Women's Tennis: Indoor Nationals

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RE: Women's Tennis: Indoor Nationals - oldalum - 02-11-2019

with court cams it's impossible to see close calls accurately, either way

great match at #1
Stanford team making themselves heard too

RE: Women's Tennis: Indoor Nationals - ColoradoTree - 02-11-2019

Jokic didn't like that call, but it's a break for Michaela, and we're back on serve at 3-3!

Ouch. Michaela had a couple of game points, but Jokic wins two straight to go up a break again....

Ugh. Jokic holds at love, and Michaela will serve to stay in it, trailing 5-3 in the third....

Losing stinks. Sigh.

RE: Women's Tennis: Indoor Nationals - ColoradoTree - 02-11-2019

OK, let's start with the positives first.

* A nice effort to close out a tight doubles point.
* A routine win from Shin that we couldn't even appreciate because we had no idea what the score was. But that's a player that Shin split sets with last year, and this year Shin took care of business. A nice bounce-back win for her after a tough day yesterday.
* A great performance from Lampl, shaking off a disappointing first set to drop just three games across the final two sets.
* Losing doesn't hurt us too much. We won't (and shouldn't) be #1 after this loss, but that's because either Georgia or the UNC/Duke winner will have put together a ridiculous resume over the course of a week. We probably weren't going to go undefeated this season, so we can feast on this disappointment and let it fuel us.
* We got a couple of good wins out of this week, and we're 5-1. We're still probably the best team in the Pac-12, and depending on how things go with Vanderbilt and the Texas rematch, we could still be in the top couple of teams the rest of the year. Remember, this year is about getting in the top 8 by the end of the year, so we can host throughout the postseason until the final site. We're still on track for that.

The negatives:

* What happened with Higuchi and Arbuthnott??
* Lord unraveled at the end of that first set and could never find herself again. In retrospect, losing in doubles might have been a sign that she just wasn't right today.

It's a bummer that Gordon lost, but sometimes when you play the top player in college tennis, you lose. (Jokic is ranked #2, but has the highest UTR). She pushed her to the limit, and that's all you can reasonably ask. I'm not disappointed in Michaela in the least. I'm disappointed in Lord, Higuchi, and Arbuthnott. And disappointed isn't even the right word for Arbuthnott and Higuchi--bewildered, confused, flabbergasted all get to the point better.

But all in all, we flush this and move onto the next match. We have a home match against Santa Clara this Friday to cleanse the palate, and then it's Vanderbilt the weekend after that and a Texas rematch the weekend after that. A little context, too: last year, we lost three matches before February was out, including getting *blanked* by Vanderbilt, and we came back to beat them in the NCAA final. Three years ago, we lost to Ole Miss, Vandy, Arizona State, Pepperdine, and Cal, and we won the whole darn thing, avenging a loss to Vandy in the tournament, too. A few years before that, we lost to Cal, USC, Florida, and *St. Mary's* of all teams, and we won the whole darn thing, avenging losses to USC and Florida in the tournament, too. The last time Stanford finished the regular season undefeated, it lost in the NCAA final to Florida in 2011. We'll be OK.

RE: Women's Tennis: Indoor Nationals - oldalum - 02-11-2019

(02-11-2019, 03:03 PM)ColoradoTree Wrote: last year, we lost three matches before February was out, including getting *blanked* by Vanderbilt, and we came back to beat them in the NCAA final. Three years ago, we lost to Ole Miss, Vandy, Arizona State, Pepperdine, and Cal, and we won the whole darn thing, avenging a loss to Vandy in the tournament, too.

true, BUT, we were missing our #1 or #2 player for all of the above losses, which has a brobdingnagian effect, while we are at full strength now. However, I agree with your conclusion that we'll be OK; we will improve a lot and everyone's losses will help motivate them. In particular, I'm very encouraged by our doubles wins against good teams. They've been rare in the past few years, but not now. Gordon/Arbuthnott played #1 doubles last year and this year are #2 to Lampl/Yee, and Lampl/Yee have been delivering the wins. And even when they lose, I would expect our #2 and #3 teams will often pull out the doubles point for us.

After Higuchi's two surprise blow-out losses, I wonder if Madurawe will get a shot at replacing her.

We will clearly have some tough competition in the NCAA tourney. The championship match (tomorrow?) will be interesting.

RE: Women's Tennis: Indoor Nationals - ColoradoTree - 02-11-2019

Now that it's over, was returning to Kick-Off Weekend and Indoor Nationals worth it?

