01-17-2024, 05:00 PM
OK folks, quick recap on the weekend, which saw Stanford win a surprisingly close 5-2 match over a good San Diego team and an unsurprisingly close 4-3 squeaker over then-#2 Texas A&M, which saw us climb to the #2 spot in the country. In no particular order:
1. It really does depend, doesn't it? Against San Diego in singles, we quickly clinched the match behind straight-sets wins from Ma, Yepifanova, and Blokhina on Courts 2, 3, and 4. But then, with the match decided, we saw three matches go to 10-point match tiebreakers to decide those matches, and while Blake won hers on Court 1, Hui and Xu dropped theirs on Courts 5 and 6, respectively, so it was our top 4 courts booking wins. (FWIW, I've always hated giving someone credit for a win or a loss based on a 10-point tiebreaker. Either play the match out fully or abandon it when the match is clinched, but don't do this. I take these kinds of results with a brobdingnagian grain of salt, but more to the point, Hui and Xu didn't play well enough to beat overmatched opponents in straight sets.)
2. Meanwhile, against A&M, our top 3 courts fell short (and Blake in particular didn't play in a way that warranted the spot) while we only got the win because the back courts pulled out the win for us, with Xu bringing it home with a dominant 6-1 third set.
3. Better doubles play. We won the doubles point in both matches, and it was the difference in coming away with a win against A&M. But there, too, it was a different story from last year, but basically the same story in both matches. Against both USD and A&M, Blake/Blokhina struggled on Court 1 and it was Ma/Yepifanova on 2 and Xu/Hui on 3 that took care of business to get us the all-important doubles point. More consistent doubles play from Courts 2 and 3 was one of those things we really wanted to see coming into the season, and we got it in both of these matches. Not worried about Blake/Blokhina--they're good, and they'll figure it out.
4. Wait, Blake on 1? I mean, you can make a case on paper for it, and maybe that's good enough to convince coaches you weren't stacking your lineup to try and eke out a win. And maybe Blake has been playing better in practice than Ma or Yepifanova. But I don't think she is better. Really curious to see how that plays out the rest of the season. And it's not like doing this really makes you that much more likely to win at the 2 and 3 lines, because Blake was dominant at 3 last year. So, stacking isn't a good explanation for it. I have no inside information here, so it could be a way of recognizing Blake's career, and if that's the case, we should expect to see a gradual return to our normal lineup over the next couple of matches, given the one-line rule (you're only supposed to move healthy players one singles line per dual match). But if it really is because Lele thinks Blake has earned it due to her current form, then we'll see her there for a while, though her result against A&M will make it harder to keep her there.
5. What a match against the Aggies! We win a tight doubles point (exchanging lopsided results on 1 and 3 but then Ma/Yepifanova eking out a 7-5 win for the point), and then after Blake gets run off the court to tie the match up at 1-1, we get to a 3-1 lead behind straight-set wins from Blokhina and Hui, leaving three matches on court, with all three going to third sets and us just needing one to take the match. We don't get it from Court 2, with Connie Ma losing rather handily in the third. We don't get it from Yepifanova on 3, who was up a break in the third but couldn't close it out and lost it in a tiebreaker, allowing A&M to tie up the match at 3-3. But then Xu took control on Court 6.
6. Lineup questions: so, it ends up being Hui and not Yu who cracks the lineup, and she vaults Valencia Xu, pushing Xu down to Court 6. Xu should be dominant there, but as we saw against USD, perhaps that's not the case. Could be a motivation question or something physical, but here's hoping she embraces the role and mops up down there to make the case to be moved higher. But in any event, with two matches under our belt, we've seen the same lineup, and it doesn't involve Yu, Houghton, or Geller.
7. Lineup experimentation: the mid-week match against UC Davis gives us a good opportunity to try and do some lineup experimentation, to perhaps give someone with some soreness a rest or to shuffle our lineup to something closer to what Lele thinks is our true top 6 in order. And frankly, we shouldn't really be tested by either CU or the Maryland/UNLV winner at ITA Kickoff Weekend at the end of the month, so those are more early-season opportunities to spread around. But National Indoors is right after that, so we'll want to have our top 6 locked into place by then.
8. I've talked a lot over the years about strength of schedule, and that win over A&M is going to help buoy our ranking all season long. We have several very good, dangerous teams on our schedule (like UCLA, USC, UW, and ASU), but not very many elite teams, and it's those elite wins that count the most in the rankings formula. Hard to overstate just how big this win was.
9. Yes, the top 3 courts lost against A&M, but both Ma and Yepifanova were in third sets, and Yepifanova's was a coin flip of a match. So, we can't yet draw too many conclusions about what needs to go better for us to have a NCAA run in us.
10. If USD had been a conference match, it probably would've been abandoned with us clinching at 4-0, and a 4-0 win always looks and feels a little better than 5-2. (Another reason why you can't put too much stock in scorelines, as they don't always indicate the closeness of the match.)
