Sieg has had some success so far this fall doesn't mean Blake can't (or shouldn't) take her out. The winner plays the winner of #56 Elaine Chervinsky (UVA) and #98 Kimmi Hance (UCLA).

Here's how to watch: https://www.wearecollegetennis.com/2022/10/25/cracked-racquets-crosscourt-cast-viewing-information-2/

RE: Women's Tennis: Fall Nationals - ColoradoTree - 11-01-2022

Also, Stanford got its first verbal commitment from the class of 2023 today, and it's a big one: Katherine Hui from San Diego, who recently decommitted from Princeton. Has the feel of one of those "Stanford is my dream school, but I'm not going to give up a spot at a great school that I like until I get that acceptance letter" decisions.

Hui is currently the #7 player in the class, but she's been a top 5-type recruit the last few years. This past August, at the USTA Girls 18s National Championships, she was seeded 8th but knocked off top seed Reese Brantmeier in three sets in the quarters (Brantmeier was the top recruit in last year's class and is the #2 ranked newcomer behind a Russian playing at NC State). This was the same tournament where Blokhina was seeded 3rd, though she got upset in the third round.

Welcome, Katherine!

Looking at next year's roster math:

Possible Fifth Year (1): Angelica Blake
Seniors (2): Houghton, Geller
Juniors (3): Ma, Yepifanova, Xu
Sophomores (2): Blokhina, Sun
Freshmen (1): Hui

Biggest uncommitted prize left is currently-#3 recruit Eleana Yu from Mason, OH; Yu won that Girls 18s tournaments as the 4th seed and has been ranked as the top recruit at various times. The rest of the top 10 is verbally committed somewhere else.

Sakibomb25 - Sakibomb25 - 11-01-2022

Do we even have enough scholarships for Yu if she decided to come?

RE: Sakibomb25 - BigEasyCard - 11-02-2022

(11-01-2022, 11:12 PM)Sakibomb25 Wrote: Do we even have enough scholarships for Yu if she decided to come?

The D1 scholarship limit for Women's Tennis is 8. Yu would be the tenth player, but perhaps there may be partial scholarhips?

Geaux Cardinal!

Sakibomb25 - Sakibomb25 - 11-02-2022

I don’t believe women’s tennis has any partial scholarships - but was thinking some might be walk-ons!

RE: Women's Tennis: Fall Nationals - ColoradoTree - 11-02-2022

It's a headcount sport, so it's 8 full scholarships and no partials. That's why the scholarship math has confused me the last few years. I'm assuming that Nicole Mossmer has medically retired or her scholarship has been moved off the books of the tennis team in some other way, and that Sara Choy is no longer on scholarship, having completed her four usual years here, and she's paying for grad school some other way. (Covid changed the rules and gave folks an extra year of eligibility, but it's my understanding that didn't affect the total number of scholarships teams could offer.) That keeps us at 8 for this year, and presumably Blake will slide off the books next year, too, even if she sticks around for an extra covid year.

In the past, there have been years where I simply cannot make the math work unless someone is paying their own way a year. When Choy and Madurawe were freshmen, I assumed that's how it was going. And when Ma, Yepifanova, and Xu all joined us last year, Ma and Yepifanova were announced on National Signing Day, but Xu wasn't, making me suspect that she was paying her own way for a year or had obtained some sort of alternative funding for the year. But I'm assuming Xu is on scholarship this year.

Big, big win for Ma today, 6-4, 6-2 over #7 Chloe Beck!

Yepifanova just started her first round match, and Blake's match with Sieg is just getting going, too.

RE: Women's Tennis: Fall Nationals - ColoradoTree - 11-02-2022

* Blake leads Sieg, 6-3, 5-5
* Yepifanova lost to Melville, 4-6, 2-6. Yikes.

Haven’t been able to watch, but that’s a very surprising scoreline from Yepifanova.

Sight, Blake lost 6-3, 5-7, 2-6. Had her on the ropes, but couldn't close out that second set.

Well, time for Angelica or Sasha to make a run in the consolation bracket! Still some great matches in front of them that could really boost their rankings. It's these kinds of tournaments that make playing in the NCAA individual tournament at the end of the year possible, which is part of the reason I get frustrated we don't see our players participate in more fall tournaments.