Who came off the schedule compared to last year:

* #7 Pepperdine
* #22 Florida
* TCU
* UNLV
* San Jose State
* UCSB

What stayed on:

* #6 Texas
* #2 Vanderbilt
* St. Mary's
* Hawaii

What got added:

* A second match against Wazzu
* #18 LSU
* A second match against #6 Texas
* #5 Georgia
* Princeton
* Santa Clara
* UC Davis

It's good that we got two ranked wins this week, but we could have gotten those if we'd kept Pepperdine and/or Florida on the schedule, and we could have played those matches outdoors. This was billed as a way for us to ensure getting into the top 8 at the end of the year rather than float around the edge of the top 16. We can reevaluate based on year-end rankings, but it's maybe slightly better this year, since LSU and Florida are comparable right now, and Georgia and Pepperdine are comparable, so adding a second match against Texas gives this year a slight edge. But it's certainly not the schedule saver that it was reputed to be.

RE: Women's Tennis: Indoor Nationals - oldalum - 02-11-2019

(02-06-2019, 02:42 PM)oldalum Wrote: I always feel sorry for the poor soul at #6 singles who has to play Higuchi.

reality check: I have to take back my words, at least for the moment.

(02-11-2019, 04:03 PM)ColoradoTree Wrote: This was billed as a way for us to ensure getting into the top 8 at the end of the year rather than float around the edge of the top 16. . . it's certainly not the schedule saver that it was reputed to be.

well, that was oversold. By participating we gave ourselves the opportunity to improve our ranking points, but only if we made the finals. You still have to win the matches. No consolation prize for losses to top teams: they don't help at all in the computer rankings, they actually lower your score (but only by a tiny amount).

RE: Women's Tennis: Indoor Nationals - ColoradoTree - 02-11-2019

Amen, oldalum. From the official team preview of the National Indoors:

[quote]Simply participating in the ITA National Team Indoor Championships should only cement the Cardinal's already lofty ranking. It would also likely translate into a more manageable postseason path for Stanford, which has inexplicably been seeded higher than No. 5 only once (at No. 1 in 2011) over the last 10 years. [/quote]

https://gostanford.com/news/2019/2/7/womens-tennis-we-re-back-indoors.aspx

That's now how this works. That's not how any of this works. (Also, to further beat this dead horse, our seeding is super explicable. "We play a lighter and weaker schedule than most other teams, and the rankings weigh the quality of your wins against the quality of your losses, so any attempt to capture--in ranking/seeding form--just how good our season was will generally underrate how good we are, and therefore, how likely we are to win the NCAA tournament." There, I explicated it. I mean, I've argued the NCAA tennis tournament committee should take more data points into account rather than just rely on the ITA rankings, but it's not like it's a mystery how they calculate this stuff.)

And that's a great point on scheduling, oldalum, and one I always try and stress--yes, you have to win the matches, but losing to great teams ain't so bad. College tennis incentivizes scheduling tough matches, and that's kind of awesome. Go to Athens and play Georgia. Go to Nashville and play Vanderbilt. Go to Chapel Hill to play UNC. If you win, it's a major boost to your ranking, but if you lose, it barely affects you. Can you imagine if college football had a structure that only dinged you the tiniest bit for losing to Alabama or Clemson? I can only imagine the HOT TAKES that would erupt if a 10-2 Stanford team that beat Notre Dame and swept through the Pac-12 but lost to Alabama made it into a future hypothetical playoff over, say, 11-1 Oklahoma who played nobody tough in the non-conference portion. That'd be great! More high-caliber non-conference matchups is great for the sport, and I'm glad tennis recognizes that.

RE: Women's Tennis: Indoor Nationals - oldalum - 02-11-2019

good points, there is trivial downside to tough scheduling in college tennis, except you have to get your points (wins) somewhere so you can't overdo the tough scheduling unless you win some of them. And you get a 10% points bonus for an away win (but not a neutral site win).

My main criticism of the women's tennis NCAA tournament seeding is that the committee too slavishly follows the computer rankings without making adequate adjustments for unusual circumstances. For example, when we lost all those matches three years ago because we were missing our number 1 player for them (off playing internationally), most (or all?) of those losses were 4-3 and we would have won most of them with our #1 player in the lineup. Our seeding should have reflected that.

RE: Women's Tennis: Indoor Nationals - ColoradoTree - 02-12-2019

(02-11-2019, 11:57 PM)oldalum Wrote: good points, there is trivial downside to tough scheduling in college tennis, except you have to get your points (wins) somewhere so you can't overdo the tough scheduling unless you win some of them. And you get a 10% points bonus for an away win (but not a neutral site win).

