11-14-2019, 11:30 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-14-2019, 11:46 AM by ColoradoTree.)
Fall Season Wrap-Up Post
Coming into the fall season, we had six singles players ranked, and while we lost two absolute legends to graduation last season as well as another doubles mainstay, things looked pretty bright. I had four fundamental questions:
1. Does it look like Michaela Gordon can more reliably hold down the #1 spot?
2. How will Arbuthnott (last year's #4) and Shin (last year's #5) deal with playing higher in the lineup, perhaps at #2 and #3?
3. Where, if at all, will we see the freshmen--Angelica Blake and Nicole Mossmer--play in the singles lineup? If they play, who gets left out?
4. How do our chief rivals, both in the Pac-12 and around the country, look?
As for the first question, I'm not sure we yet know how much Michaela has improved, but I certainly didn't see anything to suggest she'd do worse at #1 than she did last year, so I'm cautiously optimistic on this one. (She won her third straight Northwest Regionals (good!), and yet again didn't blow us away at national singles competitions (meh), so the jury is still out here.)
As for the second question, that remains a very live concern. Arbuthnott doesn't look like a #2 on a national championship caliber team. Now, she might grow into the role, but I remain concerned. Shin is more of a mixed bag with her fall results, and while I don't think she's a #3, I'd feel very good about her at #4.
As for the third question, Angelica Blake seems like the real deal. She partnered successfully with Arbuthnott in doubles, winning Northwest Regionals, and her singles play in that tournament looked just as sharp, until she retired from a match due to illness. She won her own trophy in singles at the St. Mary's Invitational, too. I wouldn't be surprised to see her at #3 above Shin, though perhaps #4 or #5 is more likely to start the season. Nicole Mossmer is still an unknown, as she only competed at this last invitational tournament, but she booked a ranked win, suggesting we'll be fine if she's needed at the back end of the lineup.
Not sure where Emma Higuchi has been this fall, but she didn't play a bit (explaining her rankings drop below). If it was an injury that she'll recover from in time for the spring, then she's in the lineup. You just can't drop that level of experience and dominance at #6 from the lineup. Whether she plays #5 or #6 is a different question, but if she's healthy, she plays. With that in mind, here's my guess at a lineup that probably overestimates where Blake will play, but I like it:
1. Gordon
2. Arbuthnott
3. Blake
4. Shin
5. Higuchi
6. Madurawe or Choy
One of our blue chip sophomores will likely have to sit out most matches to make room for Blake in the lineup, but such is life. If Higuchi's injury situation lingers, however, then it's Madurawe and Choy in some order, and our outlook is substantially the same. This might be the lineup we start with, but we also started with Higuchi playing at #4 last season before she eventually settled back into #6, where she's always been most dominant. I wouldn't be shocked if we see Higuchi end up at #6 for most of the year.
Rest of the Conference and Country:
In the Pac-12, UCLA looks scary, scoring the top 3 seeds at the recent ITA Fall Nationals, with multiple other players looking dangerous. I had pegged USC as the #3 team in the conference, with Cal as a close #4, but after the fall, I'll swap those two teams based on how good the Cal freshmen looked. As it stands right now, I think UCLA is the favorite to win the conference title (we might win a close one in the regular season, since we get them at home, but on neutral courts in Ojai?), with Stanford second, Cal third, and USC fourth.
As for the rest of the country, this is UNC's time to shine. They have four players in the top 20 of the ITA rankings, their #3 player just won Fall Nationals, and they look dangerous in doubles, too. They're good, and unlike us, they didn't lose anyone from last year, though with their top 3 all being seniors, this could be UNC's last, best chance for a few years. Georgia is likely to be dangerous as well, as they add freshman Lea Ma to a lineup anchored by Katarina Jokic. Duke looks as solid as they did last year, and Pepperdine is as dangerous as ever, with Ashley Lahey plowing through the field of every tournament she entered.
That doesn't mean we won't still be a top 8 or 16 seed (recall that top 16 seeds host two rounds of NCAAs, while the top 8 seeds (if they advance) host a third), but that expecting another repeat championship may not be reasonable. Could happen! Nobody gets better over the course of the regular season than this team does. But right now, it seems likely that this team takes a slight step back this year.
