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RE: Women's Tennis: Round of 16 vs. North Carolina - ColoradoTree - 05-17-2018

Scheduling note: we will play the winner of the South Carolina-Georgia match at 12:00pm Eastern/9:00am Pacific on Saturday.  #3 Duke is playing during that same window, so if weather forces the matches indoors, it'll be our turn to drive to Chapel Hill, as the higher seed gets to stay and play at Wake.  If we play outside, it'll be on the Lower Courts, not the Leighton Family Courts.  

South Carolina is up 1-0 after taking the doubles point.  So far in singles, most matches are lopsided--Georgia has good leads on Courts 1 and 6 (took both first sets 6-1) and is up a break on 5 (4-2), South Carolina likes where it is on Courts 2 (5-2) and 3 (4-2), and Court  4 is tied 3-3 early. 

Let's hope for an exhausting marathon of a match where most matches go into tough third sets, eh?  Though we don't play the winner until Saturday, so there's enough time to recover.  (It's the final that can be rough that way, since the final is played the day after the semis--it hurt us last year as Taylor Davidson won an epic three-setter on a bum leg, and just didn't have enough left in the tank in her third set against Florida in the title match. I'm not sure I've ever been so shocked by a result than Higuchi losing 6-0, 6-0 in that one. That's what she usually did to people. We were close in that one, though, even though Florida won 4-1. Arbuthnott was up a break in her third set, and Lampl was on serve in hers.)
Some official quotes from the NCAA site: http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/wake/sports/w-tennis/auto_pdf/2017-18/misc_non_event/Match3Qutoes.pdf

Not much that's terribly newsworthy there, but the UNC coach seemed deflated and highlighted how they've been a top 2 seed the past two years but just couldn't get over the hump vs. Stanford each year.  The fact that they have all six singles players coming back bodes well for their chances next year, but then again, so do we.  

(That said, the incoming recruiting class has two blue chips, which would mean we'd be at 9 scholarships in an 8-scholarship-limit sport, so I remain confused on how that's going to work out, unless we've managed to persuade a freshman with some money that we'll hook them up with a scholarship after her freshman year, in which case Lele Forood is the world's greatest saleswoman. The alternative is that someone on this year's roster is transferring or going pro, which I wouldn't be super pumped about.  But if we end up with 9 blue chips on next year's roster?  That's just silly good.)

RE: Women's Tennis: Round of 16 vs. North Carolina - Spiny_Norman - 05-17-2018

CT, can women's tennis divide a full scholarship across multiple athletes - e.g., player 1 gets 50%, player 2 gets 50%? I know that others sports can do so.

RE: Women's Tennis: Round of 16 vs. North Carolina - ColoradoTree - 05-17-2018

South Carolina 1, Georgia 0

Singles update:

Court 1: #12 Jokic (UGA) leads #59 Gamarra Martins (SCAR) 6-1, 3-3
Court 2: #34 Berg (SCAR) leads #75 Shaffer (UGA) 6-2, 3-2
Court 3: Horvit (SCAR) leads #90 Gonzalez (UGA) 6-5
Court 4: Gould (UGA) leads Cline (SCAR) 6-4, 1-1
Court 5: Christofi (UGA) leads #113 Davies (SCAR) 6-2, 2-1
Court 6: #103 Coppoc (UGA) leads Rohrabacher (SCAR) 6-1, 5-4

South Carolina is going to need to force some third sets to make it through.  

FYI, by UTR, here's how the matchups would go versus both teams, in case you're looking for a rooting interest here:

Stanford vs. South Carolina

1. Gordon by 0.62
2. Lord by 0.10
3. Lampl by 0.18
4. Arbuthnott by 0.54
5. Shin would trail by 0.05
6. Higuchi by 0.31.

So, that's three courts with a strong edge, two courts with a slight edge, and one court where we trail slightly (Shin, whose chances you'd like anyway based on recent performance).

