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11-29-2021, 10:49 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-29-2021, 11:02 AM by
ColoradoTree.)
So exciting to get confirmation that Gordon will be part of the team this year! (More than her placement on the roster itself, I mean. But with an official match and instagram evidence from the official team account that she went on the Hawaii trip, we know it's real now!)
And yes, Mossmer was there, too, but if she's not going to play in what are as good as exhibition matches in Hawaii, when is she going to play? We have scholarship math headaches, after all.
As far as the matches themselves, not a ton to glean from them. Zandberg and Heynemans are transfers from Arizona, where they played #3 and #5 singles last year, respectively. (So, Choy losing to Heynemans counts as a bad loss--Choy played a line higher than Heynemans last year and beat her Wildcat opponent 6-0, 6-1. Geller needing a third set is similarly eyebrow-raising. But it's basically an exhibition in the middle of a Hawaiian vacation, so I'm not stressed.) Blake beat Zandberg last spring 6-3, 6-1, so a 7-5, 7-6 win here is also curious, but Ma beat her handily. As an aside, Janice Shin played Heynemans in 2019 as a sophomore and again last year as a senior, and it tracks the downward trend we saw in her game. Shin beat her 6-2, 6-1 in 2019, but it took her three sets last spring. Takamura mostly played #2/3 last year, Romain played #4/5, Merrill played #5/6, and Kim played occasionally in the back half of the lineup, so Ma and Yepifanova easily dispatching Takamura is another sign they're cementing themselves in the top two. We have a ton of talent, and we've got plenty of time for the rest of the roster to work themselves into top form, but Ma and Yepifanova are in great form right now.
I think this is Gordon's first competitive match since the end of the spring, so it's going to take some time for her to work back into form. Holding onto the #1 line over Ma would have been extremely difficult even if Gordon had been playing, but with what looks to have been a significant amount of time off, it's harder and harder to see a lineup this spring that doesn't have Ma atop it.
In any event, we should see Ma and Yepifanova join the ranks of ranked players soon--the final fall rankings usually come out before now, but no word yet on when they'll be out.