My main criticism of the women's tennis NCAA tournament seeding is that the committee too slavishly follows the computer rankings without making adequate adjustments for unusual circumstances. For example, when we lost all those matches three years ago because we were missing our number 1 player for them (off playing internationally), most (or all?) of those losses were 4-3 and we would have won most of them with our #1 player in the lineup. Our seeding should have reflected that.

I completely agree on both of your points. Our seeding should have been adjusted last year due to Lord's injury and a few years ago because Zhao was off playing with Team Canada (your memory is pretty good, too--4 of our 5 losses in 2016 were by 4-3 scores). I think tournament organizers have an obligation to present a bracket that is fair to the teams in it, taking into account the performance that year through whatever calculation they prefer, but also with an eye toward how personnel changes have affected the team's level. It shouldn't affect whether a team makes the tournament--you can't wipe away the wins a team earned, even if its #1 is now out for the season--but seeding should more comprehensively get at how good a team is right now. North Carolina earned the #1 seed last year, and it was fair to neither them nor us to put those two teams on a collision course in the Round of 16, when that's a final- or semifinal-caliber match. (Of course, we shouldn't have been seeded in the top handful of teams, though, even if you account for Lord's injury. Take the Texas and Florida losses and turn them into wins (I still think we lose to Vandy in Nashville--I still can't believe we lost that match 7-0), and we're top 8 at 20-1, but we still didn't schedule hard enough to deserve to be seeded at the very top. But we should've been higher, certainly.) I'd be all for an approach that used the ITA rankings as a cutoff to establish the tournament field, while then adjusting seeding to reflect the kind of roster issues you mention.

There is absolutely a downside to tough scheduling, and Cal experienced it last year. Even though they played some very good teams close (they lost 4-3 to Texas and UCLA), they didn't turn close losses into wins, and they were left outside the NCAA tournament field for the first time in program history. They doubled up with USC and UCLA and lost 3 out of those 4 matches. They lost to Pepperdine, and had the bad luck to have a match against a good Texas Tech team rained out. They also gambled that they'd make it to Indoor Nationals and get a couple wins, but they got upset by Texas (it's really been a meteoric rise for the Longhorns) at Kick-Off Weekend, meaning they had that weekend off. But if they'd taken care of business in the Pac-12, they still would have made the tournament and could have played spoiler to some regional host. They didn't, losing 4-0 at Arizona State, 5-2 at Washington, 4-3 at USC, and 4-3 vs. Washington State in the conference tournament. Win two of those three and they're in. Or beat Texas to make it to Indoor Nationals, and win one of your three matches there, and you're in. It was really a combination of bad luck and a certain approach to scheduling, but that Florida road win gives Cal's case this year a big boost, and they seem improved this year anyway.

It helps to have a good--but not too good--conference to bail you out if you schedule too hard but lose a lot of those matches closely. If you're, say, a top-10 caliber team who can reliably beat teams in the 20s and 30s, you'll still be OK even if you swing and miss when you play the other top 10 teams. (In terms of making the tournament, that is. You're not getting seeded without some better wins than that. Beating UCLA last year in early March was absolutely necessary for us getting seeded; we probably don't even host a regional without that one.)

Stanford's approach has generally been to do just enough to get into the top 16, but not have too many early-season tests, and betting that we'll win the few ranked matchups that we do schedule. Rather, we build throughout the season so we're in peak form at NCAAs. I don't know that this year's schedule is robust enough to absorb many more ranked losses and still see us make the top 8 (now that it's super regionals rather than the final 16 making the final site), but lucky for us, we get Vanderbilt and Texas at home. We play at UCLA, at USC, and at Cal, though, so our road to another Pac-12 title will be tougher than usual, especially since UCLA is still good and USC and Cal look to be good again. I think we're the best team in the conference, to be sure, but road conference matches are tricky things.

RE: Women's Tennis: Indoor Nationals - oldalum - 02-12-2019

close finals match, which suggests Georgia really is good. UNC won the doubles point 6-1 and 6-2 on the first two courts (UGA's Jokic and partner won 6-1 on court 3). But Georgia has already tied it up with a quick win on court 5, and won first sets on courts 2 and 6 (UNC won first sets on courts 3 and 4). Court 1 is in a first-set tiebreaker, and if everything holds the match will probably come down to court 1.