Stanford vs. Georgia

1. Gordon by 0.18
2. Tie (both at 11.87)
3. Lampl by 0.11
4. Arbuthnott by 0.10
5. Shin by 0.06
6. Higuchi would trail by 0.09.  

Stanford would have only slight edges at 4 courts, would be tied in another, and would trail slightly at Court 6 (though you bet against Higuchi at your peril).  

Because it's a much clearer path to victory versus South Carolina, I'm hoping South Carolina pulls off the upset here.
(05-17-2018, 01:12 PM)Spiny_Norman Wrote:  CT, can women's tennis divide a full scholarship across multiple athletes - e.g., player 1 gets 50%, player 2 gets 50%? I know that others sports can do so.

As I understand it, and I'm happy to be corrected, but I believe women's tennis is a headcount sport, so all scholarship athletes are on full rides, and you're limited to 8.
Oh, and lest we forget, that victory today over Alle Sanford moved Melissa Lord to 15-0 all-time in NCAA tournament play.  That's right.  She has never lost a match in the NCAA tournament. That's bonkers.

RE: Women's Tennis: Round of 16 vs. North Carolina - oldalum - 05-17-2018

(05-17-2018, 01:12 PM)Spiny_Norman Wrote:  CT, can women's tennis divide a full scholarship across multiple athletes - e.g., player 1 gets 50%, player 2 gets 50%? I know that others sports can do so.
CT is right: we get 8 full scholarships max. But the men, who get 4.5 scholarships, can. Not sure why--is it because of the Title IX need to balance overall number of men's and women's athletic scholarships??

RE: Women's Tennis: Round of 16 vs. North Carolina - BobK - 05-17-2018

We shall not be divided ?.  Yes a headcount full scholarship sport

RE: Women's Tennis: Round of 16 vs. North Carolina - 2006alum - 05-17-2018

Big congrats to our women's team - what an outstanding win over the nation's top-ranked team! And yeah, must really suck to be UNC and work so hard only to get a grossly underseeded opponent this early in the tournament.

Without knowing tons about the world of women's tennis, it seems like the sport would benefit from a ranking system similar to college football during the BCS era, should they want to retain computer metrics. For the first half of the season, the focus was on the AP and Coaches rankings, and then mid-way through, switched over to the BCS rankings once there were sufficient metrics to make good judgments. Or maybe something more like the College Football Committee, which does manual rankings but takes lots of stats into consideration. Regardless, when we're beating higher ranked teams almost 9 times out of 10, it's abundantly clear we are being systematically underranked year after year. That does a disservice not only to us, but also those highly ranked teams that I'm sure would love to avoid Stanford as long as possible.

Re: this being the result of our light schedule, in professional tennis, the rankings reward playing a certain number of tournaments in order to incentivize participation, which is the way the sport monetizes itself. But I don't think the college tennis tournaments are making anyone any money, so a rankings system that punishes schools that prioritize their students' academics and minimize mid-week travel seems perverse, to say the least. This should really be addressed, along with the requirement of a winning record, so as to obviate any future Razerback-esque shenanigans.

RE: Women's Tennis: Round of 16 vs. North Carolina - ColoradoTree - 05-17-2018

(7) Georgia 2, (10) South Carolina 2

Remaining matches: 

Court 1: #12 Jokic (UGA) leads #59 Gamarra Martins (SCAR) 6-1, 3-6, 1-0 (on serve)
Court 3: Horvit (SCAR) leads #90 Gonzalez (UGA) 7-5, 3-0
Court 5: Christofi (UGA) leads #113 Davies (SCAR) 6-2, 4-5 (SCAR up a break)

Completed matches:

Court 2: #34 Berg (SCAR) d. #75 Shaffer (UGA) 6-2, 6-4
Court 4: Gould (UGA) d. Cline (SCAR) 6-4, 6-1 
Court 6: #103 Coppoc (UGA) d. Rohrabacher (SCAR) 6-1, 6-4

South Carolina forced at least one third set, and will serve to force another, so it's still very much in the balance.
(05-17-2018, 01:56 PM)2006alum Wrote:  Big congrats to our women's team - what an outstanding win over the nation's top-ranked team! And yeah, must really suck to be UNC and work so hard only to get a grossly underseeded opponent this early in the tournament.

