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W Pac-12 Championship tennis match vs. UCLA - oldalum - 04-28-2018

We split courts 2 and 3 in doubles, but lose the doubles point on court 1 by 9-7 in the tiebreaker. *&%#$+! Early in singles, we're up in 3 and down in 1 match.
Gordon and Lampl lost their first sets in singles but are each up a break early in the second set. Higuchi and Lord won their first sets; Arbuthnott and Shin's matches are even. We need 4 wins . . .

RE: W Pac-12 Championship tennis match vs. UCLA - BobK - 04-28-2018

Lord wins it’s 1-1
Three matches in the 3rd set the other two may go 3

RE: W Pac-12 Championship tennis match vs. UCLA - oldalum - 04-28-2018

match is very close. Lord won at #2 in 2 sets, so the score is 1-1.
Shin won her first set at #5 but is down in the second. Higuchi at #6 won the first set and is 5-5 in the second set. We are up a break in one third set and even in two others.

RE: W Pac-12 Championship tennis match vs. UCLA - BobK - 04-28-2018

Higuchi wins it’s 2-1 Stanford
Higuchi wins it’s 2-1 Stanford

RE: W Pac-12 Championship tennis match vs. UCLA - oldalum - 04-28-2018

Now 3-2 Stanford and we're serving for the match in each of the last 2 matches

RE: W Pac-12 Championship tennis match vs. UCLA - BobK - 04-28-2018

We win 4-2 wow that was close

RE: W Pac-12 Championship tennis match vs. UCLA - oldalum - 04-28-2018

And Arbuthnott clinches it! we win 4-2. NCAAs here we come!!! Hosting here we come!!!

RE: W Pac-12 Championship tennis match vs. UCLA - BostonCard - 04-28-2018

PAC-12 tournament champs (again)!

https://twitter.com/stanfordwtennis/status/990358781199446016?s=21

Quite the turnaround from our early season. Some number one seed is going to be pissed at having us in their bracket.

Think we get a 3 seed?

BC

RE: W Pac-12 Championship tennis match vs. UCLA - oldalum - 04-28-2018

(04-28-2018, 03:45 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  Think we get a 3 seed?

In tennis there are just 16 national seeds, they don't break them down into regional seeds like in basketball. We'll get a double-digit seed; Colorado Tree will have the best insight on the likely second digit. We'll know for certain on Tuesday when the bracket is revealed.

RE: W Pac-12 Championship tennis match vs. UCLA - Hulk01 - 04-29-2018

I've only watched her for a few points here and there. So can someone tell me why Shin's matches take so long? Or does it just appear that way to me?

RE: W Pac-12 Championship tennis match vs. UCLA - ColoradoTree - 04-30-2018

(04-29-2018, 05:38 AM)Hulk01 Wrote:  I've only watched her for a few points here and there. So can someone tell me why Shin's matches take so long? Or does it just appear that way to me?

She's a grinder, much like Arbuthnott (man alive, some of her matches last year took *forever*). Powerful ground strokes, and appears to have a sense that she'll outlast the person in front of her, so she appears content to keep play alive rather than take some risks to end the point early. That's not to say she just hits it back and doesn't use angles to put her opponent in a tough position--she absolutely does that--but it's a matter of degree compared to other players in the lineup.
What a match.  I was without reception in the mountains for much of it, so I'd quickly check Twitter and the video feed when I had a stray signal, but it was fleeting enough that I couldn't get on here and comment with you fine folks.