New Rankings:
The final ITA singles and doubles rankings are out, and here's where we stand now, with the previous ranking in parentheses:
#7 Gordon (#6)
#49 Shin (#60)
NR Arbuthnott (#30)
NR Choy (#87)
NR Madurawe (#93)
NR Blake (NR, #5 newcomer)
NR Higuchi (#78)
And in doubles, we saw reshuffled lineups, so preseason #10 Arbuthnott/Gordon isn't a thing anymore, but here's how things stand now:
#33 Arbuthnott/Blake
#58 Arbuthnott/Gordon
First thought: my goodness, what a rankings hit that is. Arbuthnott drops at least 95 spots, from #30 to out of the rankings entirely, but then again, what did she do in the fall to warrant staying ranked? She went 4-3 in singles, beating four middling players, and losing (albeit in all close matches) to two good players--Kozyreva from St. Mary's and Colling from USD--and Eleni Christofi, who will probably play #5 singles for Georgia this year, if she keeps her spot in the lineup with an infusion of impressive freshmen. What great wins did anyone else (other than Gordon or Shin) have? So, we can't say it's undeserved. And skipping All-Americans (for some as-yet-unknown reason) definitely hurt our players' chances to get some good wins under their belts, not just for these rankings, but to help qualify for individual NCAA tournaments in the spring. But it's another indicator that we're not as good as we have been in the past. Meanwhile, Georgia has six singles players ranked (and Christofi isn't one of them). UCLA has five. Many others, including Cal, UNC, and Pepperdine, have four. Even USC has three! I am not used to this.
Here are all the Pac-12 players in the new singles rankings:
6. Abigail Forbes (Fr., UCLA)
7. Michaela Gordon (Jr., Stanford)
9. Jada Hart (Sr., UCLA)
14. Elysia Bolton (So., UCLA)
20. Valentina Ivanov (Fr., Cal)
21. Haley Giavara (Fr., Cal)
41. Ilze Hattingh (Sr., ASU)
45. Julia Rosenqvist (Jr., Cal)
49. Janice Shin (Jr., Stanford)
60. Angela Kulikov (Sr., USC)
68. Sydney Van Alphen (Sr., USC)
70. Danielle Willson (So., USC)
T88. Katarina Kopcalic (Sr., UW)
99. Annette Goulak (So., UCLA) (a transfer from Georgia)
100. Anna Bright (Jr., Cal)
102. Vanessa Wong (Jr., UW)
T103. Melisa Ates (Sr., WSU)
108. Alexandra Vagramov (Fr., UCLA)
UCLA, Cal, and USC each have more ranked singles players than we do, and UW equaled us. Yes, all the usual caveats should apply--this is a reflection of our reduced fall schedule, we improve in the spring more than most teams do, and we tend to play better in a team environment than individually, etc.--but it should still be a wake-up call.
Coming into the fall season, we had six singles players ranked, and while we lost two absolute legends to graduation last season as well as another doubles mainstay, things looked pretty bright. I had four fundamental questions:
1. Does it look like Michaela Gordon can more reliably hold down the #1 spot?
2. How will Arbuthnott (last year's #4) and Shin (last year's #5) deal with playing higher in the lineup, perhaps at #2 and #3?
3. Where, if at all, will we see the freshmen--Angelica Blake and Nicole Mossmer--play in the singles lineup? If they play, who gets left out?
4. How do our chief rivals, both in the Pac-12 and around the country, look?
As for the first question, I'm not sure we yet know how much Michaela has improved, but I certainly didn't see anything to suggest she'd do worse at #1 than she did last year, so I'm cautiously optimistic on this one. (She won her third straight Northwest Regionals (good!), and yet again didn't blow us away at national singles competitions (meh), so the jury is still out here.)
As for the second question, that remains a very live concern. Arbuthnott doesn't look like a #2 on a national championship caliber team. Now, she might grow into the role, but I remain concerned. Shin is more of a mixed bag with her fall results, and while I don't think she's a #3, I'd feel very good about her at #4.
As for the third question, Angelica Blake seems like the real deal. She partnered successfully with Arbuthnott in doubles, winning Northwest Regionals, and her singles play in that tournament looked just as sharp, until she retired from a match due to illness. She won her own trophy in singles at the St. Mary's Invitational, too. I wouldn't be surprised to see her at #3 above Shin, though perhaps #4 or #5 is more likely to start the season. Nicole Mossmer is still an unknown, as she only competed at this last invitational tournament, but she booked a ranked win, suggesting we'll be fine if she's needed at the back end of the lineup.
Not sure where Emma Higuchi has been this fall, but she didn't play a bit (explaining her rankings drop below). If it was an injury that she'll recover from in time for the spring, then she's in the lineup. You just can't drop that level of experience and dominance at #6 from the lineup. Whether she plays #5 or #6 is a different question, but if she's healthy, she plays. With that in mind, here's my guess at a lineup that probably overestimates where Blake will play, but I like it:
1. Gordon
2. Arbuthnott
3. Blake
4. Shin
5. Higuchi
6. Madurawe or Choy
One of our blue chip sophomores will likely have to sit out most matches to make room for Blake in the lineup, but such is life. If Higuchi's injury situation lingers, however, then it's Madurawe and Choy in some order, and our outlook is substantially the same. This might be the lineup we start with, but we also started with Higuchi playing at #4 last season before she eventually settled back into #6, where she's always been most dominant. I wouldn't be shocked if we see Higuchi end up at #6 for most of the year.
