Best Teams Not To Win A Natty In The Last 10 Years: 2005 Baylor Bears

After seeing that Connor Smith was up to 200 in the latest ATP rankings that got me thinking about how Ohio State didn't win a national championship the year he played at #6 singles or for that matter the year he played at #3.  Then I started thinking about some of the other teams that were seemingly loaded but came up short when it mattered the most. So I decided to go back through the last 10 years and pick out those teams the many considered favorites and replay the moment where their season came to an end.

I'll start off with the 2004-05 season and this is a pretty obvious one.  The Matt Knoll coached Baylor Bears were the defending national champs and they were ranked #1 all season long in every poll released except for the last one.

College on Tour Weekly Recap/Results 6/8 - 6/14

There was 1 former college player that picked up a title this week with Tennys Sandgren (Tennessee '11) winning the $15K Charlottesville, Virginia Future with a 6-4, 6-4 win over Ernesto Escobedo.  It was Sandgren's 9th career pro title (8 Futures and 1 Challenger)

Roberto Cid (South Florida Sr) made it to the finals of the $10K Bursa, Turkey Future before falling 7-5, 6-3 to #253 Yannick Jankovits.

Alex Sarkissian (Pepperdine '14) made it to the finals of the $10K Hong Kong Future before retiring down 4-1 in the 1st to #213 Ti Chen.

In the College on Tour tab I added the point totals and prize money that the guys are playing for each week.

Drake's Alen Salibasic Wins Elite 89 Award (Again)

I saw this a few weeks ago but didn't actually get around to reading what it was all about until just a few days ago.  The award goes to the student-athlete with the highest GPA from all those who participated in the NCAA Championships and who had participated on the team for at least 2 years.

The video below the Drake release is an interview with Salibasic conducted by the legendary Dave "Koz" Kozlowski.  Near the end it mentions that Salibasic will be heading to graduate school at Princeton and he'll also be a graduate assistant coach with the tennis team.

State of the Union - College Tennis Today

My main priority over the last 4 months was to keep the content up to date so I didn't do much with the design or layout.  Now that we've hit the off-season I've been trying to spiff up the site a bit. This was first stab at doing a blog so most of the layout and features I copied from other sites but other features I've had to research to figure out how they work. I was just able to figure out how to make a scrolling text box which I thought was kind of neat and I've recently learned how to make a picture in picture page (iframe) where you can have as many different windows within a page as you want (see scoreboard pic on bottom). It seems like to do anything semi-complex you have to understand html and I'm learning more about it daily.

Season Ending UTR Top 10s (All Divisions)

Now that we're officially in the college tennis off-season I thought I'd take another look back at the year-end singles rankings across all divisions.  The one way to compare the rankings across divisions is to use each player's season ending Universal Tennis Rating so what I did is I pulled the UTR Top 10 from each division then at the bottom I have them combined into one list.  While Division 1 is by far the deepest you can see there are good players throughout all divisions.

College on Tour Weekly Recap/Results 6/1 - 6/7

It was a very good week for former and current college players on the ATP Pro Tour with 3 former college guys and 1 current winning titles.  4 former college guys finished as runner-up as did 1 current player.  Georgia recruit Tommy Paul won the French Open Junior Championship though it won't be known for a few months whether he'll end up in Athens or choose to go pro.

Noah Rubin Turns Pro

After Wake Forest signed Dennis Uspensky this past week it seemed like the writing was on the wall and today it was confirmed that Noah Rubin has left Wake Forest and turned pro. Rubin came to Wake Forest when many thought he wouldn't after winning the 2014 Wimbledon Junior Championships so you've got to give him credit for at least coming and experiencing college tennis for one year.

After much contemplation I have decided to turn pro. It's been an unforgettable year at WF due to the amazing people I was surrounded by.

— Noah Rubin (@Noahrubin33) June 6, 2015

Kickoff Weekend Draft Is Complete

Every year during the draft there are always a few surprises and this year it was everybody jumping on the Columbia regional.  The other surprise was #49 Oregon, #51 San Francisco, and #62 UTSA being #2 seeds. Usually the #2 seeds are top 30 teams but this year it didn't work out that way.  Many of the higher ranked teams decided to be a #3 or #4 seed in what they considered to be a more winnable regional

Final ITA Singles & Doubles Rankings Released

The ITA released the final singles and doubles rankings today below are both the men's and women's rankings.  There is a comparison of the final ITA rankings versus each player's Universal Tennis rankings - check out the chart to see how they compare.