Takeaways:

* Losing the doubles point to UCLA is not ideal, but they are really good at doubles, so it's not like it's an upset for that to happen. If you had to draw up "how we beat UCLA" beforehand, you'd be smart to just assume the doubles point is lost and focus on getting four wins in singles. (Though being up 6-5 on serve at #1 and losing in a tiebreak hurt, to be sure.)
* Needing four points from singles, we won just three first sets, and things looked a little daunting.  But after two of those first set wins turned into points on the scoreboard (Lord over #30 Jada Hart and then Higuchi over Alaina Miller), we got angry second sets from both Lampl and Arbuthnott, both by a 6-1 score. Nothing better to regain momentum after dropping a first set than to flush it and come out swinging, but there's a reason it doesn't usually happen, and because it's very hard to just flip a switch and start bludgeoning someone who just got the best of you. Things tightened up for Lampl, but she pulled it out, and then Arbuthnott kept on the gas against #59 Abi Altick (who has been ranked as high as the 30s this year, if I recall correctly) and won the third set 6-1 to clinch. And if we needed it, we had a safety valve on Court 5, where Shin was hopefully about to break Ayan Broomfield's heart (Broomfield finished last season as a top 50 player before transferring from Clemson, so a close match was to be expected). 
* Gordon losing to Shibahara is a bummer, but it pays to remember that Shibahara was the preseason #1 player in the country, and is still in the top 20. And Gordon has now split her two matches with her this year, which is super good.  And the way the singles rankings work, when you beat a good player, you get a bump, and if you lose to a good player, you don't drop by much.  Because they've now beaten each other, they're somewhat symbiotically tied together in the rankings. 
* We needed to see Melissa Lord in top form, and we did. Hart is a terrific player, and Lord came out on fire before holding on. That's an excellent sign heading into the NCAA tournament.  
* UCLA is a top 10-caliber team (8th in the USTA rankings, 13th in the controlling ITA rankings). Beating them should be hard. Coming into the match, I would have given UCLA a slight edge at doubles, and then I would have rated the singles matches as follows: #1 - coin flip; #2 - slight lean to Lord, but unsure about form; #3 - ever so slight lean to Lampl; #4 - lean to Altick; #5 - perhaps slight lean to Broomfield based on experience; #6 - Higuchi. We could have won 4-1 after doubles and I wouldn't have been shocked.  We could have lost 4-1 with Higuchi as our lone win and I wouldn't have been shocked. 
* Before the season, I was very nervous about UCLA, given that they added Altick and Broomfield and didn't lose anyone to graduation, so a talented-but-underperforming lineup from last year should be even more dangerous this year. And they were. I picked Stanford to narrowly edge them out, but you guys, a big part of that was loyalty. UCLA terrified me this season, and when we lost the doubles point to them back in March, I assumed that we were done, especially with Lord out.  That win, highlighted by Gordon beating Shibahara and Lampl handling Hart in a surprisingly strong performance, was when I started to think they'd be OK once Lord came back.

RE: W Pac-12 Championship tennis match vs. UCLA - oldalum - 04-30-2018

(04-30-2018, 07:42 AM)ColoradoTree Wrote:  She's a grinder, much like Arbuthnott . . . Powerful ground strokes, and appears to have a sense that she'll outlast the person in front of her, so she appears content to keep play alive rather than take some risks to end the point early.
Yes. As a (mediocre) player, that's one of the things I keep track of during a match: who is winning the long rallies. If you are winning a decent majority, that usually means you are more consistent than your opponent, so you want to get into long rallies and not take chances to end points early. That does not necessarily mean you will get to continue having long rallies, because if your opponent makes the same assessment as you, then they will start taking more initiative to end points earlier (hitting closer to the lines, coming up to the net, sprinkling in drop shots, etc.) or at least mixing up some things to disrupt your consistency.

RE: W Pac-12 Championship tennis match vs. UCLA - ColoradoTree - 04-30-2018

As for how winning the Pac-12 tournament affects our seeding, here are some thoughts:

1. We will absolutely be in the Top 16 and hosting.  No question.
2. UCLA was ranked 13th, so beating them is very useful to a nice climb in the rankings.
3. The ACC tournament played out about perfectly for us, with the top seeds cruising, Florida State (17th in the last rankings) getting upset in its first match, Miami (15th) losing to Duke in the semis, and Virginia (20th) getting upset in its first match. So, none of the ACC schools that were in competition with us will be any threat.
4. That said, the Big 12 and Big Ten tournaments didn't go great.  In the Big 12 tournament, we needed Kansas to not do well, and they obliged, losing to Baylor in a first-round upset. We were never going to catch Texas (currently 6th), so the Longhorns' run to the title is fine, but we really could have used a poor Texas Tech performance.  Instead, the Red Raiders (currently 14th, but 8 points up on us in the last rankings) made the final and upset 7th-ranked Oklahoma State in the semis. Had Texas Tech lost, we might have passed them, but as it is, I wouldn't be shocked for both of those teams to stay ahead of us.  Oklahoma State was just so far ahead of us in terms of ranking points that I don't think we can catch them.  As for the Big Ten tournament, we wanted Illinois to do poorly and for Michigan to not go on a run.  Illinois did its part, beating #44 Nebraska but losing to #2 seed Michigan.  Michigan, however, ended up winning the title over 12th-ranked Northwestern, meaning Michigan notched wins over unranked Michigan State, #19 Illinois, and #12 Northwestern.  Sure, Michigan was 7.4 points behind us in the last rankings (41.44 to 34.02), so they have a ton of ground to make up. I don't think they can do that. Maybe if we'd lost to UCLA, but we notched wins over #43, #48, and #13 ourselves.  (FYI, Northwestern was 12th, up 11.2 points on us last week. That's a lot to make up, even though Northwestern only beat one good team, #28 Ohio State, during the tournament.)
5. We've now beaten UCLA twice, but they'll probably be seeded above us, because they were about 9.5 points up on us going into the week.  We beat #43, #48, and #13, while they beat #30 and #35 before losing to #16. With as many data points as are factored into the rankings at this point, it's hard to make up a 9.5-point swing.  (As a point of comparison, Stanford gained about 4 points after winning the Pac-12 tournament last year.)
6. Because of how things played out, I think a single-digit seed is out of reach. I think you'll see a glut of teams in the low 50s and high 40s on average.  I think we're 15th. I think we'll be well ahead of the team ranked 16th and that we'll be very close, points-wise, to the teams ranked 10th-14th, but I'm not sure we've got enough to pass them. (We could be 12th, too.
7. If we're 15th, that would set up a Round of 16 matchup against the #2 seed, which at this point will either be Vanderbilt or North Carolina. (Both won their conference tournaments, beating multiple highly-ranked teams along the way. I'm not sure how that shakes out.)  If it's Vandy, I'd relish another shot at them.  Yes, we got swept there, but we were without Lord and we were still very competitive in singles, with Gordon losing in three at 1, Lampl losing in three at 3, Shin losing a third-set tiebreaker at 5, and Higuchi (at 4) and Yee (at 6) dropping absolute heartbreakers, 7-6, 7-5 and 7-6, 7-6, respectively. Arbuthnott's loss at Court 2 was the only match that wasn't close.  Put Lord at 2 and that match is instantly competitive.  Right now, I'd say 1, 2, and 5 would be toss-ups, 3 would lean to Vanderbilt, and 4 and 6 would lean our way.  I think our doubles has gotten much stronger as the year has gone on (and Lord paired with Shin at 3 makes that a more powerful duo), so yeah, we might lose, but every match from the Round of 16 on will be exceedingly close. This is the fun part!
7. If we're somewhere from 12th to 14th, then possible Round of 16 opponents include Duke, Georgia Tech, Ole Miss, or a rematch against Texas. (Given our current lineup and form, I think we beat Texas if we play them again. I'd say Court 1 would lean to Texas, Court 2, 3, 5, and 6 would lean our way, and Court 4 would be a toss-up. And we'd be favored in doubles, too.)
8. If we're 15th, I am obligated to remind you that the last time we were the 15th seed, we won the whole darn thing.  There, our ranking was weighed down by the fact that #1 player Carol Zhao missed much of the year training with the Canadian national team, but she was back by NCAAs. We then enjoyed the most white-knuckle ride to a championship that I can remember, getting pushed to the brink from the second round onwards.  (Oh yeah. The downside of being underseeded is that you'll play someone in Round 2 that has a legit chance to beat you, because they're one of the teams that just missed out on hosting themselves, so before we get too confident at making the Round of 16, we have to beat someone of Miami's or Florida State's caliber to get there.)  4-3 over Texas A&M, then upsetting #1-ranked (but 2nd-seeded) Florida in the Round of 16, then 4-3 over #10 Michigan, 4-2 over #6 Vanderbilt, and 4-3 in that classic final over #12 Oklahoma State.