RE: Women's Tennis: Fall Nationals - BostonCard - 11-02-2022

Tennis is hardly the only sport where the scholarship math is a big question mark. I remember around 2010 we had a women’s volleyball player, Lydia Bai, who was presumed to be an an external scholarship because otherwise the scholarship math couldn’t add up. And we’ve definitely had cases in basketball (most recently for the men), where a player is offered a scholarship but not for four years.

BC

RE: Women's Tennis: Fall Nationals - BobK - 11-02-2022

A commit.

[Tweet]https://twitter.com/parsabombs/status/1587959159558852608?s=46&t=GRcPnABDVuiFh-8koRAQ1g[/tweet]

RE: Women's Tennis: Fall Nationals - oldalum - 11-02-2022

(11-02-2022, 01:56 PM)ColoradoTree Wrote: (Covid changed the rules and gave folks an extra year of eligibility, but it's my understanding that didn't affect the total number of scholarships teams could offer.)

I'm pretty sure that athletes are permitted to be on scholarship for their extra Covid year of eligibility, and athletics departments (that can afford it) can increase their scholarship numbers to accommodate that. But many just can't.

RE: Women's Tennis: Fall Nationals - CompSci87 - 11-03-2022

(11-02-2022, 11:06 PM)oldalum Wrote:
(11-02-2022, 01:56 PM)ColoradoTree Wrote: (Covid changed the rules and gave folks an extra year of eligibility, but it's my understanding that didn't affect the total number of scholarships teams could offer.)
I'm pretty sure that athletes are permitted to be on scholarship for their extra Covid year of eligibility, and athletics departments (that can afford it) can increase their scholarship numbers to accommodate that. But many just can't.

I believe it was only during one year that the number of scholarships was allowed to be above the normal limit, and that year is past.

RE: Women's Tennis: Fall Nationals - BostonCard - 11-03-2022

That’s correct; we are back to scholarship limits even as players are automatically granted an extra year of eligibility for those whose seasons were disrupted in spring and fall of 2020 and winter of 2020/2021 (current juniors and seniors).

BC

RE: Women's Tennis: Fall Nationals - ColoradoTree - 11-03-2022

Pretty sure I manifested that Yu commitment, folks, so you're very welcome.

RE: Women's Tennis: Fall Nationals - ColoradoTree - 11-03-2022

So, with Yu coming in, that makes for a heck of a class, with the current #3 and #7 recruits coming on board, making Stanford the only school with two top 10 recruits in this class. (That said, Harvard has 3 blue chips, though just one in the top ten. Michigan, UCF, and Yale also have two blue chips.) Yu has been ranked as high as the #1 recruit each year of high school, and she won the USTA Girls 18s National Championship. She's a big, big get, and we remain absolutely loaded going forward.

Updating that roster math:

Possible fifth year (1): Blake
Seniors (2): Houghton, Geller
Juniors (3): Ma, Yepifanova, Xu
Sophomores (2): Blokhina, Sun
Freshmen: (2): Yu, Hui

Now, you can count as well as I can, and that makes ten, or nine if Blake doesn't come back. I had assumed Xu was the odd woman out last year, as she wasn't announced. Even though she was a top 10 recruit, she was still the clear #3 in the class. But Xu would be above Sun, for sure. I wonder if Sun is on a year-to-year situation, as both Yu and Hui will probably jump ahead of her in the lineup next year.

**

Meanwhile, in San Diego, we have some matches to play:

Round of 16:

Main Draw:

10:00am: [2] vs. Carolina Gomez Alonso (Arkansas)

Consolation:

11:45am: #14 Yepifanova vs. Daria Kuczer (Tennessee)
12:15pm: #105 Blake vs. #98 Kimmi Hance (UCLA)

Sakibomb25 - Sakibomb25 - 11-03-2022

Who is a bigger get - Ma or Yu?

RE: Sakibomb25 - ColoradoTree - 11-03-2022

(11-03-2022, 10:27 AM)Sakibomb25 Wrote: Who is a bigger get - Ma or Yu?

Great question! Ma was the no-doubt top recruit of the class, it was a deep class of elite players anyway that year, and there was a chance coming in that she could supplant Gordon at 1 (this was when we thought Gordon might be coming back for the whole year). Yu isn't quite at that level. That's nothing to be ashamed of, and she's got a heck of a resume in her own right, and she's not THAT far off. But the answer is Ma.