Without knowing tons about the world of women's tennis, it seems like the sport would benefit from a ranking system similar to college football during the BCS era, should they want to retain computer metrics. For the first half of the season, the focus was on the AP and Coaches rankings, and then mid-way through, switched over to the BCS rankings once there were sufficient metrics to make good judgments. Or maybe something more like the College Football Committee, which does manual rankings but takes lots of stats into consideration. Regardless, when we're beating higher ranked teams almost 9 times out of 10, it's abundantly clear we are being systematically underranked year after year.

Re: this being the result of our light schedule, in professional tennis, the rankings reward playing a certain number of tournaments in order to incentivize participation, which is the way the sport monetizes itself. But I don't think the college tennis tournaments are making anyone any money, so a rankings system that punishes schools that prioritize their students' academics and minimize mid-week travel seems perverse, to say the least. This should really be addressed, along with the requirement of a winning record, so obviate any future Razerback-esque shenanigans.

Interesting points, and I certainly agree that (1) college tennis tournaments aren't making anyone any money, and (2) Stanford is perenially and systematically underranked, so something should be done.

The ITA rankings actually do what you suggest already.  They go with a committee approach for the first several weeks of the season (where Stanford traditionally does very well) before it goes over to the algorithm for the rest of the season.  What the ITA rankings do is count your 10 best wins and subtract points for all of your losses.  Wins over good teams are worth more, and losses to good teams barely hurt your ranking at all, while losses to bad teams hurt more.  Your 11th-best win doesn't factor in at all, nor do wins less impressive than that. Theoretically, Stanford could play as an independent, only play the top 10 other teams in the country, go 10-0, and they'd be the #1 team in the country by far.  So, you could argue that the ITA ranking system doesn't demand mid-week matches and tournament play more than it demands a certain number of matches against good teams.  The way the early season has developed, however, most of the top teams are locked into Kick-Off Weekend and National Indoors, so those are two weeks/weekends that are booked, making it tougher to schedule some of those top teams.  That said, usually wins over Cal, UCLA, and USC count for a lot, but this year, only UCLA held up its end of the bargain, so beating Cal and USC this year just didn't move the needle. 

In my mind, there's no way to do an objective set of rankings that accurately captures how good Stanford and Pepperdine are, because of our schedule and perhaps weakening conference, and because of Pepperdine's terrible conference.  Slam.tennis is trying to create an ELO-type ranking system for tennis, however: https://slam.tennis/teams/rankings.asp?season=2018&div=di&topic=women&week=13  After the first two rounds of the tournament, Stanford was 6th in that ranking.  (This match, over the #1 team in that ranking, will certainly help.)  That ranking is something to keep an eye on moving forward. More information, and more ways of looking at how good a team is, should only help Stanford.

I'm not saying the ITA and the NCAA don't have some blame here.  They do (particularly the NCAA, since they're the ones that set the seeds and can depart all they want from ITA rankings).  But other teams are choosing to play tougher schedules, while we mostly don't, so any ranking that purports to be objective is going to underrank Stanford.  The only way to get to a fair ranking, from Stanford's perspective, is to follow your alternative approach: have a poll of experts do the rankings until the bitter end and never switch over to an objective results-based ranking.  I'd be in favor of that approach, and the USTA started doing that this year--in the final pre-NCAA rankings, Pepperdine was 4th and Stanford was 6th, which is probably about right.  If only the NCAA would start looking to the USTA rankings, then we'd be in much better shape.

