10-08-2018, 11:46 AM
(10-07-2018, 10:40 PM)oldalum Wrote: and Gordon lost in singles consolation semis to the eventual winner, so after her first-round hiccup she ended up okay.
and Shin lost to the eventual main bracket winner.
and both our doubles teams lost to the KU team that is obviously good. I figured out how KU got to be so good in W tennis: 6 out of 8 are international students, including both doubles players and the singles player (Rychagova) who beat us. I think I'm going to have to adopt a more principled stand about this: I have no objection to the use of international ringers in US College women's tennis, as long as they're OUR international ringers.
Yeah, we've seen this throughout college tennis, and it's the only reason why the Big 12, in particular, has any decent teams. You see it in all conferences, but among the top teams in the country, it's those Big 12 teams (and the non-traditional tennis powers from the ACC and SEC, plus competitive mid-majors) that fill a majority of their rosters from international players. Stanford, by contrast, rarely gets international players, with Carol Zhao (Canada) and Emily Arbuthnott (England) as recent exceptions that come to mind. But Zhao barely counts, because it's Canada and she'd move in many of the same U.S. tournament-based recruiting circles. Florida has come to rely on international players more recently, and so has Georgia, another traditional tennis power. But it's the upstart tennis teams from the Big 12, ACC, and SEC that have had the most success with international players. Here's a look at this year's preseason individual Top 25, with U.S.-based players in bold, and with reference to a player's school and home country/state:
1. Bianca Turati (UT/Italy)
2. Makenna Jones (UNC/South Carolina)
3. Estela Perez-Somarriba (Miami/Spain)
4. Ashley Lahey (Pepperdine/California) (though she's one of just two Americans on the roster)
5. Gabriela Knutson (Syracuse/Czech Republic)
6. Anastasia Rychagova (Kansas/Russia)
7. Fernanda Contreras (Vanderbilt/Texas)
8. Katarina Jokic (Georgia/Bosnia)
9. Stacey Fung (UW/Canada)
10. Michaela Gordon (Stanford/California)
11. Carla Touly (FSU/France)
12. Kelly Chen (Duke/California)
13. Melissa Lord (Stanford, Connecticut)
14. Marie-Alexandre Leduc (Clemson/Canada)
15. Jada Hart (UCLA/California)
16. Emma Davis (Wake Forest/Massachusetts)
17. Michaela Bayerlova (Wazzu/Czech Republic)
18. Kate Fahey (Michigan/New Jersey)
19. Alle Sanford (UNC, Ohio)
20. Marianna Petrei (Idaho/Italy)
21. Anna Turati (UT/Italy)
22. Rosie Johanson (UVA/Canada)
23. Veronica Miroshnichenko (Loyola Marymount/Russia)
24. Emily Arbuthnott (Stanford/UK)
25. Vanessa Wong (UW/Canada)
And looking at the top teams, here are the final top 25 teams from last year since we don't have preseason rankings yet, including the number of international players in parentheses on this year's rosters. Where the roster size is larger than 8--women's tennis is an 8-scholarship headcount sport--you can safely assume the international players are scholarship athletes while the walk-ons come from the U.S.
1. Stanford (1)
2. Vanderbilt (1)
3. UNC (0)
4. Duke (1)
5. Georgia Tech (4/7)
6. Texas (8/10)
7. Georgia (5/9)
8. Ole Miss (5/9)
9. Texas Tech (5/10)
10. UCLA (1)
11. Florida (3/6)
12. South Carolina (4/8)
13. Pepperdine (4/6)
14. Oklahoma State (4/8)
15. Northwestern (5/9)
16. Florida State (7/9)
17. Miami (6/7)
18. Kansas (6/8)
19. Tulsa (a perfect 8/8)
20. Illinois (2/9)
21. Michigan (3/9)
22. UCF (8/9)
23. Virginia (2/9)
24. Auburn (2/9)
25. Baylor (5/6)