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Women's Tennis: Sun Devils and Wildcats - Printable Version

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RE: Women's Tennis: Sun Devils and Wildcats - ColoradoTree - 03-25-2019

Let's actually dig a little into our win over Hawaii, comparing how Cal did against them the day before:

Doubles:

We rolled out our usual doubles lineup, and we had no trouble at all, getting easy wins from Lord/Madurawe at #3 (6-1) and Lampl/Yee at #1 (6-2), with Arbuthnott/Gordon knocking on the door at #2, up 5-2 when the match was abandoned.  

Cal struggled, though, losing at #3 doubles, needing a tiebreaker to take it at #1 doubles, and clinching the doubles point with a 7-5 win at #2. That would prove crucial for Cal.

Singles:

The news on our end was the shuffled lineup at the top, but those three were the first three off court, with Lampl leading the way! Lampl won 6-1, 6-2 over a legitimately good player in Petra Melounova (Melounova beat Gordon 6-2, 6-3 last year). Lord added a 6-2, 6-2 win on Court 3, and Gordon clinched 6-2, 6-0 on Court 2. Higuchi piled on with a 6-0, 6-2 win at #6, and Shin also had little trouble, winning 6-0, 6-3 at #5. Arbuthnott was the only player tested, taking the first set easily, dropping her second set, and then turning on the gas in the third (6-2, 2-6, 6-1). If teams suspect us of some lineup stacking, seeing our highest-ranked player at the #4 position, then this match shows exactly why Arbuthnott belongs where she is. She has the ability to beat just about anyone, and showed that in the fall tournament season. But she struggles to put away lesser players sometimes. 

Cal didn't have as easy of a time, though. Anna Bright made the score 2-0 when she had as little difficulty defeating Sela at #2 as Gordon did. And Stloukalova won handily on Court 3, making the match 3-0. But then it tightened. Hawaii's Melounova beat #30 Julia Rosenqvist 7-6, 6-3 to get Hawaii on the board, Alexis Nelson lost at #6 to make it a one-point match, and Hawaii's Pits beat Hana Mraz 6-2, 4-6, 7-5 at #4 to level the match at three points apiece. It fell to Maria Smith on Court 5 to save Cal from disaster, winning a third-set tiebreaker after she lost one for the second set. Caveat: Olivia Hauger played doubles but not singles (she hasn't played singles in a few weeks), so she may be dealing with some sort of injury. With Hauger back, this is a much better Cal team. But still, that would have been a brutal loss for Cal's ranking (and ours, in turn). I'm relieved that they didn't take an ugly loss, but it also feels good to know we should still beat Cal when we play them. 

Melounova may have been a little tired after a great ranked win over Rosenqvist the day before, but my goodness, Lampl destroyed her! Melounova has beaten six ranked players this year, including Rosenqvist, USC's Salma Ewing, and San Diego's Solymar Colling (twice), and Lampl didn't bat an eye at the challenge. If Lele only meant this as a reward for Lampl (to get to play #1 at least once in her career), she may have invited a legitimate controversy as to who should play #1 for us! I wouldn't put Lord there (I can't get the ASU match out of my head), and I still think Gordon is the best player on our team, but perhaps Gordon-Lampl-Lord is the right top of the lineup.
(03-25-2019, 01:53 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  
(03-25-2019, 12:35 PM)ColoradoTree Wrote:   (I have no idea as to the relationship between Lele and longtime UCLA head coach Stella Sampras-Webster, but it would certainly take a hit if UCLA protested. USC's coach is in her second year there, so Alison Swain's willingness to say something is an unknown.) 

I looked; that Sampras is her brother.

BC

Yep. Pete did a lot of fundraising for the UCLA women's tennis team once his sister got the gig, IIRC, but Stella is a force in her own right. That is a great team, year in and year out. She's been a national coach of the year, they won the NCAA tournament a few years ago, and they're always right there. No signs of slowing down, either. She signed a couple of blue chips last year in Elysia Bolton (playing #2) and Taylor Johnson (playing at either #5 or #6), and has another two blue chips coming next year. 

She's got that program at the level that Stanford-UCLA is the match I most look forward to on the Pac-12 calendar. Weird to say that when Cal is still a great program, but that's just how it is.

RE: Women's Tennis: Sun Devils and Wildcats - oldalum - 03-25-2019

Incidentally, Hawaii's entire roster appears to be non-U.S.

RE: Women's Tennis: Sun Devils and Wildcats - ColoradoTree - 03-26-2019

No official announcement yet from Stanford, but according to UC Davis, the match has been rescheduled for Wednesday, March 27 at 1pm. Because this match is utterly meaningless in our final ranking (UC Davis is 3-9, with lopsided losses to St. Mary's and Santa Clara), I have to assume Lele is highly motivated to get a chance to adjust her lineup one more time before UCLA.