RE: Women's Tennis: Round of 16 vs. North Carolina - Viking_Guy - 05-17-2018

Wow.  That was strange.

UGA just won 4-3 by winning #1 singles, 6-1, 3-6, 6-4.  In the final game, South Carolina's Gamarra Martins was serving up 30-0, then tried to slide into a forehand return and tweaked something.  After a few minutes for treatment, she came back and won the next point to have a 40-15 lead and chance to tie up the set.  

She QUICK-SERVED, underhanding a short ball into the court, which Georgia's Jokic converted into a hammered approach and then a put-away volley.  Gammara Martins then double-faulted, and on a second-serve, had an advantage, tried to come in on a short ball, and put her approach into the net.

Strange way to end the match, but Stanford will be playing the Bulldogs on Saturday.

VG

RE: Women's Tennis: Round of 16 vs. North Carolina - StanfordMatt - 05-17-2018

Yeah, deplorable sportsmanship from the South Carolina player. As much as I wanted South Carolina to win for Stanford’s chances, it would’ve been a shame to see them rewarded for that stunt.

The injury timeout also seemed a tad shady but hard to know just from watching the live feed.

RE: Women's Tennis: Round of 16 vs. North Carolina - oldalum - 05-17-2018

I agree with the various sentiments on the flaws with the NCAA's current seedings approach, which is to rely exclusively on the final ITA computer rankings. The primary goal should be to seed teams commensurate with their strength, not to banish all human judgment from the rankings system. The NCAA should rely heavily on the computer rankings, but add a committee's judgment to adjust them when those rankings are clearly flawed. Their refusal to do so is a disservice to Stanford, Pepperdine, and their early opponents, and really makes a mockery of the rankings.
(05-17-2018, 02:56 PM)Viking_Guy Wrote:  She QUICK-SERVED, underhanding a short ball into the court,
I didn't see it, but if the Georgia player was not prepared to receive serve, she was entitled to immediately say so and not return it. If she was ready to receive but surprised by the underhanded delivery, that is legal, but the sportsmanship is unclear to me. I mean, is the South Carolina player supposed to announce in advance that the next serve is going to be underhanded? Sounds like it didn't work anyway.

RE: Women's Tennis: Round of 16 vs. North Carolina - donkey687 - 05-17-2018

I like the enthusiasm here in following the tournament, but it is a little strange to see the Georgia South Carolina women's tennis match getting more posts and attention than the majority of our men's hoops games this season.

RE: Women's Tennis: Round of 16 vs. North Carolina - 2006alum - 05-17-2018

(05-17-2018, 03:51 PM)donkey687 Wrote:  I like the enthusiasm here in following the tournament, but it is a little strange to see the Georgia South Carolina women's tennis match getting more posts and attention than the majority of our men's hoops games this season.

Well, in fairness, our women's tennis team has won the national title SEVEN times since the last time our men's team won the PAC-12 conference or tournament title, and scoping out our Elite Eight competition would seem to be more important than most regular season MBB games once it was clear we were unlikely to even get an NIT invite.

Personally, I love our deep bench of alum enthusiasm for non-revenue sports. I'll always get highlights and game quotes from even our worst performing men's basketball teams, so bring on the color commentary for all those sports that aren't going to be all over ESPN! And on that note, three cheers to ColoradoTree, Viking_Guy, and everyone else giving us such great updates. I say keep 'em coming!

RE: Women's Tennis: Round of 16 vs. North Carolina - oldalum - 05-17-2018

(05-17-2018, 03:51 PM)donkey687 Wrote:  I like the enthusiasm here in following the tournament, but it is a little strange to see the Georgia South Carolina women's tennis match getting more posts and attention than the majority of our men's hoops games this season.
well, there's a difference between regular season games and NCAA games. I suspect if men's basketball was playing in the sweet sixteen today and had a good chance of winning, there'd be a lot of posts and attention to the game between our possible regional final opponents.
now that we've disposed of the University of Fake Classes, I like our path to the final, which if we get there would be an epic match against probably vanderbilt or pepperdine.

