03-26-2019, 09:29 AM
No official announcement yet from Stanford, but according to UC Davis, the match has been rescheduled for Wednesday, March 27 at 1pm. Because this match is utterly meaningless in our final ranking (UC Davis is 3-9, with lopsided losses to St. Mary's and Santa Clara), I have to assume Lele is highly motivated to get a chance to adjust her lineup one more time before UCLA.
I wonder if the Davis team didn't end up making the drive down on Monday, since the match seemed like it was cancelled fairly early in the day. If I'd driven my team down to Stanford twice (4 hours of driving each time) just to get rained out, I wouldn't be highly motivated to try a third time. (The head coach is a Stanford alum, though--former All-American Bill Maze '78, who played under Dick Gould and played doubles at Stanford with John McEnroe--so that can't hurt.)
Regarding Hawaii: Hawaii has usually had a couple of players on their team from Hawaii in addition to a majority of international students, but I hadn't realized it was entirely international this year (something which is becoming increasingly common, as this board has noticed before). By contrast, UC Davis's team is entirely American--six Californians, a Texan, and a Hawaiian.
Among the top 10 teams, you see the different approaches:
1. UNC is entirely American
2. Georgia has a 5/4 international/American split (though its singles lineup is 5/1, indicating some of those Americans are walk-ons)
3. Duke is mostly American (just one international student from the UK)
4. Stanford is the same as Duke
5. Vanderbilt is mostly American with one player from Ireland and one from the UK.
6. South Carolina has a 4/4 split
7. Pepperdine has a 5/2 split
8. Oklahoma State has a 6/5 split (though its singles lineup is 5/1, so like UGA, some of the Americans have to be walk-ons)
9. UCLA is mostly American, with one Canadian
10. Washington has a 5/5 split, though three are Canadians (there's long been a strong Canadian pipeline to UW)--the singles lineup is 5/2, with the Canadians occupying the top three spots (the total is 7 because they've shuffled the bottom 2-3 spots around a lot).
The best American players are still enough to build a champion. But there just aren't enough to create competitive rosters at most of the DI schools. So, if you're a middling program and you want to get competitive, it's often easier to sell your program to international players than it is to domestic players until you reach a certain level of success, and then your success recruits Americans for you. (Georgia is an exception, as a perenially competitive program that has switched gears from a mostly domestic roster to a mostly international one.)
I wonder if the Davis team didn't end up making the drive down on Monday, since the match seemed like it was cancelled fairly early in the day. If I'd driven my team down to Stanford twice (4 hours of driving each time) just to get rained out, I wouldn't be highly motivated to try a third time. (The head coach is a Stanford alum, though--former All-American Bill Maze '78, who played under Dick Gould and played doubles at Stanford with John McEnroe--so that can't hurt.)
Regarding Hawaii: Hawaii has usually had a couple of players on their team from Hawaii in addition to a majority of international students, but I hadn't realized it was entirely international this year (something which is becoming increasingly common, as this board has noticed before). By contrast, UC Davis's team is entirely American--six Californians, a Texan, and a Hawaiian.
Among the top 10 teams, you see the different approaches:
1. UNC is entirely American
2. Georgia has a 5/4 international/American split (though its singles lineup is 5/1, indicating some of those Americans are walk-ons)
3. Duke is mostly American (just one international student from the UK)
4. Stanford is the same as Duke
5. Vanderbilt is mostly American with one player from Ireland and one from the UK.
6. South Carolina has a 4/4 split
7. Pepperdine has a 5/2 split
8. Oklahoma State has a 6/5 split (though its singles lineup is 5/1, so like UGA, some of the Americans have to be walk-ons)
9. UCLA is mostly American, with one Canadian
10. Washington has a 5/5 split, though three are Canadians (there's long been a strong Canadian pipeline to UW)--the singles lineup is 5/2, with the Canadians occupying the top three spots (the total is 7 because they've shuffled the bottom 2-3 spots around a lot).
The best American players are still enough to build a champion. But there just aren't enough to create competitive rosters at most of the DI schools. So, if you're a middling program and you want to get competitive, it's often easier to sell your program to international players than it is to domestic players until you reach a certain level of success, and then your success recruits Americans for you. (Georgia is an exception, as a perenially competitive program that has switched gears from a mostly domestic roster to a mostly international one.)