I wonder if the Davis team didn't end up making the drive down on Monday, since the match seemed like it was cancelled fairly early in the day. If I'd driven my team down to Stanford twice (4 hours of driving each time) just to get rained out, I wouldn't be highly motivated to try a third time. (The head coach is a Stanford alum, though--former All-American Bill Maze '78, who played under Dick Gould and played doubles at Stanford with John McEnroe--so that can't hurt.) 

Regarding Hawaii: Hawaii has usually had a couple of players on their team from Hawaii in addition to a majority of international students, but I hadn't realized it was entirely international this year (something which is becoming increasingly common, as this board has noticed before). By contrast, UC Davis's team is entirely American--six Californians, a Texan, and a Hawaiian. 

Among the top 10 teams, you see the different approaches:

1. UNC is entirely American
2. Georgia has a 5/4 international/American split (though its singles lineup is 5/1, indicating some of those Americans are walk-ons)
3. Duke is mostly American (just one international student from the UK)
4. Stanford is the same as Duke
5. Vanderbilt is mostly American with one player from Ireland and one from the UK. 
6. South Carolina has a 4/4 split
7. Pepperdine has a 5/2 split
8. Oklahoma State has a 6/5 split (though its singles lineup is 5/1, so like UGA, some of the Americans have to be walk-ons)
9. UCLA is mostly American, with one Canadian
10. Washington has a 5/5 split, though three are Canadians (there's long been a strong Canadian pipeline to UW)--the singles lineup is 5/2, with the Canadians occupying the top three spots (the total is 7 because they've shuffled the bottom 2-3 spots around a lot). 

The best American players are still enough to build a champion. But there just aren't enough to create competitive rosters at most of the DI schools. So, if you're a middling program and you want to get competitive, it's often easier to sell your program to international players than it is to domestic players until you reach a certain level of success, and then your success recruits Americans for you. (Georgia is an exception, as a perenially competitive program that has switched gears from a mostly domestic roster to a mostly international one.)

RE: Women's Tennis: Sun Devils and Wildcats - ColoradoTree - 03-26-2019

Some shuffling in the newest ITA rankings, as Stanford drops from #4 to #7 due to our lack of strong wins.  Georgia retakes the top spot by a hair over UNC, Duke is still a solid #3, and it's South Carolina that is now #4, with Vanderbilt holding at #5, and Texas jumping 12 spots to the #6 spot, ahead of us. (Before you get upset, remember that this is still just the computer ranking. Given our H2H wins over both Vanderbilt and Texas, it's nearly certain that we'd be the #5 seed over Vanderbilt and Texas if these were the ranking lines the NCAA committee had to deal with in determining seeds.)

Here are the teams in our conference and on our schedule in the top 50:

1. Georgia (L)
5. Vanderbilt (W)
6. Texas (W, up 12)
7. Stanford (down 3)
11. UCLA (down 2)
13. Washington (down 3)
15. Cal (up 4)
16. USC (down 3)
23. LSU (W, down 2)
35. Washington State (W, down 2)
38. Princeton (W, up 11)
47. Utah (down 9)
50. Arizona State (W, up from NR)

If we beat UCLA and USC this weekend, our best 8 wins will be #5 Vanderbilt, #6 Texas, #11 UCLA (away), #16 USC (away), #23 LSU, #35 Washington State, #38 Princeton, and #50 Arizona State. Based on my back-of-the-napkin math, beating UCLA and USC would put us ahead of Duke again, and perhaps ahead of South Carolina as well, depending on how they do (a couple of road matches this weekend against #12 Texas A&M and #23 LSU, so some big points available for them). It would put us ahead of Vanderbilt and Texas, too, even if Vanderbilt beats Kentucky on the road. (Weirdly, Vanderbilt's wins over UW and Cal are now its two most valuable wins.) 

But the lesson is straightforward. Beat UCLA/USC and we're either #3 or #4, depending on how other matches shake out, and our annual dip in the rankings as we navigate having fewer quality wins than other teams only got as bad as #7. Lose to UCLA or USC, however, and the slide continues.

RE: Women's Tennis: Sun Devils and Wildcats - oldalum - 03-26-2019

(03-26-2019, 09:29 AM)ColoradoTree Wrote:  No official announcement yet from Stanford, but according to UC Davis, the match has been rescheduled for Wednesday, March 27 at 1pm. 

maybe a 50% chance the courts will be wet then. Today would have been better.