Oklahoma Men, North Carolina Women Top This Week's Rankings; Hauger Lone American Left at Grade 1 Asuncion Bowl; Eubanks, Amritraj Interviews; BNP Paribas Challenge
 |
| The Oklahoma Sooners are back at No. 1 |
Oklahoma benefited from previous No. 1 Southern Cal's Saturday loss to Tulsa, returning to the No. 1 ranking they relinquished with their own surprising loss to Texas A&M on February 20th. The Sooners have another big non-conference road match on Friday against No. 8 Ohio State. Should Oklahoma win that match, it will snap the Buckeyes' NCAA record (for all sports) 200-match home winning streak.
The men's Top 10 this week:
1. Oklahoma
2. Duke
3. Illinois
4. Georgia
5. Baylor
6. Southern Cal
7. Texas
8. Ohio State
9. Mississippi
10. Texas A&M
If you would like more detail on how the men's rankings work on a week to week basis, see this post from the College Tennis Today blog.
Like Oklahoma, North Carolina took over the top spot after winning the Team Indoor, but the Tar Heels have kept their No. 1 ranking, going 4-0 since then. Georgia dropped from No. 2 to 6 despite going 3-0 since the Team Indoor finals loss to North Carolina, but they have a chance to pick up a big road win this Friday at No. 9 Alabama. Oklahoma State vaulted into No. 8, the program's highest ranking ever.
The women's Top 10 this week:
1. North Carolina
2. Florida
3. Southern Cal
4. Baylor
5. Virginia
6. Georgia
7. Cal
8. Oklahoma State
9. Alabama
10. Stanford
There were no individual rankings released this week. For the complete team rankings, see the ITA website.
As I mentioned in yesterday's post, 19 American juniors were in the draws of the ITF Grade 1 Asuncion Bowl in Paraguay, but after two rounds of singles, just one, No. 10 seed Olivia Hauger, remains. Last week's Grade 2 champion Nathan Ponwith, seeded 15th this week, lost to Maxime Mora of France, with No. 8 seed Sameer Kumar and No. 5 seed Emil Reinberg also unable to win a match, having had byes in the first round. Two girls seeds--No. 16 Ndindi Mwaruka and No. 11 Gabby Pollner also went out in their opening matches.
The news is better in the doubles draw, where three boys teams have reached the quarterfinals, including Sam Riffice and Vasil Kirkov, who beat No. 2 seeds Bogdan Bobrov of Russia and Felipe Cunha Silva of Portugal in the second round.
The ITF Junior website is not being updated, but results can be found at the COSAT website, with links to pdf draws at the bottom of this page.
Two interviews of interest were posted today. Jonathan Kelley of the On the Rise blog met USTA National Collegiate Coach Stephen Amritraj last month in Chicago at the Team Indoor, with Amritraj agreeing to an email interview, which can be found here.
Lisa Stone of the Parenting Aces blog spoke to five-star recruit Christopher Eubanks, a freshman who plays No. 2 at Georgia Tech, about adjusting to college tennis in this interview for the Tennis Recruiting Network.
The BNP Paribas Challenge at Indian Wells, which earns the winner a qualifying wild card, began yesterday, with Chase Buchanan, the top seed in the men's draw, winning two matches Monday without dropping a game. Melanie Oudin, the top seed in the women's draw, gave a walkover to her opponent as did Ellie Halbauer(12), Jacqueline Cako(13), Alexa Glatch(11), Laura Gulbe(16) and Jessica Failla(19). The tournament has always been plagued by no shows and walkovers, which I guess is always going to happen when there are no points and no money to be gained be competing in it, unless of course, you win it.
The draws, which haven't been updated with Tuesday's results yet, are available here.
11 comments:
Interesting with all the comments regarding the ITA Format changes, like Ad/No Ad scoring and suspending individual matches after a team victory, that NO ONE is talking about the amount of matches that can be played per day.
That is one of the most unhealthy rules in the NCAA. If a team can only be allowed to practice only a certain amount of hours per week BUT not limit the amount of matches per day, seems like an big over-sight by the rules committee.
To play 6 matches in a day is criminal and unhealthy for the student-athlete. Even to play a triple-header is unhealthy. It is actually embarrassing.
It's astonishing how some coaches would want their players NOT to finish their match. So only in the Fall tournaments can a player know they can finish their match. The NCAA individual field and individuals rankings will not be accurate.
I personally do not care which format is played but lets put out quality performance over quantity (stop scheduling anything over a double header) and lets get rid of clinch formats which allows our players to complete their matches (except in most tournament formats).
The NCAA individual rankings have always been the least reliable of any ranking throughout tennis for many many reasons. Now, with no-ad scoring and different conference playing different formats they have zero point zero validity. None, zippo, nada.
No ad scoring has ruined the validity of the rankings.
Colette, some unusual upsets lately. Do you think no ad played a part in it?
What the ____! No Americans in the Grade 1 TF in Asuncion Bowl .
The ITA should come down hard on those D1 teams playing D3 and Junior College opponents simply to pad their winning record percentage. That is gaming the system for sure and is a joke. But then again, you can't get into the NCAAs without a winning record and how better to achieve that goal than playing srub teams.
@Upsets
It's possible, but there's no way to determine that with any degree of certainty. I think you'd need years and years of data to draw any conclusions about that theory.
Has the rankings formula/calculations changed? I am seeing more drastic changes from week to week than previous years. Tennessee men were #20 and then the next week in the high 50's. GT women were #27; a week later #56. Seems really odd.
Please, really, you need a study? All the opinions you put on this site and you need years of data to figure out if no-ad is messing with results? It's common sense, no study needed. This sounds like a typical politicians answer which is not your style. It seems you are worried about stepping in it with your chosen ones in college tennis. For not covering college tennis anymore, you are choosing interesting times to do so and I believe your favoritism is sneaking in more and more. But it's your blog afterall.
you need to have a winning record against d1 teams to get an at-large bid. your d3/naia/juco wins don't count. the d3/juco/naia/d2's love playing d1's. whether for recruiting. test themselves out. whatever. it's not like they're obligated to do it. some d1's have to play d3's because of their location and budget. they don't have a lot of teams around and need a cheap match. Jackson St and Jacksonville St are both d1 too.
Jim Wright,
There are always swings in the rankings in the first week or two, following the switch from voting to computer based team rankings. This switch happens around the first of March each year.
Post a Comment