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Tuesday, February 23, 2010

North Carolina Women Move to Top of ITA Campbell Rankings; Vankova to SMU; USTA Junior Girls Play Miami; Devvarman and Mladenovic Sign with Lagardère

Another round of team rankings was released today by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association, and Notre Dame's win over Northwestern caused a shakeup in the women's standings, with North Carolina taking over the top spot from the Wildcats. Northwestern fell to No. 2, followed by Cal, UCLA and Baylor. Notre Dame rose from the 17th spot to 7th. Tennessee fell out of the top 10 after a loss to Indiana over the weekend. The Ohio State women have moved up to 17th and they will have a big test on Wednesday, when they travel to South Bend to take on the Fighting Irish.

There was little change in the men's rankings, with Virginia retaining the top spot, followed by Tennessee, Ohio State, Texas and USC. Stanford's loss to Cal dropped them from 8th to 14th, while Cal vaulted from 27th to 15th. Oklahoma also posted a big gain. After a win over Alabama, John Roddick's Sooners went from 44th to 26th.

For the complete rankings, see the ITA website.

In men's action tonight, Virginia again lost the doubles point, this time to Virginia Tech, but won all six singles matches to defeat the No. 18 Hokies.

In a big rivalry match on the women's side tonight, No. 9 Florida shut out No. 15 Florida State in Gainesville.


The SMU women have added Katerina Vankova of the Czech Republic to their roster, a former top 10 ITF junior. The 20-year-old lefty, who reached a career-high 339 in the WTA rankings two years ago, played in the No. 3 position for the 21st-ranked Mustangs in their shutout of No. 32 TCU last week. It's obviously been a couple of years since I've seen her play, but she is very good, and once she adjusts to college, she has the talent to play at the very top of the lineup.

A USTA junior girls team will be playing the University of Miami women at 1:15 tomorrow afternoon in Coral Gables. I'll have more about the match in Wednesday evening's post.

And finally, the sports management company Lagardere has announced the signings of former NCAA champion Somdev Devvarman of India and 2009 World Junior Champion Kristina Mladenovic of France. Andy Roddick and Justine Henin are clients, as are many other prominent professional players, as you can see from this page of signing announcements.

8 comments:

Sam said...

Try and tell me Vankova did not accept money, and now she can play college tennis for free

Colette Lewis said...

@Sam
I'm only speculating, but if the NCAA amateur clearinghouse viewed her earnings as not exceeding her expenses she would be within the rules.

Tyler said...

ESPN lists her career prize money at 34,000 but who's counting?

Kind of puts things in perspective when the NCAA is willing to penalize someone for having an 80$ bus ticket paid for on a recruiting trip.

joe said...

If anything i wish the NCAA would be more leniant with American players than international players, not the other way around. NCAA just wants to use the stupid rules that they made to make them seem like they are doing anything but being a pain for American Athletes of all sports

getreal said...

With the cost of travel, coaching etc. Vankova was in the hole. The question is though did she have any endorsement deals, bonus $ for signing with an agent etc. I know of a Texas A&M player (male) whose NCAA clearance was held up because of concerns about that.

AR Hacked Off said...

I think the bigger thing is how is the young lady not playing #1 right, do not know of any current player who has held a ranking that high before heading to college.
The whole expenses thing is just asking for trouble, one must also figure she probably also played Professional Club Tennis somewhere in Europe as well. Regardless though SMU has landed a very talented player and could not be one of the Top teams in the nation by the end of the season.

iluvtennis said...

Its no different on the Men's side, both Maytin from Baylor and Lucassen from USC have over 10k in "earnings", but you have assume their expenses exceeded that. However, the question is how was Lucassen able to play over 50 Futures in the last 2 years while he was in a dutch University, now that is impressive

Tyler said...

It's a joke, clearly some of these college players are not amateurs! NCAA tennis should not be the place where players with initial pro aspirations come to rest.

When did NCAA tennis become an Olympic sport?