Thrilling Men's Semifinals Produce First Final Between Unseeded Players in NCAA Division I History; Georgia's Lopata, Lowest-Ranked Player to Advance to Women's Final, Faces Noel; Three Americans Reach Milan Semis; Chicago Adds D-III Men's Title

©Colette Lewis 2024--
Stillwater Oklahoma--

History has been the theme of this year's NCAA Division I championships, with first-time team winners crowned on Sunday. Saturday's conclusion to the individual championships will feature more of the same, with ninth alternate Anastasiia Lopata of Georgia the lowest ranked woman to reach a women's final and, 

for the first time under the current NCAA singles format, established in 1978, two unseeded players will meet for the men's championship.

The two men's semifinals, played simultaneously, entertained the small crowd at the Greenwood Tennis Center at every twist and turn, with both coming down to a handful of points in the 12th and 13th games of the third set. Filip Planinsek defeated Ozan Baris 5-7, 7-5, 7-6(6) and Michael Zheng downed Colton Smith 1-6, 6-3, 7-5.

Planinsek of Alabama, the first semifinalist in program history, earned two match points against No. 8 seed Ozan Baris of Michigan State, another program earning its first NCAA semifinal appearance.  

The first came with Baris serving at at 5-7, 3-5, when his 40-0 lead disappeared and he had to put away an overhead on a decided point to stay alive. Planinsek, now attempting to close out the match on his own serve, fell behind 15-40 with, Baris refusing to miss in the long physical rallies. Two aces in the game brought him to match point, but Baris caught him with a good dropshot, and Planinsek's response to it landed wide.

Baris then rode the momentum of that point to a hold and another break, and when the sophomore from Okemos Michigan held to open the third set, he had claimed five straight games.

Planinsek held to end Baris's streak, and after such a grueling end to the second set, the next seven games of the third set went quickly, until Baris forced a match deciding point with Planinsek serving at 4-5. Despite the stakes, Planinsek kept his nerve, hitting a forehand approach and putting away the volley, and two holds later, they began the tiebreaker to decide it. Baris ran out to a 5-1 lead with some aggressive tennis, but Planinsek got one of the minibreaks back for 5-3, before Baris held for 6-3.

Planinsek won both of his service points, with a good serve and backhand that forced an error, but Baris had earned his fourth match point on his serve. He played a tentative point, netting a backhand to make it 6-6 and after the change of ends, Planinsek came up with one of the shots of the tournament, an inspired running backhand pass that he dipped crosscourt. Now leading 7-6, Planinsek finally had earned a third match point, over an hour after his first, and he cranked a forehand winner to end the nearly three-hour contest, claiming his fourth consecutive victory over a seeded American.

"I don't even know what just happened," said the junior from Slovenia, ranked 29th coming into the tournament. "I think I need a couple of hours to realize I just made the NCAA finals. But awesome match, he's just a great player, great competitor."

Planinsek, who had 14 aces and myriad service winners, acknowledged the importance of that shot in a match decided by such a slim margin.

 

"This was one of the best serving performances I had this year, especially this week. I was hitting my targets well; all the practice on my serves over the years is actually paying off. I'm super glad it's working and I just want to serve even better tomorrow."

Zheng, a sophomore at Columbia, had recently defeated Arizona junior Colton Smith 6-4, 6-1 in the Lions 4-3 win in the Super Regionals, but Smith looked ready to continue his revenge tour, a theme throughout his run this week, taking the first set in a 30-minute tour de force. After beating Oliver Tarvet of San Diego, Nishesh Basavareddy of Stanford and Arizona State's Murphy Cassone, all of whom had dealt him losses in their last encounters, Smith was hoping to continue that pattern.

The window was there when, Smith went up a break at 3-2 in the second set, but the junior from Washington state immediately gave it back, with Zheng going on to claim the next four games to even the match. After struggling with his serve in the first two sets, Zheng was able to hold more easily in the third, and after a love hold for 4-4, he broke Smith. But Smith dug in and produced some of his best tennis since the first set, breaking Zheng at 15 for 5-5. 