Let's say all players on the current roster came in as freshmen the same year, we know nothing about their subsequent performance/development, and so we're really just looking at the "recruiting win" aspect of it. I think the recruiting rankings pecking order would have been like this:

1. Ma
2. Yepifanova
3. Yu
4. Houghton
5. Blokhina
6. Xu
7. Geller
8. Blake
9. Choy
10. Sun

But that's making some fine distinctions, and it probably would've been really close between Yepifanova and Yu. Ma is the best freshman we've had in a long time. Yu should make the middle of our lineup look over their shoulders, though, for sure. Here's a guess at the singles lineup next year if Blake doesn't come back:

1. Ma
2. Yepifanova
3. Yu
4. Blokhina
5. Xu
6. Hui

Yep, two seniors on the bench. Geller should be in that mix, but injuries and fitness have been concerns. And if you'd told me when we signed her that a healthy India Houghton would be on the bench her senior year, no way I'd have believed you. She came in as an absolute beast of a recruit, with wins over players like Sarah Hamner (this year's preseason #2), Emma Jackson (#100), Elaine Chervinsky (#56), Carmen Corley (#22), etc. She was an elite, elite recruit. And it just hasn't translated so far for some reason. Hopefully this is the year when she takes a leap.

And not that it's of terribly great use to us now, but back in 2019, Yu beat Xu in three sets, lost to Yepifanova 0&4, and beat South Carolina's Hamner in three. That same year, she also beat now-UNC sophomore Carson Tanguilig in three sets, and ... drum roll ... Tanguilig will be Connie Ma's next opponent after Ma beat Gomez Alonso 6-4, 6-1.

In consolation action, Yepifanova won her first set over Kuczer 6-4 but is down 0-4 in the second. Blake is down 1-5 in the first to UCLA's Hance. Wake up, Angelica!

FYI, 4th-seeded Madison Sieg withdrew with an injury after outlasting Blake yesterday, so Blake clearly pushed her to her limit. Injury withdrawals are pretty common in these fall tournaments, as the cost-benefit analysis just doesn't justify pushing through--potentially aggravating a minor injury in the NCAA tournament is one thing, but for matches that don't help your team win, it's quite another. (I have no idea what Sieg's injury is, just noting the norm for the record.) Smarter to just sit and rest something minor before it turns into something major.

RE: Women's Tennis: Fall Nationals - ColoradoTree - 11-03-2022

Sigh. Basically a waste of a trip for Yepifanova and Blake, as both go 0-2 and their tournaments are over. At least Yepifanova put up a fight, losing 6-4 in the third to Kuczer, but Blake got smoked, losing 1-6, 1-6 to Kimmi Hance, who played #4 for UCLA last year and who I would pick Blake to beat 9 times out of 10. Not a good outing there at all--the Sieg match must have taken a lot out of her, too.

And for those that may have wondered whether Yepifanova beating Ma at Northwest Regionals indicated she'd closed the gap--nope, Ma's still our ace. Sometimes the other person plays better on the day, but Ma is better.

Sakibomb25 - Sakibomb25 - 11-03-2022

(11-03-2022, 03:13 PM)ColoradoTree Wrote: Sigh. Basically a waste of a trip for Yepifanova and Blake, as both go 0-2 and their tournaments are over. At least Yepifanova put up a fight, losing 6-4 in the third to Kuczer, but Blake got smoked, losing 1-6, 1-6 to Kimmi Hance, who played #4 for UCLA last year and who I would pick Blake to beat 9 times out of 10. Not a good outing there at all--the Sieg match must have taken a lot out of her, too.

And for those that may have wondered whether Yepifanova beating Ma at Northwest Regionals indicated she'd closed the gap--nope, Ma's still our ace. Sometimes the other person plays better on the day, but Ma is better.

Interesting that Houghton was that highly regarded. I wonder if her interests have just shifted. I would have thought she would have made more of an impact in NCAA.

RE: Women's Tennis: Fall Nationals - ColoradoTree - 11-04-2022

Ma plays Tanguilig this morning at 10:00am, fyi.

Links to live streaming and scores are here: https://www.wearecollegetennis.com/championships/ita-national-fall-championships/