Men's Singles #1: Axel Alvarez (Oklahoma)
Men's Doubles #1: Julian Lenz/Diego Galeano (Baylor)
Women's Singles #1: Robin Anderson (UCLA)
Women's Doubles #1: Erin Routliffe/Maya Jansen (Alabama)

Kickoff Weekend Draft - 7 Opt-Out in Advance

We're now 2 days away from the ITA National Indoor Kickoff Weekend Draft and so far we've seen 7 schools take a pass with many probably planning on playing other matches that weekend.

The 7 that have taken a pass on the draft are #35 Princeton, #42 Dartmouth, #48 Cornell, #55 Penn State, #56 Texas A&M Corpus Christi, #64 Washington, and #66 Clemson.

Kickoff Weekend Draft - Who's On The Clock

One of the more unknown phenomenons takes place this coming Thursday and 95% of even the biggest college tennis fans probably has never heard of it - it's the ITA National Team Indoor Kickoff Weekend Draft. The draft gets started Thursday morning at 11am eastern and lasts until 2pm.

Below are the full procedures and policies but in a nutshell you have the top 15 teams from the final ITA rankings set up as regional hosts. Since Virginia is the host of next year's National Team Indoors they get a bye and thus the #16 team (South Florida) will be able to host a regional.

College on Tour Results

Last week was an extraordinary week for ex-college guys so I knew it'd be unlikely that we'd see similar results this week. Year listed after the college is the last year they were in school.

May 25 through today:

French Open:
#56 Steve Johnson (USC '12) lost in the 3rd round to #9 Stan Wawrinka 6-4, 6-3, 6-2 after defeating #24 Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 6-3, 6-3, 6-7, 3-6, 6-3 in R1 and #54 Sergiy Stakhovsky 2-6, 6-3, 7-6, 7-6 in R2

Top 20 - Who Is Coming Back & Who Is Departing (Part 3)

I looked over 1-10 and 11-15 a few days ago so today I'll look at the teams that finished the year ranked 16-20.

The new recruits section is from tennisrecruiting.net and from school releases so its possible some of those guys may not end up where they are currently showing. Several teams will probably have some guys coming in from outside the U.S. so we probably won't know any names until the schools put out a release or we see the name on the roster in August or January. BC=Blue Chip, 5*=5 star, etc.

Top 20 - Who Is Coming Back & Who Is Departing (Part 2)

I looked over 1-10 a few days ago so today I'll look at the teams that finished the year ranked between 11-15.

The new recruits section is from tennisrecruiting.net and from school releases so its possible some of those guys may not end up where they are currently showing. Several teams will probably have some guys coming in from outside the U.S. so we probably won't know any names until the schools put out a release or we see the name on the roster in August/January. BC=Blue Chip, 5*=5 star, etc.

Year-End Recap & Thoughts on NCAAs in Waco

The books have been closed on the 2014-15 season though technically we still have one more set of singles/doubles rankings to tackle when they come out next Wednesday.

Virginia won its 2nd NCAA Championship in the last 3 years while Oklahoma won its 1st National Team Indoor Championship and finished as NCAA Runner-Up for the 2nd year in a row. 

Each of the 3 "Grand Slams" had a different champion in both singles and doubles so the wealth was spread out evenly this year.

Top 20 - Who Is Coming Back & Who Is Departing (Part 1)

Well its time to put the 2014-15 season in the rear-view mirror and start looking ahead to next year. There are 4 teams (TCU/USC/Texas/Duke) in the final top 10 that will have to replace 4 starters so those teams could face an uphill climb next year to return to the top 10.

The new recruits section is from tennisrecruiting.net so its possible some of those guys may not end up where they are currently showing. Several teams will probably have some guys coming in from outside the U.S. so we probably won't know any names until the schools put out a release or we see the name on the roster in August/January.

I'm sure we'll also see some guys transfer as we do every year. We probably won't know those until they show up on a new roster in the fall or we see a name with a different school beside it on the ITA All American list of participants in late September. I've added a new tab at the top to keep up with transfers throughout the summer.

Final ITA Team Rankings Released

Virginia and Vanderbilt finished atop the men's and women's rankings after each won the NCAA National Championship.  Oklahoma finished #2 after holding down the top spot virtually the entire season.

TCU and Illinois swapped spots at 4 and 6 after the Illini went out in the Round of 16 while TCU made it all the way to the semifinals. 

Columbia and South Florida moved into the top 16 which will give them both a chance to host a regional for next year's National Team Indoors (assuming they put in a bid and it meets the qualifications).  The regionals take place during the ITA Kickoff Weekend on January 22-24 and the participants for each regional will be decided early next week. 