Smith couldn't hold in the next game however, double faulting at 30-40 to give Zheng a second chance to serve for the final. When he went down 0-40, with a forehand error, a double fault and Smith volley winner, it looked as if another third set tiebreaker was in store, but Zheng clawed back. After Smith netted a backhand, Zheng hit a big first serve for 30-40, then reached his first match point with a forehand forcing an error.

Although his first serve percentage hovered around 50 percent during the match, Zheng made the most important one of his collegiate career, which just grazed the tape as it approached Smith, who had little chance to return it.

"I thought Colton played great on both of those games when I was trying to serve out the match," said Zheng, 20-year-old from New Jersey. "He just wouldn't miss a ball. It's tough when you're a little bit nervous, you know he's a little bit nervous but not missing a ball, and it's on you to take the initiative and take the match, instead of having him give it to you. But I thought I served pretty good in big moments in that last game, on the deuce point, and I'm happy to get it done."

Zheng is aware that as an American he is in line for a US Open men's main draw wild card if he defeats Planinsek Saturday. 

"That's something that's always in the back of your mind, but I have to keep it in the back of my mind," said Zheng, who received a US Open qualifying wild card last year and won a round. "I'm not going to be thinking about that too much in tomorrow's match. It's obviously a huge plus if I end up winning and getting a wild card, but if I don't get it, it's ok as well. I'm just focusing on improvement. If I get to that level, I'll eventually get the chance to play there anyway."

Zheng has experience competing on one of the sport's biggest stages as a finalist at the Wimbledon Junior Championships in 2022, and he believes that can benefit him Saturday.

"I think it's helpful for sure," Zheng said. "The first time playing on such a big stage you obviously feel a lot of pressure, there's so many people watching. It was helpful to get that experience, to have peace of mind going into tomorrow, ready to give it my all."

Zheng and Planinsek have met twice in college, both times indoors, with their most recent match at the ITA National Team Indoors at Columbia unfinished, and Zheng winning in Alabama last year in three sets. 

Zheng isn't the only singles finalist who can draw on the experience of competing in the Wimbledon Junior final, with Alexa Noel of Miami reaching the girls championship match in 2019. She too will draw on that experience Saturday, after the No. 8 seed turned in a near-perfect performance against top seed Mary Stoiana of Texas A&M in a 6-3, 6-2 victory.

"I'm not sure the crowd will be the same size," said the 21-year-old from New Jersey, who played in front of more than 5000 British tennis fans on Court One five years ago and perhaps 100 on Friday. "It's great to have that experience as a junior and carry that through, collegiately and professionally. You can learn what you've done wrong, what you've done right, change and adapt and be ready to go for tomorrow.....it's super beneficial, something I take pride in and will apply in the match tomorrow."

Noel, whose backhand slice pass on match point was an apt ending, not only has the Wimbledon junior experience to draw on as she approaches Saturday's final. She also has Paige Yaroshuk-Tews, who has coached two previous NCAA women's singles champions at Miami: Audra Cohen in 2007 and Estela Perez Somarriba in 2019.

Yaroshuk-Tews, in her 23rd year as head coach at Miami, said that she will not be overloading Noel with information from her previous times on court with NCAA champions.

"Everybody's personality is different, everybody's approach is different, everybody's 'why' is different, so you've got to figure it out with each kid," Yaroshuk-Tews said. "But this one is a special one; she's got the fire, the passion. I'm not an easy one to get along with sometimes, nor is she, so we're like a match made in heaven I think. As we say in the recruiting process, we want kids who love tennis, and nobody loves tennis more than Alexa, and I think it's showing."

Noel, like Zheng, will likely be awarded a US Open main draw wid card, and she too is motivated by the prospect. 

"You definitely don't want something so massive weighing on your mind when you're trying to win points and matches," said Noel, who earned her degree, but due to a significant injury layoff. has a year of eligibility remaining. "But it's something every American looks forward to, something I hope to get; but my mindset is one match at a time, so if it happens great, but if it doesn't you move on and keep playing tennis."

The inconceivable run this week of Georgia sophomore Anastasiia Lopata, Noel's opponent in Saturday's final, continued Friday, when the 19-year-old from Ukraine defeated No. 2 seed and last year's semifinalist Amelia Rajecki of North Carolina State 6-4, 7-5.