Rest of the Conference and Country:
In the Pac-12, UCLA looks scary, scoring the top 3 seeds at the recent ITA Fall Nationals, with multiple other players looking dangerous. I had pegged USC as the #3 team in the conference, with Cal as a close #4, but after the fall, I'll swap those two teams based on how good the Cal freshmen looked. As it stands right now, I think UCLA is the favorite to win the conference title (we might win a close one in the regular season, since we get them at home, but on neutral courts in Ojai?), with Stanford second, Cal third, and USC fourth.
As for the rest of the country, this is UNC's time to shine. They have four players in the top 20 of the ITA rankings, their #3 player just won Fall Nationals, and they look dangerous in doubles, too. They're good, and unlike us, they didn't lose anyone from last year, though with their top 3 all being seniors, this could be UNC's last, best chance for a few years. Georgia is likely to be dangerous as well, as they add freshman Lea Ma to a lineup anchored by Katarina Jokic. Duke looks as solid as they did last year, and Pepperdine is as dangerous as ever, with Ashley Lahey plowing through the field of every tournament she entered.
That doesn't mean we won't still be a top 8 or 16 seed (recall that top 16 seeds host two rounds of NCAAs, while the top 8 seeds (if they advance) host a third), but that expecting another repeat championship may not be reasonable. Could happen! Nobody gets better over the course of the regular season than this team does. But right now, it seems likely that this team takes a slight step back this year.
New Rankings:
The final ITA singles and doubles rankings are out, and here's where we stand now, with the previous ranking in parentheses:
#7 Gordon (#6)
#49 Shin (#60)
NR Arbuthnott (#30)
NR Choy (#87)
NR Madurawe (#93)
NR Blake (NR, #5 newcomer)
NR Higuchi (#78)
And in doubles, we saw reshuffled lineups, so preseason #10 Arbuthnott/Gordon isn't a thing anymore, but here's how things stand now:
#33 Arbuthnott/Blake
#58 Arbuthnott/Gordon
First thought: my goodness, what a rankings hit that is. Arbuthnott drops at least 95 spots, from #30 to out of the rankings entirely, but then again, what did she do in the fall to warrant staying ranked? She went 4-3 in singles, beating four middling players, and losing (albeit in all close matches) to two good players--Kozyreva from St. Mary's and Colling from USD--and Eleni Christofi, who will probably play #5 singles for Georgia this year, if she keeps her spot in the lineup with an infusion of impressive freshmen. What great wins did anyone else (other than Gordon or Shin) have? So, we can't say it's undeserved. And skipping All-Americans (for some as-yet-unknown reason) definitely hurt our players' chances to get some good wins under their belts, not just for these rankings, but to help qualify for individual NCAA tournaments in the spring. But it's another indicator that we're not as good as we have been in the past. Meanwhile, Georgia has six singles players ranked (and Christofi isn't one of them). UCLA has five. Many others, including Cal, UNC, and Pepperdine, have four. Even USC has three! I am not used to this.
Here are all the Pac-12 players in the new singles rankings:
6. Abigail Forbes (Fr., UCLA)
7. Michaela Gordon (Jr., Stanford)
9. Jada Hart (Sr., UCLA)
14. Elysia Bolton (So., UCLA)
20. Valentina Ivanov (Fr., Cal)
21. Haley Giavara (Fr., Cal)
41. Ilze Hattingh (Sr., ASU)
45. Julia Rosenqvist (Jr., Cal)
49. Janice Shin (Jr., Stanford)
60. Angela Kulikov (Sr., USC)
68. Sydney Van Alphen (Sr., USC)
70. Danielle Willson (So., USC)
T88. Katarina Kopcalic (Sr., UW)
99. Annette Goulak (So., UCLA) (a transfer from Georgia)
100. Anna Bright (Jr., Cal)
102. Vanessa Wong (Jr., UW)
T103. Melisa Ates (Sr., WSU)
108. Alexandra Vagramov (Fr., UCLA)
UCLA, Cal, and USC each have more ranked singles players than we do, and UW equaled us. Yes, all the usual caveats should apply--this is a reflection of our reduced fall schedule, we improve in the spring more than most teams do, and we tend to play better in a team environment than individually, etc.--but it should still be a wake-up call.