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Women's Tennis: ITA Kick-Off Draft - ColoradoTree - 06-16-2021

Tennis news today, as the ITA Kick-Off Draft was held, and for the first time since Stanford started participating in it again, we won't be hosting. (Another consequence of this weird, disappointing, shortened year, as the hosts and draft order are determined by the past season's rankings.)

Stanford had the 8th pick on where to go. When we chose, here's what the 15 sites looked like:

Austin: #1 Texas, 3 openings
Chapel Hill: #2 UNC, 3 openings
Malibu: #3 Pepperdine, 3 openings
Athens: #4 UGA, 3 openings
Los Angeles: #5 UCLA, 3 openings
Raleigh: #6 N.C. State, #21 Northwestern, 2 openings
Tallahassee: #7 FSU, #19 Florida, 2 openings
Durham: #8 Duke, 3 openings
Charlottesville: #9 UVA, 3 openings
Atlanta: #10 Georgia Tech, #16 Michigan, 2 openings
Orlando: #11 UCF, #22 Auburn, 2 openings
Columbus: #12 OSU, #17 LSU, #18 Tennessee, 1 opening
Berkeley: #13 Cal, 3 openings
Waco: #14 Baylor, #20 Miami, 2 openings
College Station: #15 Texas A&M, 3 openings

Stanford chose to be the #2 seed at 9th-ranked UVA. I don't mind the decision at all, as UVA has a great top 2 but is vulnerable thereafter, and depth is traditionally our strength. Freshman Emma Navarro won the NCAA singles championship for UVA, but whether she returns or goes pro early is very much up in the air--she says she's coming back in the fall, but she also says she's taking it "one semester at a time." She was seen as one of the more likely one-and-done players in her recruiting class, too. She'll play the US Open in August, so if she does well, she may not be on UVA's roster in January when we play them. Perhaps I'm reading too much into the "one semester at a time" formulation, but it's not the worst idea to get another semester of school paid for, train with the team while playing lower-tier pro events, and then leave before the spring season starts to coincide with the professional calendar. 

Anyway, I'd rather get good matches against out-of-conference opponents during Kick-Off Weekend, while hopefully advancing for even better ones, rather than playing in-state and playing teams we'll play in the regular season anyway. So, if we rule out Pepperdine, UCLA, and Cal as places we'd want to go, and we wanted to be favored in the first match, our best options were going to UVA, Duke, or Texas A&M. All three have great incoming classes (ours is #1, A&M is #2, Duke is #3, and UVA is #6), so it's sort of a pick-your-poison thing at that point, but if you've got a deep team, those teams are hardly unbeatable. (And after we picked, Oklahoma picked the #2 line at Duke and South Carolina picked the #2 line at A&M.)

RE: Women's Tennis: ITA Kick-Off Draft - ColoradoTree - 06-16-2021

With the James Madison Dukes choosing to be the 4 in Charlottesville, here's our regional:

1. #9 UVA
2. #23 Stanford
3. #36 Arkansas
4. #59 James Madison

Nobody wants to play Pepperdine, even though they lose Lahey and Failla, and even though Malibu is lovely. 38 picks in and 9 of the 15 regionals completely filled up, and Pepperdine was still standing alone in that regional. Finally, with the 39th pick, #57 Notre Dame became the 2 seed there, with #61 Colorado joining them as the 3 seed a few minutes later. Here are the rest of the regionals with Pac-12 or other California teams:

Chapel Hill: (1) UNC, (2) Oregon, (3) Tulsa, (4) UNC Charlotte. Oregon should absolutely beat Tulsa, and they should give UNC a decent match.
Malibu: (1) Pepperdine, (2) Notre Dame, (3) Colorado, (4) Columbia
Los Angeles: (1) UCLA, (2) Washington, (3) Denver, (4) Cal Poly. UW should beat Denver, but UCLA will be too tough.
Charlottesville: (1) UVA, (2) Stanford, (3) Arkansas, (4) James Madison
Orlando: (1) UCF, (2) Auburn, (3) Arizona State, (4) UC Santa Barbara. I kinda like ASU's chances here. Both UCF and Auburn are obviously tough teams, but they're not so far out of ASU's reach.
Berkeley: (1) Cal, (2) Vanderbilt, (3) San Diego, (4) BYU
Waco: (1) Baylor, (2) Miami, (3) USC, (4) Kansas. USC could absolutely emerge from this regional.

