[ColoradoTree]

Thanks ColoradoTree for your ongoing detailed analyses!

If we are to challenge for a natty, what will be critical to making that title run? Is it improved doubles play, to get the important first point? Is it more wins for Ma and Yepifanova at the top of the lineup against the other elite players in the country? Or is it just sweeping the lower half of the singles matches with our depth? Or a combination of everything?

I'm sorry to give a boring, "it depends" response, but, well, it depends. There's no one single recipe when it comes to winning the really difficult matches against the other top teams, so we'll have to be able to adapt and adjust and do different things on any given day. 

I took a spin through the closer matches from last season (any match where we won or lost by a 4-2, 5-3, or 4-3 score) plus the NCAA second round, Super Regional, and Quarterfinal wins in an effort to answer the question of "what went right for us in close matches and what didn't go right." So, out of the 11 matches that fit that bill, here's how we did:

Doubles

We went 6-5 in these matches, so certainly some room for improvement. But within the doubles lineup, we can see where the improvement mainly needs to come from. On Court 1, Blake/Blokhina went 9-2, so hard to do much better than that. But the other matchups weren't always consistent, and the performance wasn't consistent, either. Yepifanova was at 2 in all of these matches, and Ma was at 3, but their partners (Choy and Xu) swapped partway through. But in any event, we went 4-7 on Court 2 and 7-4 on Court 3, so while we can do better on both of those courts, it's really doing better on Court 2 that should swing some overall matches.

Singles

Ma: 6-3 (1 game away from a win in 1 DNF)
Yepifanova: 7-2 (1 game away from a win in 1 DNF)
Blake: 9-2 (both losses were on Court 1)
Blokhina: 5-4
Xu: 5-5 (1 game away from a win in 1 DNF)
Choy: 6-2 (1 game away from a win in 1 DNF)

So, looking at that, it's really the back courts, especially 4 and 5, that need to pick up their game and get us better results. We're doing just fine on 6, Blake was on lockdown on Court 3, and Ma and Yepifanova really did as well as can be expected at the top two courts (though certainly you'd like to see more from them). It's the lack of consistency from Blokhina and Xu that will hopefully improve this year.

Even looking at the 4-0 NCAA seminal loss to NC State, there are signs of what would help. We lost the doubles point behind 6-3 and 6-2 losses at the 1 and 3 courts, but we got a 6-3 win on Court 2. In singles, Yepifanova got absolutely crushed by Shnaider at #1, but Choy lost a competitive match (6-3, 7-6) on Court 6, and Ma lost another really tight match on 2 (7-5, 7-5). Blake and Xu were both starting third sets, and Blokhina was one game away from a win on 4. It's the little things sometimes, and sometimes 4-0 doesn't really tell the story of how close a match was. Not hard to imagine, say, Choy winning that second set tiebreaker instead of losing it, and then Ma taking a little bit of momentum from it to take her second set rather than losing it narrowly, and then Blokhina closes out her match, and all of a sudden, we're down 2-1 with the four remaining matches all in third sets.

One last thing: we won several matches by 4-1 or 6-1 scorelines that I would have expected would be sweeps, so I also looked at the nine matches where we won but dropped a match on the way to winning. In those matches, Ma was the sole loser 3 times, Blokhina twice, and then one each for Choy, Xu, Sun, or Yepifanova. So, if you put that against the close matches up above, it does tell a bit more of a story about Ma's performance that needs to improve. So, we need better from Ma, Blokhina, and Xu in singles--and from Yepifanova and her partner in doubles--if we want to make a legitimate run at the title.

[ColoradoTree]

Thanks ColoradoTree for your ongoing detailed analyses!

If we are to challenge for a natty, what will be critical to making that title run? Is it improved doubles play, to get the important first point? Is it more wins for Ma and Yepifanova at the top of the lineup against the other elite players in the country? Or is it just sweeping the lower half of the singles matches with our depth? Or a combination of everything?

I'm sorry to give a boring, "it depends" response, but, well, it depends. There's no one single recipe when it comes to winning the really difficult matches against the other top teams, so we'll have to be able to adapt and adjust and do different things on any given day. 

I took a spin through the closer matches from last season (any match where we won or lost by a 4-2, 5-3, or 4-3 score) plus the NCAA second round, Super Regional, and Quarterfinal wins in an effort to answer the question of "what went right for us in close matches and what didn't go right." So, out of the 11 matches that fit that bill, here's how we did:

Doubles

We went 6-5 in these matches, so certainly some room for improvement. But within the doubles lineup, we can see where the improvement mainly needs to come from. On Court 1, Blake/Blokhina went 9-2, so hard to do much better than that. But the other matchups weren't always consistent, and the performance wasn't consistent, either. Yepifanova was at 2 in all of these matches, and Ma was at 3, but their partners (Choy and Xu) swapped partway through. But in any event, we went 4-7 on Court 2 and 7-4 on Court 3, so while we can do better on both of those courts, it's really doing better on Court 2 that should swing some overall matches.

Singles

Ma: 6-3 (1 game away from a win in 1 DNF)
Yepifanova: 7-2 (1 game away from a win in 1 DNF)
Blake: 9-2 (both losses were on Court 1)
Blokhina: 5-4
Xu: 5-5 (1 game away from a win in 1 DNF)
Choy: 6-2 (1 game away from a win in 1 DNF)

So, looking at that, it's really the back courts, especially 4 and 5, that need to pick up their game and get us better results. We're doing just fine on 6, Blake was on lockdown on Court 3, and Ma and Yepifanova really did as well as can be expected at the top two courts (though certainly you'd like to see more from them). It's the lack of consistency from Blokhina and Xu that will hopefully improve this year.

Even looking at the 4-0 NCAA seminal loss to NC State, there are signs of what would help. We lost the doubles point behind 6-3 and 6-2 losses at the 1 and 3 courts, but we got a 6-3 win on Court 2. In singles, Yepifanova got absolutely crushed by Shnaider at #1, but Choy lost a competitive match (6-3, 7-6) on Court 6, and Ma lost another really tight match on 2 (7-5, 7-5). Blake and Xu were both starting third sets, and Blokhina was one game away from a win on 4. It's the little things sometimes, and sometimes 4-0 doesn't really tell the story of how close a match was. Not hard to imagine, say, Choy winning that second set tiebreaker instead of losing it, and then Ma taking a little bit of momentum from it to take her second set rather than losing it narrowly, and then Blokhina closes out her match, and all of a sudden, we're down 2-1 with the four remaining matches all in third sets.

One last thing: we won several matches by 4-1 or 6-1 scorelines that I would have expected would be sweeps, so I also looked at the nine matches where we won but dropped a match on the way to winning. In those matches, Ma was the sole loser 3 times, Blokhina twice, and then one each for Choy, Xu, Sun, or Yepifanova. So, if you put that against the close matches up above, it does tell a bit more of a story about Ma's performance that needs to improve. So, we need better from Ma, Blokhina, and Xu in singles--and from Yepifanova and her partner in doubles--if we want to make a legitimate run at the title.