RE: Women's Tennis: Round of 16 vs. North Carolina - qwerty49 - 05-17-2018

(05-17-2018, 10:57 AM)StanfordMatt Wrote:  Lampl's opponent has resorted to hitting some of her second serves underhand. Lampl should be able to take advantage but something as unconventional as that can mess with your head sometimes.

Didn't Michael Chang beat Lendl that way back in the day?

It's very easy to overthink and get too careful returning a serve like that.  I was taught to put everything out of my mind and treat it like any drill when your opponent hits a short shot, i.e. drive it hard and deep down the line and come in to choke off the return, you only lose to a low percentage cross-court shot or topspin lob.  But I grew up in the Jurassic Age of tennis when net play made all the difference -- and I still have nothing in my mind!

RE: Women's Tennis: Round of 16 vs. North Carolina - Canalejas - 05-17-2018

UCLA upsets #5 seed Ole Miss to also reach the quarterfinals.

RE: Women's Tennis: Round of 16 vs. North Carolina - BostonCard - 05-17-2018

(05-17-2018, 08:17 PM)Canalejas Wrote:  UCLA upsets #5 seed Ole Miss to also reach the quarterfinals.

So that's the 2 seed, 5 seed, 6 seed (Texas), 8 (Oklahoma State) and 9 (Florida) seeds all upset.

BC

RE: Women's Tennis: Round of 16 vs. North Carolina - ColoradoTree - 05-18-2018

UCLA over Ole Miss is one of those upsets that barely deserves the name.  By UTR, UCLA is the 8th-best team in the country, and Ole Miss was 13th.  UCLA had a slight edge in USTA ranking, and Ole Miss an even slighter edge in the slam.tennis ELO-ish rankings.  UCLA is a terrific doubles team, so you'd give them the edge there (and that's how it turned out), and while the top 3 courts either favored Ole Miss slightly or were coin flips, UCLA had big UTR leads on the back three courts (though one of them, Abi Altick, lost again despite a 0.51 UTR advantage). UCLA won its other two singles matches where they had big UTR advantages and also won the coin flip, and Ole Miss won the two matches where they had a UTR advantage. 

The result that really shocks me is that Georgia Tech beat Pepperdine.  I know a 4 seed beating a 13 is what should happen, but by UTR, Pepperdine was 2nd and Georgia Tech was 9th, the Waves had decent UTR advantages on four singles courts and a slight lead on a fifth, and Pepperdine won the regular-season matchup.  This was an interesting matchup in that it was something of a test case for comparing an excellent team who hasn't really been tested in months due to conference play versus a very good team who has been tested week in and week out in what is probably the best conference in the country, the ACC.  (In all of our commiseration over how Stanford is treated in the seeding, while our conference may not have as many elite-level teams as it usually does, we still get tested by teams ranked in the 30s and 40s, at least.)  In Pepperdine's one real test in the home stretch, they lost to UCLA in Malibu.  While Pepperdine and Stanford have the same history of being underseeded and underranked, Pepperdine doesn't have the same track record of overperforming their seed (as the 12 seed last year, they beat 5th seed Georgia in the Round of 16 in Athens before falling to 4th seed Vanderbilt; two years ago, though, they lost to top seed Cal** in the quarterfinals, and that was the first time they'd reached the quarters since 1994). 

So, eight teams left.  Three from the ACC, two from the Pac-12, two from the SEC, and one from the Big 12. The Pac-12 may have been down this year overall, but the top held its ground.  (Unlike the Big Ten, whose lone representative in Winston-Salem--Northwestern--got trounced by Duke.)

