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Friday, February 12, 2010

Notes From First Round at Men's Team Indoor


©Colette Lewis 2010--
Charlottesville, VA--

I hope you've been following the Twitter feed today, because I don't have much time to go into detail regarding all eight matches I saw today at the Men's Team Indoor at the Boyd Tinsley Courts at the Boar's Head Sports Club. The slide show below features the players who clinched the matches for their teams, and the scores. Complete results can be found at the ITA's tournament website.

Because it's late, I'm just going to pass along a few observations from today's action, in no particular order.

The fire alarm that disrupted Southern Cal's 4-0 win over Fresno State was caused by a basketball in the Sports Club gym hitting an emergency exit sign and breaking it.

In addition that fire alarm, my first at a tennis match, I also saw not one, but two players breaking shoelaces during a game, who needed to have new ones delivered to them before play could continue. I had never seen that happen even once, and in the space of a half hour, both Chase Buchanan of Ohio State and Alex Lacroix needed that odd repair.

The closest match of the day was certainly Georgia's 4-3 win over Ole Miss, but the majority of the matches were very competitive. Although the only upset was No. 11 Florida's 4-2 win over No. 6 Baylor, particularly surprising given that the Bears had beaten the Gators 5-2 less than a month ago, I think No. 8 Texas's shutout of No. 9 Stanford was equally unexpected. Texas dominated the Cardinal, and a match I expected to be one of the best of the day, was very one-sided.

There are 4-0 wins that are lopsided, and 4-0 wins that are anything but, and Tennessee's triumph by that score over Illinois was in the second category. After losing the doubles point and at No. 6 singles, the Fighting Illini stayed true to their nickname and battled back to force a third set in three separate matches. After dropping a 6-1 decision to the Volunteers last weekend, with Tennessee missing two starters with illness, Illinois hung tough against a much more talented opponent and made Tennessee work for every point and game. If there were a heart award for the day, it would go to Illinois.

A very impressive crowd was in attendance Friday evening for Virginia's dismantling of Alabama, and it is expected to be even bigger for the Georgia match on Saturday. The Crimson Tide's Billy Pate was probably not too happy to have to face the home team coming off a surprising loss to Kentucky last weekend, and for good reason. The Cavaliers crushed Alabama in doubles and although there were a couple of close matches in singles, most of the fans could afford to leave before the finish and not worry about missing anything.

On Saturday, all four quarterfinals will be played on the six main courts, which will make sitting in one place feasible.

The women's team indoor featured two upsets today, with unseeded North Carolina downing No. 4 Georgia 5-2 and unseeded UCLA beating No. 6 Miami 4-3. For complete results, see the ITA tournament home page.


4 comments:

wi tennis said...

Wow! Novak vs. Bangoura. Will either guy ever miss or not run down a ball?! Could be a good one!

Austin said...

Im completely stunned by Louisville's performance so far. Against Ohio State yesterday they had break points in dubs and even a match point or two in the deciding match, eventually losing the tiebreaker 12-10 after OSU converted match point #8. Then in singles OSU claimed three of the five matches, but the one still playing was extremely close with Allare up 7-6,3-4...but Hall is a scrappy player and I actually thought he might have won that match.

Today Louisville found itself in the same position against Baylor, this time they rolled in the tiebreaker in the deciding doubles match. With the score at 2-1 Louisville, four matches headed to a third set. The Cardinals got two of the three wins, the one still on court had Baylor up a break at 4-3.

This has been the most surprising team to me so far. Looked at their roster, Louisville starts zero seniors, so this may be a team to be reckoned with for the next two years. Very impressive.

OSU-Florida was a weird match. Gators won the dubs point by winning both matches in tiebreakers. None of the singles matches were competitve except for the deciding match that had Uzawa pull it out 4&5 I believe. All the other singles matches were very one-sided.

This USC-Texas match should be awesome, very interested to see if Johnson plays singles.

wi tennis said...

or...I'm completely wrong! haha.

texasfan said...

Beating Stanford and USC two days in a row is huge. Corrie is a stud !
I predict them to go all the way and win it all . Let's go Longhorns !!!