11. With USD also knocking off A&M--and by a 5-2 scoreline!--our win over USD is likely going to look even better as the season goes on. Expect the Toreros to climb the rankings, as they join them this week as the #22 team.
1. It really does depend, doesn't it? Against San Diego in singles, we quickly clinched the match behind straight-sets wins from Ma, Yepifanova, and Blokhina on Courts 2, 3, and 4. But then, with the match decided, we saw three matches go to 10-point match tiebreakers to decide those matches, and while Blake won hers on Court 1, Hui and Xu dropped theirs on Courts 5 and 6, respectively, so it was our top 4 courts booking wins. (FWIW, I've always hated giving someone credit for a win or a loss based on a 10-point tiebreaker. Either play the match out fully or abandon it when the match is clinched, but don't do this. I take these kinds of results with a brobdingnagian grain of salt, but more to the point, Hui and Xu didn't play well enough to beat overmatched opponents in straight sets.)
2. Meanwhile, against A&M, our top 3 courts fell short (and Blake in particular didn't play in a way that warranted the spot) while we only got the win because the back courts pulled out the win for us, with Xu bringing it home with a dominant 6-1 third set.
3. Better doubles play. We won the doubles point in both matches, and it was the difference in coming away with a win against A&M. But there, too, it was a different story from last year, but basically the same story in both matches. Against both USD and A&M, Blake/Blokhina struggled on Court 1 and it was Ma/Yepifanova on 2 and Xu/Hui on 3 that took care of business to get us the all-important doubles point. More consistent doubles play from Courts 2 and 3 was one of those things we really wanted to see coming into the season, and we got it in both of these matches. Not worried about Blake/Blokhina--they're good, and they'll figure it out.
4. Wait, Blake on 1? I mean, you can make a case on paper for it, and maybe that's good enough to convince coaches you weren't stacking your lineup to try and eke out a win. And maybe Blake has been playing better in practice than Ma or Yepifanova. But I don't think she is better. Really curious to see how that plays out the rest of the season. And it's not like doing this really makes you that much more likely to win at the 2 and 3 lines, because Blake was dominant at 3 last year. So, stacking isn't a good explanation for it. I have no inside information here, so it could be a way of recognizing Blake's career, and if that's the case, we should expect to see a gradual return to our normal lineup over the next couple of matches, given the one-line rule (you're only supposed to move healthy players one singles line per dual match). But if it really is because Lele thinks Blake has earned it due to her current form, then we'll see her there for a while, though her result against A&M will make it harder to keep her there.
5. What a match against the Aggies! We win a tight doubles point (exchanging lopsided results on 1 and 3 but then Ma/Yepifanova eking out a 7-5 win for the point), and then after Blake gets run off the court to tie the match up at 1-1, we get to a 3-1 lead behind straight-set wins from Blokhina and Hui, leaving three matches on court, with all three going to third sets and us just needing one to take the match. We don't get it from Court 2, with Connie Ma losing rather handily in the third. We don't get it from Yepifanova on 3, who was up a break in the third but couldn't close it out and lost it in a tiebreaker, allowing A&M to tie up the match at 3-3. But then Xu took control on Court 6.
6. Lineup questions: so, it ends up being Hui and not Yu who cracks the lineup, and she vaults Valencia Xu, pushing Xu down to Court 6. Xu should be dominant there, but as we saw against USD, perhaps that's not the case. Could be a motivation question or something physical, but here's hoping she embraces the role and mops up down there to make the case to be moved higher. But in any event, with two matches under our belt, we've seen the same lineup, and it doesn't involve Yu, Houghton, or Geller.
7. Lineup experimentation: the mid-week match against UC Davis gives us a good opportunity to try and do some lineup experimentation, to perhaps give someone with some soreness a rest or to shuffle our lineup to something closer to what Lele thinks is our true top 6 in order. And frankly, we shouldn't really be tested by either CU or the Maryland/UNLV winner at ITA Kickoff Weekend at the end of the month, so those are more early-season opportunities to spread around. But National Indoors is right after that, so we'll want to have our top 6 locked into place by then.
8. I've talked a lot over the years about strength of schedule, and that win over A&M is going to help buoy our ranking all season long. We have several very good, dangerous teams on our schedule (like UCLA, USC, UW, and ASU), but not very many elite teams, and it's those elite wins that count the most in the rankings formula. Hard to overstate just how big this win was.
9. Yes, the top 3 courts lost against A&M, but both Ma and Yepifanova were in third sets, and Yepifanova's was a coin flip of a match. So, we can't yet draw too many conclusions about what needs to go better for us to have a NCAA run in us.
10. If USD had been a conference match, it probably would've been abandoned with us clinching at 4-0, and a 4-0 win always looks and feels a little better than 5-2. (Another reason why you can't put too much stock in scorelines, as they don't always indicate the closeness of the match.)
11. With USD also knocking off A&M--and by a 5-2 scoreline!--our win over USD is likely going to look even better as the season goes on. Expect the Toreros to climb the rankings, as they join them this week as the #22 team.