We wouldn't be in this position, sweating out seeding, if we played more matches during the year against good teams. An obvious culprit is not playing ITA Kick-Off Weekend (and the subsequent Team Indoor Nationals). But just as important is the fact that we didn't play and beat Pepperdine this year due to weather, and that the rest of the Pac-12, aside from UCLA, is a bit down. Cal should be a perennial top 20 team, but they were in and out of the Top 50 this year. USC shouldn't be too far behind them, but they were out of the rankings more often than they were in this year. Oregon, Arizona State, and Washington State were all ranked higher than usual, true, but you need marquee wins to climb the rankings, and beating teams in the 30s and 40s doesn't get it done. But leaving all of that aside, if you assume we were healthy all year, it's likely that this team is 20-1 rather than 18-3, with wins over SEC runner-up Florida and Big 12 champ Texas.  With those two big wins, we'd probably be seeded somewhere from 7th to 9th. If it doesn't rain and we beat Pepperdine, we're probably 5th or 6th.  But with the light schedule, there's no margin for error or injury (or for Cal, say, to have a down year).

RE: W Pac-12 Championship tennis match vs. UCLA - ColoradoTree - 04-30-2018

One more thing: By getting two really good wins in the Pac-12 tournament, over #50 Vanessa Wong of UW and #30 Jada Hart of UCLA, Melissa Lord might help her ranking enough to make the cut for the NCAA singles tournament (just completing those matches was important for her, too, as she now has 7 completed matches this spring, and you need 6 to be eligible for an at-large selection).  Arbuthnott might be there as well, as she got a nice ranked win over Altick, which may be enough to keep her ranking about where it is (#51). (Gordon will, of course, be there, and very likely as a seeded player.)

As for doubles, Arbuthnott/Gordon will be in the NCAA field (and as a national seed), but that'll be it.  

Last year, Taylor Davidson was one of the very last players to get into the field, at #59.  Lord's ranking before the Pac-12 tournament was #68, but I would think this week had to give her a nice boost.

RE: W Pac-12 Championship tennis match vs. UCLA - 2006alum - 04-30-2018

Thanks for all this, CoTree! Very helpful context for a team we've all loved following the past few post-seasons.

Am I mistaken, or does this website not provide a pretty good estimate of our likely ranking: http://collegetennisranks.com/rankings/current/d1w

Seems like if their projected ranking is right, we moved up one spot to 15th and UCLA down one to 14th, but not much movement overall. Seems silly since the top teams lost to more and far worse teams than we did, but you've been saying that all season..

RE: W Pac-12 Championship tennis match vs. UCLA - Spiny_Norman - 04-30-2018

If the pairings were made strictly on rankings, the 15 seed would open vs. the 50 seed. That would pit Stanford vs. U.SC or C.al.

Does the tournament committee try to avoid conference matchups in the 1st two rounds? Or would they do that in the interest of minimizing travel? Looking back through Stanford's NCAA history, the most recent conference opponent I see in the Round of 64 or 32 was vs. Arizona in 2006.

RE: W Pac-12 Championship tennis match vs. UCLA - BostonCard - 04-30-2018

If I am reading it correctly, the red line represents the end of the at-large bids so USC and Cal (as well as Washington and Washington State) would not get a bid because of automatic qualifiers below them. The 50th team that would be included in the tournament (by virtue of winning their conference) is #89 Fresno State; the 51st "seed" team would be #94 McNassee state.

Assuming that is correct, and barring upsets, we would expect to see #18 Kansas in the second round, and, if we get by them, #2 Vanderbilt in the sweet sixteen. I'm sure Vandi would have rather played Pepperdine, Northwestern, UCLA, or Miami than us. If we "upset" Vandi, and other seeds hold, we'd get to play #7 Georgia, followed by #3 Duke in the semi-final and #1 North Carolina in the final. But a lot has to happen between now and then.