Comparing power conference performance so far, we have the following:

* Pac-12: 2/4 tournament teams made QFs, including both seeds advancing over higher seeds; 1 team lost in the first round, 1 team lost in the second round

* ACC: 3/10 tournament teams made QFs, including one unseeded team, the #3, and the #4; 2 teams lost in the first round, 3 in the second round, and 2 in the Round of 16 (2nd-seeded UNC and 16th-seeded Miami)

* SEC: 2/11 tournament teams made QFs: 4 lost in first round, 3 more lost in second round (incl. 9th-seeded Florida), and 2 more in Round of 16 (incl. 5th-seeded Ole Miss and 10th-seeded South Carolina)

* Big 12: 1/6 tournament teams made QFs: none lost in the first round, 4 lost in the second round (incl. 8th-seeded Oklahoma State), and 1 more in the Round of 16 (6th-seeded Texas).

* Big Ten: 0/4 tournament teams made QFs: 1 team lost in first round, 2 in second round, and 1 in the Round of 16 to a higher seed

I'll take what the Pac-12 did over anybody else.  I think the Pac-12 is underrated, the ACC properly rated as excellent, the SEC overrated, the Big 12 probably rated as pretty good but not great, and the Big Ten either overrated or properly rated as not very good (its champion was unseeded and its top-ranked team the 14th seed, after all).  Of the 5 ousted seeds that lost to either lower seeds or unseeded teams, 2 came from the SEC, 2 from the Big 12, and 1 from the ACC.  Of the 5 teams that pulled off those upsets, two came from the Pac-12, 1 from the Big 12, 1 from the ACC, and 1 from the American Athletic Conference (Tulsa). 

Quarterfinal matchups:

(1) Vanderbilt vs. Florida State
(4) Georgia Tech vs. (12) UCLA

(3) Duke vs. (11) Texas Tech
(7) Georgia vs. (15) Stanford

** You guys, Cal was the top overall seed in the NCAA tournament two years ago.  I knew it at the time, but I've since put it out of my mind that they lost in the semis to Oklahoma State, who we then beat in the final. (Oklahoma State was way better than their seed that year, to be fair.)  Cal was the best regular season team in women's tennis two years ago, and they missed the tournament altogether this year.  Wowza.
One quick note on Washington.  They were the first team out this year, but some folks have looked at the ITA rankings and when they ran the numbers again, Washington should have been the last team in, over Kansas State.  What happened is that a couple of match results (involving neither Kansas State nor Washington, to be clear) weren't timely uploaded to the ITA's system, so they were omitted from the calculations.  But had those two match results been included, it would have lowered the quality of one of KSU's wins and made one of their losses slightly worse, just barely enough to have Washington squeak ahead of them.  

The Huskies should rightfully be upset (I haven't seen a statement from them, so I don't know if they are). It's unlikely that they would have done much damage, but if you put them in Kansas State's spot, they get a chance to play a mid-tier SEC team in Kentucky, and then challenge one of the weaker seeds, Northwestern, in the second round.  I don't think UW had the depth to get past Northwestern, but it's not out of the question.

RE: Women's Tennis: Round of 16 vs. North Carolina - StanfordMatt - 05-18-2018

(05-17-2018, 08:07 PM)qwerty49 Wrote:  Didn't Michael Chang beat Lendl that way back in the day?

It's very easy to overthink and get too careful returning a serve like that.  I was taught to put everything out of my mind and treat it like any drill when your opponent hits a short shot, i.e. drive it hard and deep down the line and come in to choke off the return, you only lose to a low percentage cross-court shot or topspin lob.  But I grew up in the Jurassic Age of tennis when net play made all the difference -- and I still have nothing in my mind!

He did, although the primary factor motivating Chang's underhand serve was exhaustion and cramping (it was in the 5th set of a match that had gone on for 4.5 hours). Martina Hingis also infamously used an underhand serve against Steffi Graf in the 1999 French Open final and was booed mercilessly by the French crowd for doing so. Hingis' intent was clearly to catch Graf off guard with the tactic. It worked for Hingis in the short-term as she won the point but ultimately lost the match.