RE: Women's Tennis: Indoor Nationals - ColoradoTree - 02-12-2019

(02-12-2019, 12:42 PM)oldalum Wrote: close finals match, which suggests Georgia really is good. UNC won the doubles point 6-1 and 6-2 on the first two courts (UGA's Jokic and partner won 6-1 on court 3). But Georgia has already tied it up with a quick win on court 5, and won first sets on courts 2 and 6 (UNC won first sets on courts 3 and 4). Court 1 is in a first-set tiebreaker, and if everything holds the match will probably come down to court 1.

We're gonna turn everyone here into a women's tennis fan yet, my friend.

Georgia 2, UNC 2 right now after Georgia added a win at #6 to the win at #5 (I mean, UNC is also crazy deep, so Georgia winning against us at #5 and #6 and then repeating the feat against UNC is a little scary), and UNC got one back at #3 after Georgia forced a third set there. Georgia also forced a third set on #4 and has taken the momentum there, while UNC forced a third on #2 but is down a break.

1. Jones (UNC) leads 7-6, 5-6 (Jokic held down 4-5 and then broke for the chance to serve out the set)
2. Gonzalez (UGA) leads Daavettila (UNC) 6-3, 6-7, 2-1 (up a break)
4. Wolff (UGA) leads 4-6, 6-3, 5-2

Georgia has what it needs right now, if results hold....

Aside from yesterday, here's how our players have done against these folks so far this year:

* At the USTA Blizzard Wild Card challenge (which Gordon went on to win), Gordon lost to Makenna Jones 13-11 in a match tiebreaker after they split the first two sets at 7-5 apiece. That should be a great match if we see UNC in the NCAAs.
* At ITA All-Americans back in October, Arbuthnott lost to Jokic, 7-5, 6-2. At the same tournament, Gordon lost to UNC's #3, Alexa Graham, 0-6, 6-3, 6-3.
* At the Freeman Memorial Championships last month, Kimberly Yee lost to UNC's Jessie Aney, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1.

Georgia 3, North Carolina 2

Georgia gets the win at #4 (4-6, 6-3, 6-2) to go up 3-2.

1. Jokic won the second set 7-5, and it's on serve early in the third.
2. Gonzalez now leads 5-2 in the third and will serve for the match now.

Georgia 3, North Carolina 2

1. Jokic (UGA) and Jones (UNC) still on serve in the third, with Jones leading 3-2
2. Getting tighter! Daavettila breaks for 3-5 in the third and then holds for 4-5. Gonzalez gets another chance to serve it out right now.

Georgia 3, North Carolina 2

Things turning UNC's way....

1. Jones (UNC) broke Jokic and consolidated, and all of a sudden she's up 5-2, and Jokic will serve to stay in the match.
2. Oh boy. Gonzalez is broken again and it's back on serve. She had match points up 5-3, and was also up 5-4, 30-0. Ouch.

Georgia 3, North Carolina 2

1. After a time-out, Jokic is serving to stay in the match, down 2-5.
2. Now Gonzalez breaks, and she'll serve for her match--and the Georgia win--again, now up 6-5.

Goodness. Jokic holds at love to 3-5, but Daavettila breaks Gonzalez at love to send that match to a third-set tiebreaker. Gonzalez has had all the chances she could have wanted, but she's let them slip away.... Jones serving now on Court 1, so this match could be over--either way--within a couple of minutes.

Daavettila controlled the tiebreaker, winning it 7-3 for a 3-6, 7-6, 7-6 win to tie the match at 3 points apiece. Over at #1, however, Jokic has won four straight games to go up 6-5, and was serving for the match, but was broken at love because this entire match is absurd. A third-set tiebreaker on Court 1 between #2 Jokic and #6 Jones will decide the championship.

RE: Women's Tennis: Indoor Nationals - ColoradoTree - 02-12-2019

Jokic dominates the tiebreaker, and wins over Jones 6-7 (3), 7-5, 7-6 (2), to give Georgia the ITA National Women's Team Indoor Championship by a 4-3 score.

If we had to lose, then at least we lost to the ultimate champions, right?

Hats off to Georgia, who lost the doubles point in three consecutive matches and pulled out 4-3 wins over the top 3 teams in the country--#2 Vanderbilt, then #1 Stanford, then #3 UNC. They'll be #1 with a bullet in the new ITA team rankings that come out tomorrow.

Georgia is already trumpeting its "sixth national championship in program history."

Uhh, folks, that's not a thing. There is one national championship per season, it's played outdoors, it's run by the NCAA, and it's the last thing we do all season, not as an optional indoors tournament before conference play even starts. Georgia has won two national championships, in 1994 and 2000. I can't even tell you how many Stanford has won if we start counting National Indoors on the same level as NCAAs, but it's more than the 19 we currently have.