Arizona needed five teams to pass at the end in order to make the field. Late passes certainly happen, as teams ranked that low might have limited budgets--for example, it's an easier sell for the James Madison coach to the AD to have two matches down the road in Charlottesville, whereas flying across country for a weekend is a heavier lift. You have to factor in likelihood of success in those matches, too. Are you better off getting smoked twice or staying home and playing some competitive matches? Whereas for a team like #62 Cal Poly (needed just one pass and got it when #60 Louisville begged off) or #63 San Jose State (needed two), being the 4 seed in Los Angeles or Malibu is a great option--sure, you get smoked by a great team, but then you have a winnable second match against a good team that might be your best win all year if you can get it. 

Anyway, I like our chances, especially with a roster I expect to be pretty dangerous next year with the incoming freshmen. We get a respectable but very beatable SEC team and then an elite-but-not-that-elite ACC team. (I also would've liked being the 3 seed in Atlanta behind Georgia Tech and Michigan, two teams we could absolutely take. Being the 3 in Orlando behind #11 UCF and #22 Auburn would've been great, too. Or even the 4 in Columbus behind #12 OSU, #17 LSU, and #18 Tennessee in what would've been the Group of Death.)

RE: Women's Tennis: ITA Kick-Off Draft - BostonCard - 06-16-2021

CT, thanks for running us through it.  Just out of curiosity, what would you have thought of the strategy of picking the 4th seed in Columbus?  I mean, it would have meant a brutal first match (against #12 tOSU on their home court), but given the firepower coming in, I think we probably would have been favored, and would we have won, we would have gotten a second ranked team (#17 or #18).  It's a strategy that we've put to good use in the NCAA's tournament (not on purpose, of course) where we become the nightmare underseeded team that nobody wants to play.

BC

RE: Women's Tennis: ITA Kick-Off Draft - ColoradoTree - 06-17-2021

(06-16-2021, 06:47 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  CT, thanks for running us through it.  Just out of curiosity, what would you have thought of the strategy of picking the 4th seed in Columbus?  I mean, it would have meant a brutal first match (against #12 tOSU on their home court), but given the firepower coming in, I think we probably would have been favored, and would we have won, we would have gotten a second ranked team (#17 or #18).  It's a strategy that we've put to good use in the NCAA's tournament (not on purpose, of course) where we become the nightmare underseeded team that nobody wants to play.

BC

I would've loved it for the excitement factor, though it would've been perhaps an unnecessary risk. Ohio State loses a couple mid-lineup contributors, and their recruiting class, while good (ranked #19), doesn't hold a candle to ours in terms of dominant, immediate impact. You lose those matches and it doesn't hurt you all that much in terms of ranking points, but they're great wins. And yeah, I would have favored us over Ohio State (ever so slightly) and the LSU-Tennessee winner, albeit not by much. The problem is that a team like ours is probably depending on a couple of those types of matches at Indoor Nationals, and the cost of failing to reach Indoor Nationals is thus fairly high in terms of not having good wins under our belt at the end of the season. (In other words, the direct cost of a loss on Kick-Off Weekend is fairly low, but the opportunity cost might be higher than we're willing to pay.) 

I thought the 3 seed in Waco looked fairly attractive. You get a Miami team that loses its longtime ace in Estela Perez-Somarriba in the first match, and then you get a very good-but-not-great Baylor team to advance. I would've felt better about that situation than playing at Columbus. The 3 seed in Orlando looked really appealling, too--a very winnable match against #22 Auburn and then you'd have to beat #11 UCF at the USTA National Campus, which would mean a pretty minimal home court advantage compared to a campus site. I also probably would've preferred the 2 seed at Texas A&M, but UVA is beatable. Their incoming class is very good (a Canadian who's probably behind Ma but at Yepifanova's level, and they have another blue chip who's a bit behind Xu, but still a top ten recruit) and is only ranked behind A&M's class due to A&M's quantity (four players in the class compared to UVA's three), but I'd rather have UVA's top two than A&M's four. I thought A&M was the best landing spot when we picked in terms of safety of advancing, but if we manage to get past UVA, it should stand up as a better win over the course of the season. (The head-to-head result between UVA and Ohio State last season, when OSU won 4-2 in Columbus, could've factored in there as well.) 

Charlottesville is an indoor site for Kick-Off Weekend, and most other options I mentioned are set to be outdoor sites (except for Columbus), so perhaps this was intentional to get us more used to playing indoor tennis prior to National Indoors. 

Or maybe Lele is a big Dave Matthew Band fan! The UVA indoor facility is the Boyd Tinsley Courts, named after the primary benefactor, DMB violinist and Charlottesville native Boyd Tinsley, and he apparently comes to lots of matches when not touring.

