NCAA Lineups, Roundtable; Kyle McMorrow in College Spotlight
The lineups for the Division I NCAA tournament have been released, and although I had feared otherwise, they are available to the public. Women's lineups are here, men's are here. A few interesting notes (and please chime in if you see some I've missed).
WOMEN:
- Arkansas, Florida State, Miami and Stony Brook have only 6 players
- Nina Secergebovic is at No. 1 for Baylor; Diana Nakic, a 9-16 seed, played 1 in the Big 12 tournament.
- Allie Will is back at No. 1 for Florida; Lauren Embree, who was 10-0 at 1, is at 2.
- Lauren Herring, who was injured and didn't play at the SEC tournament, is at 4 for Georgia, a position she didn't play all year. She was 13-3 at 2 and 3-0 at 3.
- Kristie Ahn is in at No. 4 for Stanford. Ahn has played only three singles matches all year and none since the March 2 match with Cal.
- Lina Padegimaite has moved into the No. 3 line for Texas
- Alex Leatu, who played for Vanderbilt through March, is no longer on their roster.
- Alcorn State is the only team with just six players.
- Ben McLachlan has moved to No. 1 spot at Cal; he's only played one match there this year, he mostly played at 2 and 3.
- George Coupland, who played most of his matches at 5 for Mississippi St. is at 4. Louis Cant moves down to 5, even though he was 13-2 at 4.
- Hunter Callahan is listed as No. 6 for Ohio State, although he has only played 9 matches, and all but one of those against unranked teams.
- David Holiner has played every line for Texas this year.
- Clay Thompson is playing No. 1 for UCLA, with Nick Meister 2.
A couple of other NCAA notes. First, the good news. The final ITA rankings will be published on Tuesday. From what I understand, the NCAA request pertained only to last week, it was not intended to be permanent.
Secondly, the feeds from the University of Georgia courts will be the same feeds as throughout the year (on all 12 courts) up until the team and then the individual finals. The Turner/NCAA crews will be doing the team finals and the singles and doubles finals, providing commentary and regular TV production values for the live streaming on ncaa.com. I thought the release sounded too good to be true, and it was.
Finally, the USTA's College Spotlight is back, with the University of Washington's Kyle McMorrow featured. McMorrow has been selected for the individual tournament, and his team will play North Carolina State at the Pepperdine regional on Friday.
15 comments:
Is Nelson Vick injured? I am assuming he is, otherwise it doesn't make any sense why he is so low.
Looking at the lineups you forget about some guys who were supposed to be so good coming into college, or were good as freshman or sophomores, now they are 7-10 on their teams depth chart.
I am also surprised how weak UVA is at #6. You would think a top team would be much better at that spot, but the record at that position is not all that good.
Also, USC has not lost at #1 all year, even when Johnson hasn't played.
You look at team who are probably too weak to win a title because their top guy is going to lose most matches against other top teams: UCLA, UGA. Not saying they can't, obviously they have both beat some of the best teams, but it makes it that much tougher when you are giving away a point right off the bat. Remember, put in context what I'm saying, when those teams are playing against UK(Quigley), USC(Johnson), OSU(Buchannon), UVA(Jenkins).
One other one I noticed was that Illinois is sitting Guignon at #6, even though he was in the lineup for the Big 10 championships, including the upset win over OSU. A couple other notes...
- I hadn't noticed how bad a season TCU had. I thought they were supposed to be on an upswing with the Sundling transfer and getting Chappell, and then you don't even make the Dance? Yikes.
- agree with Austin's point, looking through those lineups is a reminder that it isn't easy to get in a lineup and stay there. You have a lot of guys who were seeded at the Zoo who aren't playing top 6
Sundling & Denis Lin, both once top ranked juniors from Thousand Oaks back in the younger days of juniors, now neither having any impact in singles in college. Both solid doubles players though.
@Austin,
I imagine UCLA's Lineup of Thompson at #1 and Meister at #2 will get challenged and overruled (probably by Peter Smith again) and I wouldn't say Meister at UCLA is a walk over for anyone. He's been Johnson's biggest test this year and I could see him scalping an upset against one of the other teams. Spencer for UGA I agree cannot beat any of the other top teams #1.
Colette, do you know if challenges/overrules will be made public this year?
@Hoo14
I believe those are the final lineups. Challenges were heard and ruled on yesterday before these were posted. I don't think there will be any public disclosure of which lineups, if any, were overturned.
Alex Leatu is now going to be playing for Baylor, which is why she is no longer on Vanderbilt's roster.
What happened to Ryan Lipman?
@Colette, Thanks. So the Thompson/Meister lineup was overruled for the Pac-12 Championship but not for the NCAA tournament? Was it two different organizations doing the overruling?
@RD, Why would Leatu not just play out the full season and then transfer?
Ryan Lipman has been injured all season for Vanderbilt. They would have had a much better season with him at 100%.
I imagine that the fact that Thompson won his match in Ojai while Meister lost made it harder to over rule the lineup. All that being said it is clearly a stack - they are conceding the match at #1 to give themselves a better chance at 2 at least against USC...
My guess about vick is that he's in ty tucker's doghouse and that he'll transfer after this year. Regarding the Meister/Thompson brouhaha: it's not as if meister is clearly superior to thompson. Meister may have the edge mentally and in experience, but his game has definite vulnerabilities that can be exploited. When thompson's explosive aggressive game is on, he's tough to beat. So I wouldn't really call it a stack. It's more of a finesse/percentage move, as you're putting your more dependable and steadier player in his best position to win, while also giving your team an opportunity to win the other spot as well. An argument could be made that USC is doing the same thing with its 2 and 3 spots.Who's the steadier, mentally tougher player: Nguyen. Who's game has more upside to take on the stronger number twos: Sarmiento. On every team the coach makes these kinds of percentage decisions because all these guys can play. So you pick the guys in an order that gives the team the best odds of winning every dual match you play.
I am in the camp of having little issue with Thompson playing ahead of Meister. While I think Meister is indeed a better player, I also think Rola should play ahead of Buchannon and Frank should be playing #1 for UVA, but again, it's just more of an opinion. Now if UK was playing Quigley at #2 or something along those lines, then yes, there would be an issue, but with Meister not back to his pre-injury form, I think it is fine.
@Austin, You keep saying thing I vehemently disagree with. If you've seen Jenkins and Frank play this spring you'd see that Jenkins is clearly playing better tennis and is the better player right now. It's very obvious when watching a UVA dual match.
And that's fine, but if you, and I dont mean you in particular, but the collective you, think Jenkins playing #1 is fine, then the argument for Meister needing to play ahead of Thompson goes away as well.
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