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Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - Printable Version

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Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - ColoradoTree - 03-27-2019

The last few years, the Stanford-UCLA match has determined the conference title, and this year looks to be no different, with #7 Stanford and #11 UCLA the top two Pac-12 teams in the country. This year's edition takes place in Los Angeles on Friday at 1:30pm, followed by a trip to #16 USC, a resurgent threat for the conference title in its own right, on Sunday at noon. Those three teams as well as #15 Cal (who plays USC on Friday and UCLA on Sunday) have perfect conference records so far, so this weekend will finally bring some separation and clarity at the top of the Pac-12. 

But before all of that gets started, we're going to try and get in a twice-postponed match tomorrow against UC Davis. The Aggies (3-9) aren't great, but as our football team can tell us, you underestimate UC Davis at your peril. The primary goal of getting that match in seems to be a desire to get our lineup set for UCLA (i.e., moving Lampl back down from #1), since you can only move a player one line at a time. 

Season so far

* Stanford (11-1) has just one blemish, a 4-3 loss to now-#1 Georgia at National Indoors, and its best wins are against #5 Vanderbilt and #6 Texas. 

* UCLA (10-3) has beaten #4 South Carolina and #9 Oklahoma State, but has also lost to #2 UNC, #8 Pepperdine, and #16 USC (in a non-conference match). 

* USC (12-2) has also beaten #4 South Carolina, with its only other Top 25 win coming over UCLA; it lost a head-scratcher to unranked SMU as well as a hard-fought non-conference match against #15 Cal.

Last year:

Stanford's 4-3 win over UCLA without Lord in the lineup was the turning point of the season, and Stanford won again, 4-2, in the Pac-12 championship match. Here are the results from matches last year between players on this year's rosters:

Arbuthnott d. Andrews 6-1, 6-1
Arbuthnott d. Altick 4-6, 6-1, 6-1
Gordon d. Andrews 6-3, 6-1
Higuchi d. Broomfield 6-4, 6-2
Higuchi d. Miller 6-4, 7-6
Hart d. Lampl 6-7, 7-5, 7-5
Lampl d. Hart 6-2, 6-4
Lord d. Hart 6-1, 7-5
Shin d. Bendetti 6-2, 6-4
Altick d. Shin 6-1, 6-3
Miller d. Yee 6-3, 6-2

Against USC, Stanford won 4-0 behind doubles wins from Arbuthnott/Gordon and Higuchi/Shin and then fairly easy singles wins from Gordon over Gabby Smith at 1, Shin over Madison Westby at 4, and Yee over Alexa Corcoleotes at 6. At the time the match was abandoned, Lampl led Weissman 6-2, 5-3 at #2, Arbuthnott led Valdes 6-3, 4-2 at #3, and Higuchi led Kulikov 6-2, 3-4 at #5 (on serve in the second). 

Lineups
(These are anticipated lineups that assume full health; things can and do change; records are in total dual matches regardless of line)

UCLA

1. #56 Jada Hart (5-2)
2. #18 Elysia Bolton (8-4)
3. Ayan Broomfield (3-3)
4. Abi Altick (6-1)
5. Alaina Miller (8-3)
6. Taylor Johnson (4-5)

1. #22 Bolton/Hart (6-4)
2. #11 Andrews/Broomfield (3-3)
3. Altick/Johnson (4-1) or #45 Altick/Miller (2-1)

USC

USC has done a lot of lineup shuffling (they did last year, too), so predicting the exact lineup is a fool's errand, but if everyone is healthy, here's my best guess:

1. #49 Salma Ewing (3-5)
2. #75 Angela Kulikov (8-3)
3. Rianna Valdes (4-4, incl. 2-3 at #3) 
4. Ana Neffa (7-2, incl. 3-0 at #4)
5. Becca Weissmann (6-5, incl. 1-2 at #5)
6. #124 Danielle Willson (11-0, incl. 4-0 at #6)

1. #13 Kulikov/Valdes (6-2)
2. Weissman/Willson (5-3)
3. Branstine/Jaeger (5-3)

Analysis

It'll be absolute battles in the top 2 spots vs. UCLA, but I like our depth to prevail. UCLA is an excellent doubles-playing team, so coming out strong on the road will be crucial to not put too big of a burden on our singles players. If that happens, though, I'd still tip us as a slight favorite. It wouldn't be any sort of great shock if UCLA won, but I think we're better and deeper overall, and that should be enough, but it'll be a slugfest.