Lopata, whose placid demeanor and counterpunching game has proved unsolvable by every opponent she has faced in her eight days in Stillwater, stayed with the powerful Rajecki in every rally. Down three break points serving for the first set, Lopata held on the deciding point, and a similar pattern played out in the second set, when Rajecki, who double faulted four times to drop serve at 5-all, took a 15-40 lead in Lopata's service game. Two errors by Rajecki gave Lopata another deciding point, and she put away an overhead to confound yet another more highly ranked opponent.

"It's a little bit funny to me because I didn't expect to do that,"  said Georgia's No. 4, who has beaten the No. 1 players from Cal (Valentina Ivanov), North Carolina (No. 5 Fiona Crawley), Old Dominion (Sofia Johnson), Vanderbilt (No. 9 Celia-Belle Mohr) and NC State's Rajecki. 

"Like what the hell," said Lopata, who won the Bulldogs only match in their 4-1 loss to Texas A&M in the final Sunday. "But it's super cool for me that I'll have a chance to compete for a National Championship. That I was in the final of the team and am in the final of the individuals, that's really cool."

As the ninth alternate when the selections were announced last month, Lopata needed plenty of withdrawals just to get into the tournament, but that good fortune has helped her cope, as she earned win after win following the disappointment in the team final.

"I don't think I'm going to go to the next round, and I just go," said Lopata, who is currently No. 70 in the ITA national rankings. "I don't know how it works, but I know I've already done a lot and I'm just playing free."

In 2011, Stacey Tan, who played No. 5 for a Stanford team that lost in the team final, reached the singles final, losing to top seed Jana Juricova of Cal. She was ranked 43rd, substantially higher than Lopata, who is adding to the storied Georgia tennis history with an unprecedented performance of her own.

Lopata isn't the only Bulldog seeking more glory on Saturday, with teammates Dasha Vidmanova and Aysegul Mert reaching the women's doubles final, the first time in program history that Georgia has competed in the team, singles and doubles finals in the same year. Vidmanova and Mert defeated Vanderbilt's Celia-Belle Mohr and Anessa Lee 6-4, 6-4 to earn a meeting with top seeds Janice Tjen and Savannah Broadus of Pepperdine.  

Broadus, who won the Wimbledon girls doubles title the same year that Noel made the singles final, and partner Janice Tjen defeated Elza Tomase and Sofia Cabezas of Tennessee 6-2, 6-1.

In the men's doubles final, Ohio State's Robert Cash and JJ Tracy saved two match points to claim a 6-2, 4-6, 12-10 victory over Etienne Donnet and Natan Rodrigues of Louisville. Trailing 9-7, Louisville couldn't execute volleys on either match point and after another volley error gave Cash the opportunity to convert a match point on serve, Louisville netted a second serve return to end the historic run for their program.

Cash and Tracy, last fall's ITA All-American champions, will face another opponent on a historic run, Florida State's Antoine Cornut-Chauvinc and Joshua Dous Karpenschif, who defeated 2023 finalists Cleeve Harper and Eliot Spizzirri of Texas 6-4, 6-3. FSU had not had a team reach the NCAA semifinals; for the second day in a row, they will face another former NCAA runnerup in Cash, who lost in the 2022 final with Matej Vocel as his partner. Harper won the doubles title with Richard Ciamarra in 2022.

The singles finals, which will be played concurrently, will begin at 11 a.m. Central, followed by the doubles finals not before 12:30 p.m.

Cracked Racquets will have coverage of both finals at ESPN+. Live scoring is here, draws can be found here.

Three Americans juniors have advanced to the semifinals of the ITF J500 Trofeo Bonfiglio in Milan Italy, with No. 14 seed Iva Jovic facing No. 2 seed and longtime friend and doubles partner Tyra Grant for a place in Sunday's final. Kaylan Bigun, the No. 6 seed, is also through to the semifinals. Grant and Jovic, seeded No. 2, are in the doubles semifinals, as are No. 2 seeds and Australian Open champions Maxwell Exsted and Cooper Woestendick.

The University of Chicago added the men's Division III title to the women's title they won Thursday, beating Claremont-Mudd-Scripps 5-4 to earn their second NCAA team title. For more on their comeback win, see this article from the Chicago website.