Division I NCAA Roundtable; Division III Draws Announced; Wake Forest Adds $15,000 Futures in June; Delray Beach ITF Grade 4 Underway

Along with many others, I took part in the Tennis Recruiting's annual Division I Tennis Roundtable, the first half of which appears today. The first two questions--the best stories to close out the season and what regional we would like to attend--make for some interesting reading with few overlapping answers.  The upset picks and championship predictions in Part 2 are scheduled for publication on Friday. Don't forget to enter the May Madness Bracket Challenge, with the deadline Friday morning.

Bobby Knight at College Tennis Today is providing detailed previews of the men's regionals with predictions and to date he has published those for the Oklahoma and UCLA regionals, Texas and Georgia regionals, North Carolina and Illinois regionals, TCU and Wake Forest regionals, Virginia and Ole Miss regionals, Ohio State and Texas A&M regionals and USC and Duke regionals.  I'm sure he'll have the Virginia Tech and Baylor regional previews up soon.  Knight also posted an analysis of the ITA rankings vs. the Universal Tennis Rating of the players selected for the men's individual tournament, and provides a list of players highly rated by UT who are not in the field.

A complete list of times and sites for all men's and women's regional matches is here.

The NCAA Division III selections and draws have been released. The men's tournament in Division III has 43 teams, the women's 49, not the 64 teams that both men and women have in Division I.  Claremont-Mudd-Scripps is the top seed in the men's bracket and Williams is the top seed in the women's bracket.

For in-depth analysis, see the Division 3 Tennis blog.

Wake Forest announced today that it would be holding a $15,000 Futures tournament the first week of June at their facility. I was surprised by this, because the tournament doesn't appear in the USTA Pro Circuit calendar, but I was told it is an ITF-sanctioned event, not a Pro Circuit event, and it is listed on the ITF website as USA Futures16A. The deadline for entry is next Thursday, May 14th.

The main draw of the Grade 4 ITF tournament Delray Beach is underway, with Sami Kirberg and Kariann Pierre-Louis the top seeds. The draws and order of play can be found at the tournament website.