(05-17-2018, 03:03 PM)oldalum Wrote:  I didn't see it, but if the Georgia player was not prepared to receive serve, she was entitled to immediately say so and not return it. If she was ready to receive but surprised by the underhanded delivery, that is legal, but the sportsmanship is unclear to me. I mean, is the South Carolina player supposed to announce in advance that the next serve is going to be underhanded? Sounds like it didn't work anyway.

In my view, we saw two different types of underhand serves yesterday. Lampl's opponent utilized the tactic frequently enough that there was no surprise factor. The serve wasn't particularly effective; it was almost as if she knew the rules of tennis mandated that she be the one to start the points during her service games and that was the most efficient way for her to get the task over with and into the point. I would've liked to see Lampl take more advantage of the weak serve, but I didn't think there was anything unsportsmanlike about it. Even when Hingis used the underhand serve against Graf and the motivation was to trick the returner, I still don't think there was a sportsmanship issue. While the French crowd took exception, if you watch the clip on YouTube you can see that both players were set and ready for the point to begin. The difference with the way in which South Carolina's Martins used the underhand serve was, as Viking Guy noted, she RUSHED to the baseline and served quickly in an attempt to catch Georgia's player off guard. In my opinion, this was bush league. Oldalum is correct to point out that the Georgia player could've refused to return the serve and told the umpire that she wasn't ready so that the point would be replayed. However, I think it would've been very risky to leave a call like that up to the judgment of the umpire given the stakes. And regardless of what the Georgia player could have done, it was the intent of Martins that made the serve so nefarious.

Personally, I think Martins' actions were representative of a growing decline in sportsmanship across college tennis. I don't watch as much of the women as I do the men, but if you watch a men's college match you're almost assured to see at least one example of a blatantly bad line call. It's rampant throughout the sport. There was a good article in the Washington Post last fall discussing how bad cheating has become at the youth levels and most college players are products of the youth system. It's gotten to the point where on big points, college players will call winners out knowing full well that the ball was in just to "make sure" in case the umpire doesn't overrule them. Sadly, even William Genesen was guilty of this in Stanford's second round match versus Ole Miss last week. On set point for the Ole Miss player in the second set tiebreaker, Genesen called a clear winner for the Ole Miss player out only to be immediately overruled by the umpire. In another instance of poor sportsmanship from this year's ITA National Indoor Tournament, Texas A&M's Patrick Kypson spit in his hand before going to shake hands with the Ohio State player who had just defeated him. I'm not sure what can be done to solve these problems, but I know it's a far bigger issue for college tennis than playing with ad's or the length of doubles matches.

Ok, I'll get off my soapbox now and let this thread return to celebrating our women's team's victory.

RE: Women's Tennis: Round of 16 vs. North Carolina - 2006alum - 05-18-2018

(05-18-2018, 11:29 AM)StanfordMatt Wrote:   I'm not sure what can be done to solve these problems, but I know it's a far bigger issue for college tennis than playing with ad's or the length of doubles matches.

Depends on the offense. For something like spitting in your hand before shaking your opponent's hand, that's so easy to catch that that player should be kept out of X subsequent matches and the team he plays on required to forfeit the spot. Starting with a 0-1 disadvantage for two or three subsequent matches would cause people to shape up real quick.

The harder stuff is the line calling because it's so difficult to objectively measure the difference between egregious calls and run-of-the-mill errors. How expensive is hawkeye these days? I would think the long-term solution at the college level is just to encourage D1 schools to adopt the technology on their courts. I imagine it's relatively cheap to operate once it's installed? At least for NCAA tournament games, they should absolutely utilize that, because it would totally obviate the advantage of making numerous egregious calls. Have ten straight hawk-eyes go against you, and you're probably going to stop calling crap. But maybe it's too expensive to install/maintain and/or staff its operation during matches. But that seems like the only fix short of a full line crew.