BC

RE: W Pac-12 Championship tennis match vs. UCLA - Spiny_Norman - 04-30-2018

The NCAA seems to have found a rotation for the NCAA tennis championships that does not include Stanford or any location west of Oklahoma.

Stanford hosted the men's and women's championships in 2006 and 2011 but not since. And not through 2022 either. Future sites:

2018 - Winston Salem
2019 - Orlando
2020 - Stillwater, OK
2021 - Orlando
2022 - Champaign

RE: W Pac-12 Championship tennis match vs. UCLA - ColoradoTree - 05-01-2018

(04-30-2018, 04:31 PM)2006alum Wrote:  Thanks for all this, CoTree! Very helpful context for a team we've all loved following the past few post-seasons.

Am I mistaken, or does this website not provide a pretty good estimate of our likely ranking: http://collegetennisranks.com/rankings/current/d1w

Seems like if their projected ranking is right, we moved up one spot to 15th and UCLA down one to 14th, but not much movement overall. Seems silly since the top teams lost to more and far worse teams than we did, but you've been saying that all season..

What a delightful website that is!  I had no idea it existed, but it seems to be taking the algorithm that the ITA uses (which is explained on the ITA website, so no reason why someone couldn't duplicate it) and inputting the most recent data.  The one flaw is usually that we only know the top 50 teams in each set of public rankings, so while I could do the math to see what Stanford would gain from the most recent wins over ranked teams, I wouldn't know the data for the remaining teams.  But this website seems to have a pretty good method of inferring that data.  (The full ranking set each week is available to coaches, so perhaps the person behind the website has a connection to someone on a NCAA staff.)

Looks right, though.  The more resources, the better, I say.
(04-30-2018, 04:56 PM)Spiny_Norman Wrote:  If the pairings were made strictly on rankings, the 15 seed would open vs. the 50 seed. That would pit Stanford vs. U.SC or C.al.

Does the tournament committee try to avoid conference matchups in the 1st two rounds? Or would they do that in the interest of minimizing travel? Looking back through Stanford's NCAA history, the most recent conference opponent I see in the Round of 64 or 32 was vs. Arizona in 2006.

I think some effort is made to avoid conference matchups in the regional pods. Last year, there were 7 Pac-12 teams, and even though it would have been more convenient to have one or more of those teams come to Stanford, some got shipped across the country instead.  It would make sense either way, but it appears they usually go the "avoiding conference matchups" route rather than the "minimizing travel expense" route. (That said, if Pepperdine is a national seed, you can pretty much guarantee that a Pac-12 team will be in their pod, so there is some distance consideration there. And if Pepperdine isn't a national seed, you can pretty much guarantee they'll be at a California-based regional pod. I think they try and keep the automatic qualifiers from lesser conferences as close to home as possible, too, since those schools generally have lower athletic budgets.)

Once you have your top 16 national seeds, everyone else is broken down by tier, with a group of 17-32 seeds, 33-48 seeds, and 49-64 seeds. That said, if you're the #15 seed, you're unlikely to get the 32nd ranked team, as the committee still likes to get someone from the higher portion of that tier.  If the seeds hold, though, and all make it to the Round of 16, it will look exactly like a NCAA basketball regional, as 1 plays 16, 8 plays 9, etc.  So the play in the joints is limited to the first couple of rounds in the regional pods. 

Last year, for example, Stanford was a 7 seed, played an automatic qualifier (Idaho) in the first round, then got #27 TCU in the second round, then #10 Michigan.  Pretty close.  The year before, Stanford was a 15 seed, and played #19 Texas A&M in the second round, then #2 Florida in the Round of 16.  Before that, Stanford was the 14, and played #19 Pepperdine in the second round. (There's that distance consideration.)  The year before, Stanford was the 11 and would have played #21 Tulsa in the second round, but #53 Long Beach State upset Tulsa.  