Against USC, Ewing is a tremendous talent at #1, so whoever plays there will have her hands full. And I would expect competitive matches throughout the lineup, but I would favor us in doubles and then certainly at the 3, 4, and 5 lines. Danielle Willson wasn't a super highly-touted recruit, but she's done very well and is 5'11", so she's the kind of player that Higuchi struggles against. 

How to watch:

The UC Davis match will be available here: http://streamingtennis.com/Cardinal/?DB_OEM_ID=30600
The UCLA match will be aired on the Pac-12 network, but the live stats link is here: http://www.statbroadcast.com/events/statbroadcast.php?t=1&gid=ucla
The USC match will be streamed here: https://usctrojans.com/sports/2018/3/13/usc-tennis-live-streams.aspx

Other matches to keep an eye on:

Friday, March 29:
#23 LSU vs. #31 Florida
#6 Texas @ #30 Oklahoma
#5 Vanderbilt @ #22 Kentucky
#13 Washington vs. Arizona
#35 Washington State vs. #50 Arizona State

Sunday, March 31:
#23 LSU vs. #4 South Carolina
#6 Texas @ #9 Oklahoma State
#13 Washington vs. #50 Arizona State
#35 Washington State vs. Arizona
Given the risk of more rain in the forecast, I wonder if they're open to getting today's match against UC Davis in a little later on, since the weather really seems to clear up in the later afternoon. They could also start with singles and just play to clinch so they can get it in the books as soon as possible. The problem is that the men already have a match scheduled to start at 3pm, so they might be pretty well stuck with that 1pm window and just hope it pans out (making a singles-first approach all the more likely, with the hope you rattle off four quick wins to be out of there in 45 minutes or so). It's raining now, but the sun looks like it's coming out, so maybe there's hope?

RE: Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - ColoradoTree - 03-27-2019

Still raining and we're now an hour from the scheduled start. It might not start on time (it's still raining), but the weather looks clear from about 1:15pm onwards, so they should be able to get it in, even with the men's match scheduled to start at 3pm. You dry the courts, you play singles first, and you play to clinch, and this thing can be over in under an hour.
Squeegees are out! Hope lives!
The men's team tweeted that they still were doing everything they could to start on time at 3:00pm, which is aggressive if they're still going to try and get the women's match in. With the sun coming out, the stadium courts are nearly playable, and the back courts are getting closer. The men could always play doubles (either at Taube South or on the other four back courts--we do have 17 excellent courts, for pete's sake) while the women are still playing singles. Then the men can move over and play singles on the usual courts.

Heck, you could start warming up on Court 1 right now if you needed to. The rest still need more drying, but the playing surface of 1 looks good, at least (if not the entire area around it).
Looks like the men are set to warm up on 1 for their match in 50 minutes, but no sign of the women. Courts 2, 3, and 5 look playable now, too.

RE: Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - ColoradoTree - 03-27-2019

OK, the men's match will take place as scheduled starting at 3pm in the stadium and primary backcourts, while the women's match will also start at 3pm, and it'll be played at the Taube South courts. (That is per the UC Davis team Twitter account, as our team's account has provided no updates.) 

No live stream and no live scoring, so we will be at the mercy of the team Twitter accounts for live scoring updates. Unless some CardBoard denizen wants to update us here from the match!

RE: Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - ColoradoTree - 03-27-2019

The scoreline—7-0—isn’t a surprise. Neither is the fact that Gordon was back at 1. But I’m at a loss to understand how the remedy for a one-line violation was another one-line violation. 

Instead of Gordon-Lampl-Lord, which would have allowed us to roll out our usual Gordon-Lord-Lampl lineup against UCLA while complying with the one-line rule, we jumped straight to Gordon-Lord-Lampl.  

This is our most common lineup, so using it would normally be fine, except we deviated from it last time out, so we had to get back to it one line at a time. Gordon from 2 to 1 is fine. Lord from 3 to 2 is fine. But Lampl from 3 to 1 back to 3 wasn’t fine either time. And Lord from 1 to 3 for Hawaii wasn’t fine, either.

