Virginia Tops Men's Recruiting Class Rankings, Stays at No. 1; NCAA Relaxes Recruiting Restrictions in All D-I Sports; Sarmiento Wins Sherwood Cup
The Tennis Recruiting Network revealed its men's recruiting class rankings Monday, with the University of Virginia on top for the second year in a row, receiving 23 of 25 first place votes by the panel, which includes me. Because these rankings are subjective and don't take into account transfers, January admissions and many international players, they certainly don't directly correlate to a program's future success. But it is an interesting and handy way to survey what's happened on the recruiting front during the early signing period, always remembering there's another signing period coming up this spring for the class of 2013.
The ITA released another set of team rankings today, but very little changed, with the dual season barely underway for some teams and not yet started for others. The Top 10s for both men and women are virtually the same as two weeks ago.
The Top 10 Men:
1. Virginia
2. Southern California
3. UCLA
4. Ohio State
5. Duke
6. Georgia
7. Pepperdine
8. Oklahoma
9. Kentucky
10. Stanford
The Top 10 Women:
1. Florida
2. UCLA
3. Duke
4. USC
5. Stanford
6. Georgia
7. Cal
8. North Carolina
T-9 Miami (FL)
T-9 Alabama
The complete rankings are available at the ITA website.
The NCAA announced over the weekend that the dramatic recruiting rule changes will be implemented beginning this August for the recruiting class of 2014. The restrictions on number and timing of phone calls, texts, messages, etc. are gone, and there are many, many other changes. The NCAA's announcement is here, the Associated Press story is here, and ESPN has an opinion piece here, which believes recruits will be inundated when all the rules are relaxed. The NCAA obviously believes the opportunity for a recruit and a coach to get to know each other better before a commitment outweighs this concern.
One of the first important college tournaments of the year in California is the Sherwood Cup, which features most of the top Pac-12 players in an individual event prior to the start of the dual match season. This year's winner was USC junior Raymond Sarmiento, the No. 1 seed, who defeated unseeded UCLA junior Adrien Puget 4-6, 6-3, 7-5 in yesterday's final. UCLA, who had three of the four semifinalists, won the doubles title over USC, with No. 3 seeds Marcos Giron and Dennis Novikov defeating unseeded Emilio Gomez and Eric Johnson 8-7(4).
The complete draws, minus only those final two results, can be found here. Slide the bar at the bottom to the right for the doubles.
5 comments:
I would have put UCLA over UVA in the recruiting rankings. Brymer, McDonald, DiGuilio are definitely better than the Cornitelli, Kwiakowski, Aragone squad.
UNC should be #3 and not sure how Florida got that high - they should drop to 6 with USC staying at 4 and Stanford moving up to 5. Florida State should also drop one spot.
I guess it does not matter - UVA will get to the finals AGAIN and ...... AGAIN!!
Head to head there's no way UCLA's recruiting class should have been ranked above UVA's. Anyone who follows junior tennis heavily has watched McDonald's value skydive since his AO Jr semifinal performance last year. Individually, Kwiatkowski and Corintelli would both be at least rated even, if not, higher than McDonald as of late. And Brymer is a small step below those 3.
Then JC Aragone is no worse than Digiulio, with Daigle pretty much even with them so definitely better than UCLA's 5 star recruit. Admittedly, my opinion about this was completely different months ago when we were first hearing about the recruiting classes. McDonald was looking better and Corintelli was a little bit down back then, so it seemed at the time that UCLA had the better class. Maybe if McDonald gets his ish together it'll be that way again.
Also, Florida got that high because their foreign player, Diego Hidalgo was always highly ranked on the international junior circuit. Peaking with a world ranking of 16 has to mean something. Honestly, I think they got the top 3 right.
Stanford moved above Florida St. and UNC moved above USC is fine in my opinion, although the latter would be highly debatable.
disagree....
Fair enough and understand your opinions. I would mostly agree - I was more thinking of the past and predicting the upside of McDonald being (having the ability) alot better than Thai and Luca. I still think Mackie is way better than Luca. Most importantly, I have not seen too much improvement, if any in players going to UVA. They come in highly-ranked and touted and juniors but slipped in development.
I love seeing alot of the recent ex-college guys making an impact on the ATP Tour - Johnson, Klahn, Williams, etc.
McDonald has always been my favorite of that group. Love his game, and I really hope he puts it all together in college. I'm still kind of like you, looking at his major upside.
No comment on the rest of your post.
To Rankings and Agree-
I admittedly have not seen MacDonald play very much but he appears to be a grinder who probably moves very well and is very consistent. However, I didn't see any sign that he had substantial power on his serve or groundstrokes. If my perception is accurate then why do you think his game has such great potential as he moves forward into the big leagues?
Feel free to correct me if you believe that my perceptions are innaccurate because I am not pretending to be an expert on his game.
In any case, I'm sure glad that he appears to be over that health scare.
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