[oldalum]

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.

[oldalum]

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.