But I guess it’s only a problem if someone cares enough to protest, you know? And we’ll probably be fine. But it’s unnecessary, and leaves us open to an attack from an opportunistic rival. Though (thinking as the lawyer that I am) there is also the question of remedy. By switching back to our intended lineup this early, UCLA can't argue that our lineup in the match against them is a violation, since it's the same one we rolled out against Davis. The most UCLA would be able to do is file a third-party protest to complain about the lineup against Davis, in which case the most that could be ordered is that we use the same lineup against UCLA that we used against Hawaii (i.e., Lampl-Gordon-Lord). I'm not sure UCLA sees their chances as materially better against that lineup (perhaps a greater chance of winning at 1, but it's a coin flip, alongside arguably reduced chances of winning at 2 and 3). So, even if you complain, does UCLA really think it has a better chance of Altick winning against Lord rather than Lampl? Or Bolton winning against Gordon rather than Lord? I would imagine that even if Stella Sampras-Webster has considered filing a protest here, she wouldn't necessarily prefer to face that lineup. And because the remedy for a first found violation is to return to the pre-violation lineup, it wouldn't help her to wait until after the match (so she could see how it goes) and then file a protest about the Davis match. It wouldn't change the UCLA match outcome at that point. That said, USC could. But it would be such a comical overreaction to a situation where Lele was only trying to get Lampl a match on Court 1 that I'd be shocked if it happened. (And like I said before, I wouldn't be surprised if Lele called the coaches in question, let them know what she wanted to do with a one-match shift for Lampl, and they all said they had no problem with it.)

Oh, and for the record, they played out all three doubles matches, but we won all three (Arbuthnott/Gordon's win was closest, at 6-4). Then, Arbuthnott was off court first in singles (6-0, 6-1), then Higuchi (6-2, 6-0), and Lord clinched on Court 2 (6-1, 6-0). They played it out, with Shin booking her win next (a double bagel), then Lampl on Court 3 (6-3, 6-1), and finally Gordon on Court 1 (6-2, 6-2). No one lost more than 4 games in total, so this is as comprehensive a team win as you can get.

RE: Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - ColoradoTree - 03-28-2019

FYI, the lineup UCLA used in its 4-0 win over UCSB yesterday was different from the one listed above in that Broomfield still isn't back playing singles, and they shuffled their doubles teams with Hart (usually one half of the #1 duo) not playing doubles. Here's what they went with:

Doubles:

1. Andrews/Broomfield
2. Bolton/Johnson
3. Altick/Miller

Singles:

1. Hart
2. Bolton
3. Altick
4. Miller
5. Johnson
6. Andrews

Obviously, if Broomfield isn't playing singles, our chances of winning go up, and my level of confidence in winning on Courts 4, 5, and 6 goes up. The doubles shuffle is interesting, and it's hard to predict how it'll play out, but Hart/Bolton were playing very well together, sometimes at 1 and sometimes at 2, so I won't complain if we end up playing Bolton/Johnson on Court 2 instead. They're both excellent players, but they're freshmen and Arbuthnott/Gordon have a lot more experience playing with one another.

RE: Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - ColoradoTree - 03-29-2019

A shuffle in our doubles lineup today, as Shin/Choy are in at #3 instead of Lord/Madurawe. Not sure yet what, if anything, that means for singles.

RE: Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - Spiny_Norman - 03-29-2019

(03-29-2019, 01:39 PM)ColoradoTree Wrote:  A shuffle in our doubles lineup today, as Shin/Choy are in at #3 instead of Lord/Madurawe. Not sure yet what, if anything, that means for singles.

I am watching on P12 Network and doubles 3 certainly looks like Lord and Madurawe to me.

Scores (updated)
Doubles 1 - UCLA wins 6-3
Doubles 2 - UCLA wins 6-1
Doubles 3 - Stanford wins 6-1

Stanford starts the singles down 1-0

RE: Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - ColoradoTree - 03-29-2019

Sorry, I was going off the UCLA twitter feed. Shucks about doubles, but we should be able to get 4 points!

RE: Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - Spiny_Norman - 03-29-2019

(03-29-2019, 02:24 PM)ColoradoTree Wrote:  Sorry, I was going off the UCLA twitter feed. Shucks about doubles, but we should be able to get 4 points!

(updated)
Gordon loses 2-6, 3-6
Lord wins 6-4, 6-3
Lampl wins 6-2, 6-2
Arbuthnott is tied 6-3, 3-6
Shin loses 1-6, 1-6
Higuchi leads 6-4, 4-5 (on serve)

Stanford must win 4 and 6 to win the match.

RE: Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - oldalum - 03-29-2019

We need our 4 first-set winners to finish. Doesn't look like Gordon and Shin are going to turn their matches around. UCLA cleverly moved Altick down a line to play Shin, who she creamed last year and is beating her even worse this year (11-1 in games so far today). 