RE: Women's Tennis: ITA Kick-Off Draft - ColoradoTree - 07-08-2021

While we'd seen Senior Day and graduation posts honoring Michaela Gordon and Janice Shin (along with Emily Arbuthnott and Emma Higuchi, who had similar posts honoring them last year before it was announced they were returning for a fifth year), we hadn't seen anything definitive about the futures of either Gordon or Shin until this "season in review" post that hit the website yesterday: https://gostanford.com/news/2021/7/7/womens-tennis-2021-season-in-review.aspx

It's silent on Shin (except as a member of the senior class), but mentions that Gordon has "concluded" her standout career. The lack of a burb specific to Shin may indicate she's returning for a fifth year, or it may just be that her season didn't warrant highlighting. (Her career, particularly how she did at NCAAs her freshman and sophomore year, however, is a different story.) I tend to think the latter. She's already been surpassed by several younger players, and I doubt she'd crack the lineup over our ridiculously good incoming freshmen. So, I'm envisioning a lineup that looks like this:

1. Angelica Blake
2. Connie Ma
3. Ana Geller
4. Alexandra Yepifanova
5. India Houghton
6. Sara Choy

RE: Women's Tennis: ITA Kick-Off Draft - BostonCard - 07-08-2021

So does that mean that Xu gets a scholarship?

BC

RE: Women's Tennis: ITA Kick-Off Draft - ColoradoTree - 07-08-2021

(07-08-2021, 03:05 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  So does that mean that Xu gets a scholarship?

BC

I don't think the extra covid-year scholarships work that way, but I could be wrong. I thought it was sort of a personal thing to the student-athlete, with the cap still at 8 scholarships but people who were already on the team in the spring of '20 can stay a fifth year if they want to. Sort of a "use it or lose it" thing rather than a temporary increase from 8 to 10 for a few years. 

The roster math is like this:

Fifth years: 0
Seniors: 2 (Choy, Madurawe)
Juniors: 2 (Blake, Mossmer)
Sophomores: 2 (Geller, Houghton)
Freshmen: 3 (Ma, Yepifanova, Xu)

For a scholarship to be available for Xu, I think it would have to be someone who isn't staying for a fifth year leaving early (or medically retiring, which sounds like a possibility for Mossmer). But, again, I'm not positive on that score.

RE: Women's Tennis: ITA Kick-Off Draft - DC 86 - 07-08-2021

(07-08-2021, 08:25 PM)ColoradoTree Wrote:  I don't think the extra covid-year scholarships work that way, but I could be wrong. I thought it was sort of a personal thing to the student-athlete, with the cap still at 8 scholarships but people who were already on the team in the spring of '20 can stay a fifth year if they want to. Sort of a "use it or lose it" thing rather than a temporary increase from 8 to 10 for a few years. 

For a scholarship to be available for Xu, I think it would have to be someone who isn't staying for a fifth year leaving early (or medically retiring, which sounds like a possibility for Mossmer). But, again, I'm not positive on that score.

My understanding is that during 2021-2022 fall and winter sports can go over the scholarship caps by the number of sixth-year seniors that return, but that spring sports are subject to the usual hard caps. In 2022-2023 all sports return to the usual scholarship limits. So women's tennis being a spring sport that essentially played a full schedule (including conference and national championships) last year is hard capped at the usual eight scholarships.

RE: Women's Tennis: ITA Kick-Off Draft - ColoradoTree - 07-09-2021

I just checked the roster, and the class years have been updated for next year. Arbuthnott, Gordon, and Higuchi are gone, but Shin is still there, listed as a graduate student. So, she's coming back. And DC, assuming you're right (and if she's on scholarship), then that means we only have one scholarship for the incoming freshman class. 

I find it very hard to believe Lele would allow that to happen, so I presume Janice Shin is off the tennis books, and we've got two scholarships available for the three freshmen. Shin may still be around, and she may even play a little, but Lele wouldn't risk the future of the program so a player who wasn't even top 6 by the end of the year can have a year of grad school for free. 

Then after next year, when Choy and Madurawe graduate, Xu gets one scholarship and we have room for one freshman in the following class. We'll be a very good team this spring, but we should be a championship contender in 2023--Blake as a senior, Geller and Houghton as juniors, and Ma/Yepifanova/Xu as sophomores. That's an absolutely absurd top 6, and it'll be reasonably seasoned, too. I've described our lineup the past few years as a 1, a couple of 3s, and a bunch of 6s, but that's a lineup with plenty of 1s and 2s. 

DC, I hadn't realized the scholarship cap was just a one-year thing. That's particularly devastating for a team like UNC that looked unbeatable in 2020, brought back a loaded group for 2021 and fell in the semis. That was the championship window they'd been preparing for, and while it's not closed, Daavettila, Graham, and Jones aren't walking back through that door. UNC goes from being a "holy crap" team to merely being a very good team that could pull it off if things go right. Texas is just as scary with all that young talent they have, but I remain convinced that UNC would've won the title in 2020.