Sure, this tournament is a big deal, I'm glad we played in it, and Georgia is rightly thrilled about winning it. But counting it the same as a season-ending NCAA title is just ridiculous.

RE: Women's Tennis: Indoor Nationals - oldalum - 02-12-2019

The Georgiadogs.com tennis writer probably caught the same hype bug that afflicts ours.

So we now know there are two very tough teams that I think are currently just a little ahead of us (UGA and UNC). But it's a long season and we always improve a lot during it.

But what's up with Higuchi? Our old reliable? Maybe we can attribute her Texas blow-out loss to the 6'3" height of that Texas frosh, but the Georgia player who blew her out is a freshman who is 5'4" and whose previous highest-ranked win was against No. 118.

Arbuthnott was named Pac-12 player of the week for her 2 match-clinching victories at the Indoors (wish it were 3!)

Ordinarily I'd be pleased with my earlier statement about the championship match ("if everything holds the match will probably come down to court 1") but unfortunately it's just a case of a broken clock being right twice a day.

RE: Women's Tennis: Indoor Nationals - oldalum - 02-13-2019

new ITA team rankings are out. No surprise that the 4 semifinalists are the top 4: UGA, UNC, us, then Duke. Vanderbilt is 5th based on their narrow 4-3 loss to UGA; I actually would have put them ahead of Duke based on Duke's 4-0 loss to UNC, even though it was in the semifinals.

RE: Women's Tennis: Indoor Nationals - ColoradoTree - 02-13-2019

(02-12-2019, 05:54 PM)oldalum Wrote: But what's up with Higuchi? Our old reliable? Maybe we can attribute her Texas blow-out loss to the 6'3" height of that Texas frosh, but the Georgia player who blew her out is a freshman who is 5'4" and whose previous highest-ranked win was against No. 118.

I'm at a loss. Heck, earlier this season, it seemed like she'd made a real jump. At ITA All-Americans, she beat now-#9 Silvia Ambrosio of Purdue, 7-6, 6-1, and then she pushed now-#17 Ida Jarlskog of Florida to three sets in the next round. The height thing against Texas makes sense to me, because she now has six dual losses in her career (which is insanely low, let's concede that), and three are to players who are very tall by women's tennis standards: 6'3", 5'11", and 5'10". (The other three were 5'6", 5'5", and 5'4".)

Sometimes you just have bad days, though. Nothing is working, you heap pressure on yourself, and it just gets worse and worse. We've seen them from basically everyone else in the lineup, but it happens least with Higuchi, so it stands out more when it does. So, perhaps she's a victim of her own success here. We expect 6-0, 6-1 from her basically every time out, so when it doesn't happen, we wonder if something's wrong.

It's gonna have to get a lot worse before she gets jumped in the lineup, though. She's 72-14 in her career, including a seemingly-impossible 44-6 in dual matches. She was the #6 singles player on the NCAA All-Tournament Team last year. Her freshman year, she set the team record with her 22-match win streak, and her first dual loss was in the NCAA final. She's 8-2 all-time at NCAAs. She has bageled so many opponents that she should open up an Einstein Bros. franchise (seriously, she won 33 sets by a 6-0 score her first two years). Heading into National Indoors, she had the second-highest UTR on the team, behind only Gordon. In duals last year, Higuchi was 21-3, the most wins on the team (Arbuthnott was 17-3, Shin was 16-3, Lampl was 15-4, Gordon was 12-9, Lord was 11-1, and Yee was 4-5). The year before, she was 22-1, again the best on the team (Arbuthnott tied her in wins at 22-2, Lord was 19-4, Lampl was 18-5, Davidson was 13-8, Doyle was 9-12, and Yee was 1-0).

It might be a blip or the start of a longer slump, but as long as she's healthy, I think Lele will keep her out there, given the track record that we have. Heck, it could just be a sign that Georgia has a great player at #6 that might earn a higher spot over the course of the year, and who might deserve a higher spot right now. Vanderbilt on February 23 will be a great test, as Emma will likely play either Summer Dvorak or Emily Smith. Emma beat Dvorak 6-3, 6-2 in the NCAA final last year, and beat Emily Smith in three sets her freshman year. (Higuchi lost to 5'10" Emma Kurtz in the regular season match against Vanderbilt last year, but Kurtz seems behind Dvorak and Smith in the current singles pecking order.)

RE: Women's Tennis: Indoor Nationals - oldalum - 02-13-2019

might be good for Higuchi to play that tall Texan again to work on strategy against tall players. The conventional wisdom is to play a lot of slices so they have to bend low to hit the ball, and run them around.