Saving Time in Sports; It May Be March, but Indoor Tennis Continues; Cal Women Down Stanford in Palo Alto; Johns Hopkins Threepeats at Team Indoor Championships

In today's New York Times, Christopher Clarey looks into the current push to speed up games in various sports.  The decision to play no-ad in Division I tennis isn't mentioned, but the recently introduced Fast4 format for tennis is, along with other initiatives to keep the broadcast window predictable and younger fans engaged.

Rain in San Diego has delayed the singles final of the women's $25,000 Pro Circuit event in Rancho Santa Fe. No. 6 seed CiCi Bellis and No. 4 seed Maria Sanchez have been rescheduled for 9 a.m. on Monday.  The doubles final was completed Saturday night, with top seeds Samantha Crawford and Asia Muhammad beating No. 3 seeds Ipek Soylu of Turkey and Nina Stojanovic of Serbia 6-0, 6-3.

The completion of the Division I Team Indoor Championships usually signals the start of outdoor tennis for the southern half of the country, but this long, cold winner has seen the indoor season extended almost everywhere.

The Virginia and Wake Forest men went to Texas for non conference matches today, but if they were hoping for nice weather, they didn't get it, nor did either pick up a win.

For the second time in two weeks, Virginia, now No. 11, lost to No. 5 Baylor indoors 5-2.  Virginia played without top-ranked Thai Kwiatkowski and Alexander Ritschard. Baylor won the doubles point and got singles wins from Julian Lenz at 1, Vince Schneider at 4, Mate Zsiga at 5 and Felipe Rios at 6.  Mitchell Frank and Collin Altamirano collected Virginia's two victories.  For complete results, see the Baylor release.

No. 12 Wake Forest traveled to No. 6 Texas, and in a match also played indoors, the Longhorns prevailed 4-3.  Noah Rubin did not play for the Demon Deacons.  Texas senior Soren Hess-Olesen is establishing himself as a favorite for the NCAA championships in May, keeping his dual match record perfect with a 6-3 6-2 win over Romain Bogaerts at line 1.

At Texas A&M, where there is no indoor facility, the conference match between the Aggies and Tennessee was suspended and will be resumed Monday morning. Texas A&M won the doubles point and most of the singles matches were early in the second set when play was called for the day.

No. 10 Ole Miss defeated No. 16 Vanderbilt 4-0 indoors in the three-court facility in Oxford. Nik Scholtz, currently ranked an inaccurate 60, defeated No. 9 Gonzales Austin 5-7, 6-3, 6-3 at No. 1 to clinch for the Rebels.

No. 51 Tulsa kept the momentum from their shock upset of No. 1 Southern Cal on Saturday going, beating No. 53 Pepperdine 4-3.

See College Tennis Today for more on today's men's action.

Of the several Top 20 matches today on the women's side, one was a Top 10 contest, with No. 8 Cal defeating No. 7 Stanford 4-3 in Palo Alto.  The Bears, still playing without NCAA finalist Lynn Chi in the singles lineup, won the doubles point and got wins from Zsofi Susanyi at 4, Klara Fabikova at 2 and in the clincher, Cecilia Estlander at 6 for the victory.

No. 13 Vanderbilt defeated No. 15 Ole Miss 6-1 in Nashville, and No. 20 Miami blanked No. 14 Clemson 7-0  in Coral Gables.  In Columbus, No. 6 Baylor got a road win, beating No. 19 Ohio State 4-0.

No. 2 Georgia defeated unranked Texas A&M 5-2 indoors in Athens. The Aggies have yet to post a ranked win, but are likely to make their way back up in the rankings now that they've begun their conference schedule.

No. 3 Florida extended its home winning streak to 139 with a 4-1 win over No. 9 Alabama Friday night, then reached 140 with a 5-0 win over Auburn today.

At the Division III Women's Team Indoor Championships hosted by DePauw, top seed Johns Hopkins captured its third consecutive title, defeating No. 2 seed Carnegie Mellon 5-2.  Jody Law clinched all three victories this weekend for Johns Hopkins.  For the ITA recap of the final, click here.