Long story short (too late): it generally sticks pretty close to the final rankings, but it's not exact, and the committee tries to both (1) avoid conference matchups in the opening pod, and (2) minimize travel expenses/distances for the smaller schools.
(04-30-2018, 05:05 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  If I am reading it correctly, the red line represents the end of the at-large bids so USC and Cal (as well as Washington and Washington State) would not get a bid because of automatic qualifiers below them.  The 50th team that would be included in the tournament (by virtue of winning their conference) is #89 Fresno State; the 51st "seed" team would be #94 McNassee state.

Assuming that is correct, and barring upsets, we would expect to see #18 Kansas in the second round, and, if we get by them, #2 Vanderbilt in the sweet sixteen.  I'm sure Vandi would have rather played Pepperdine, Northwestern, UCLA, or Miami than us.  If we "upset" Vandi, and other seeds hold, we'd get to play #7 Georgia, followed by #3 Duke in the semi-final and #1 North Carolina in the final.  But a lot has to happen between now and then.

BC

This would be a bloodbath for the Pac-12.  UW and Wazzu are the first two schools on the wrong side of the cutline, and USC and Cal also missing out at 50 and 51, respectively. 

You'd have Stanford and UCLA as national seeds (and thus, regional 1 seeds, just like a baseball regional).  Oregon would be the top 3 seed, and ASU would also be a 3. And that's it.  7 teams last year, 4 this year. 

Wazzu has to be furious (21-7 not making it from a major conference?), but again, that non-conference schedule is so, so bad.  If they'd just beaten UW on the final day of the regular season, that's enough to get them in.  If UW hadn't lost at home to Oregon, they're probably in.  It's a long season, and a lot of things you can point to that would have been enough to get a team in, but ultimately, the fact that Cal and USC were down this year kind of dragged everyone down. Not only did Cal and USC not make it in themselves, but wins over them counted for less and losses to them counted against you more.  If Cal isn't a train wreck this year, then not only are they in, but UW and Wazzu are both in based on the strength of their wins over Cal. 

And you might be interested to see that Arkansas looks to comfortably be in the field as the last 2 seed, and could match up against Oregon in the first round if they stick closely to rankings. For those of you in the Arkansas-didn't-deserve-to-make-it crowd, Oregon might have a chance to make sure their stay isn't a long one.  But now that we know that UW is likely the first team out, and Wazzu the second team out, does that change anyone's opinions on the propriety of the six-match stunt Arkansas pulled?  It doesn't for me--Arkansas still beat way better teams than either of them and played a far tougher schedule.  And I don't think there is sweet, sweet TV money to be split among conference members for making the tournament--this is tennis, after all.

RE: W Pac-12 Championship tennis match vs. UCLA - ColoradoTree - 05-01-2018

FYI, this website seems to think that we'll be the 13 seed, getting just a bit ahead of UCLA (14), with Northwestern suffering a somewhat dramatic drop from losing to Michigan and settling in as the 15 seed, with Miami as the 16 seed.  That would mean a date with Georgia Tech in the Round of 16, and a probable rematch with Texas in the quarterfinals. (If we get past Buffalo and then #17 Michigan, that is.) I would love that, though I'm not super excited about Michigan being in the pod, coming off a Big Ten tournament title.  

I think head to head results are factored into the seeds, so there could be a mess if it's Pepperdine-UCLA-Stanford, as Stanford beat UCLA twice, but UCLA beat Pepperdine, and Stanford's Pepperdine match was rained out. 

https://slam.tennis/bracketology/ncaaw

If the final rankings fall in this order, Pepperdine-Northwestern-UCLA-Stanford-Miami (like the collegetennisranks projection has it), then I think Stanford's two head to head wins over UCLA would lead the committee to make Stanford the 14 seed, UCLA the 15, and Miami the 16. That would put Stanford on track to play 3rd-seeded Duke in the Round of 16, then Ole Miss or Texas Tech in the quarter, and then a Vandy rematch in the semi. Bring it on.