Jada Hart, as a power hitter, is not a great matchup for Gordon; Lord or Lampl might have fared better.

RE: Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - M T - 03-29-2019

I have it on in the background at work, half-listening to the audio when I can.  The announcers make it seem that UCLA is about to shutout Stanford.

RE: Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - Spiny_Norman - 03-29-2019

I was updating my earlier post, but will create a new one for the 2 remaining matches.

Arbuthnott breaks Miller to go up 4-3 in the 3rd set
Higuchi wins! 6-4, 7-6. She had a 6-3 lead in the tiebreaker, lost 4 points in a row to face a set point, then won the final 3 points for a 9-7 tiebreaker victory

RE: Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - martyup - 03-29-2019

Arbuthnott's is the only match to go to a 3rd set.
What's up with Gordon?  Lost again in straight sets.

RE: Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - Spiny_Norman - 03-29-2019

Stanford wins! Arbuthnott wins 6-3 in the 3rd set.

Man, matches vs. UCLA are tougher than crab grass. Now the team comes back to play USC at 12 noon tomorrow. Short turnaround.

RE: Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - martyup - 03-29-2019

Yes!

RE: Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - ColoradoTree - 03-29-2019

As always, our depth is just so damn tough to deal with. 

That was a big one. I’m legit surprised at how thoroughly Shin got crushed (I know Altick had her number, but still), and while Hart isn’t necessarily the best matchup for Gordon, Gordon is just flat-out a better player and I wish she’d given a better accounting of herself. 

But! But! We won a slugfest against a top 10 team on the road! That is always cause for celebration, and this feels great. 

When the schedule was released this season? This was the match I circled. This was always going to be the hardest one to get. And we got it. Because of Caroline Lampl, Melissa Lord, Emma MFing Higuchi, and Emily “I love third sets” Arbuthnott. 

I love that it looked dismal for a bit. I love that we had to fight back. I love that Emma needed to win a tiebreaker. I love that Emily needed to win a third set. I love the fight this team has, and it gets me fired up for what they can accomplish this year.

RE: Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - oldalum - 03-29-2019

(03-29-2019, 03:41 PM)M T Wrote:  The announcers make it seem that UCLA is about to shutout Stanford.
Announcers were disappointing. The play-by-play guy was annoying--spending too much time just filling time--and the former #1 doubles player in the world had little to add.

RE: Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - oldalum - 03-29-2019

Now that I've watched the end of the match, it was VERY close. Higuchi benefited from her opponent Johnson being a freshman, who double faulted on her second set point to let Higuchi back in the set. In the tiebreaker Johnson lost on unforced errors trying to go for winners. But Johnson at 5'10" has the power game to beat Higuchi and she knows it. I wouldn't be surprised if Johnson beats Higuchi at the Pac-12 championships: the second time around she will probably play a little smarter. And Miller was right with Arbuthnott in the third set at 3-3, then lost her composure somewhat when she disagreed with a few line calls made by Arbuthnott and confirmed by the chair referee (the calls all looked pretty clearly correct to me on super slo-mo, and the UCLA coaches didn't protest them).

Arbuthnott/Gordon were the Pac-12 doubles team of the year last year, but they're not looking like it this year. Don't know why.

The Gostanford.com writeup touts that the team, dating back to 2016, has won an incredible 17 out of 22 matches in which they lost the doubles point. But I'm thinking that's not good, it means we have better singles players than most teams but too often get beaten in doubles by those same teams. Seems like we either are not spending enough time on doubles or our coaches are relatively not good at coaching doubles. Usually when players arrive in college their doubles game is weaker than their singles game, so development in college is important.

RE: Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - ColoradoTree - 03-30-2019

Fyi, USC beat Cal 6-1, but all 5 USC singles wins were in three sets (Cal’s Maria Smith destroyed Danielle Willson on Court 5 for Cal’s only point).

I’d give us the edge today, but it’ll be far closer than last year. 

Tough luck for Cal, to have to turn around after all those three-setters and play UCLA.

RE: Women's Tennis: Bruins, Trojans, and some bonus Aggies - oldalum - 03-30-2019

(03-30-2019, 06:17 AM)ColoradoTree Wrote:  (Cal’s Maria Smith destroyed Danielle Willson on Court 5 for Cal’s only point).
good, maybe Shin will get back on track after getting shellacked yesterday.
Also good that 5 USC players played 3 sets yesterday, versus one of ours.
But will still be tough: USC also beat UCLA 4-3 at UCLA