NCAA Singles & Doubles Champions

Congrats to Virginia's Ryan Shane for coming from behind to beat Wake Forest's Noah Rubin to win the 2015 NCAA Singles Championship.  Shane would probably admit that things didn't look particularly good when he trailed 6-3, 5-3 but he stayed the course and pulled away in the 3rd set for the 3-6, 7-6(4), 6-1 win.

Rubin came out quick and opened up a 5-0 lead in the 1st set but Shane wouldn't give the set away as he held for 5-1, broke for 5-2, and held once more for 5-3. Rubin then served out the set after a multi-deuce game to take the opening set 6-3.

Side Note:  After Shane broke Rubin's 5-1 service game the rain and lighting came so play outside was halted and moved indoors for the remainder of the match.

Great Week for Past College Guys

Throughout the slower summer months I'm going to try and do a weekly post on Sundays highlighting the performance of current college guys as well as recent grads out on the ATP Pro Tour.  I'm sure I'll miss some because there are a ton of guys out there playing but I should be able to hit on the guys that do well (quarters-finals)

May 18-24:
#242 Daniel Nguyen (USC '12) won a $15K Future in Daegu, Korea - it was Nguyen's 7th career pro title.
#789 Sadio Doumbia (UGA '12) won a $10K Future in Annaba, Algeria - it was Doumbia's 1st career pro title.

2015 NCAA Tournament - All Team Results

NCAA Interactive Bracket & Printable Bracket
Master Lineups 

Facts & Figures

Doubles Records

National Title Contenders - positives/negatives/comments

Past NCAA Tournament History

Bobby's bracket

NCAA Singles & Doubles Results

I added the results to the tab at the top plus the singles result are on the right side of the page too - doubles results are down near the bottom.

SINGLES

Championship - May 25th - 12pm central
#8 [8] Ryan Shane (VIrginia) def. #6 [7] Noah Rubin (Wake Forest) 3-6, 7-6(4), 6-1

National Championship Recap; Virginia def. Oklahoma 4-1 & Vanderbilt def. UCLA 4-2

For the 2nd time in the last 3 years the Virginia Cavaliers are the National Champions after Brian Boland's team knocked off #1 Oklahoma 4-1 on a pleasant sunny afternoon in Waco.

Men's National Championship Preview

It's all come down to this ladies and gentlemen - #1 Oklahoma takes on #3 Virginia for the 2015 Men's NCAA National Championship.

Oklahoma is making its 2nd ever appearance in the finals after falling to USC 4-2 last year. Virginia is back in the finals for the 4th time in 5 years with the Cavaliers winning in its last appearance in 2013 over UCLA in a memorable 4-3 match.

[1] Oklahoma (30-2) vs. [3] Virginia (28-3) - Tuesday 1pm - Oklahoma is coming off a 4-3 win over #6 TCU Virginia beat #2 Baylor 4-2. Oklahoma won the regular season meeting in Norman 4-3 but it was close, close match that had several 3rd sets - for a refresher on how that match went you can read my recap.

NCAA Semifinals - Oklahoma and Virginia Win Marathon Thrillers to Advance to the Finals

After days of rain it was hot and very humid for the semifinals and all four teams had to fight the elements just as much as their opponents.  By the time the dust cleared after just over 4 hours we had #1 Oklahoma and #3 Virginia sitting atop the podium after Oklahoma held off #6 TCU 4-3 and Virginia outlasted #2 Baylor 4-2

I can attest the weather was very hot and I was standing in the shade so I can only imagine what it felt like for the players to stand out there and slug it out for hours on end.

I thought the crowd today was great for the 2 matches that were played simultaneously.  Early on there more people watching TCU/OU on the Riverside Courts but the stands gradually filled up on the Grandstand Courts and as both matches really picked up so did the crowds energy.

Semifinal Previews - Oklahoma/TCU & Baylor/Virginia

[1] Oklahoma (29-2) vs. [5] TCU (25-7) - Monday 1pm - Oklahoma is coming off a 4-2 win over #7 Georgia while TCU beat #13 North Carolina 4-1. Oklahoma won the regular season meeting in Norman 4-1 but all the singles match-ups will be different this time around except for the Alvarez/Chappell pairing. 

Regular Season Meeting:

#1 Oklahoma 4, #10 TCU 1

March 27, 2015 at Norman, OK

Singles competition

1. #19 Andrew Harris (OU 14.74) def. #37 Cameron Norrie (TCU 14.30) 7-6(5), 6-4

2. #7 Axel Alvarez (OU 14.59) vs. #36 Nick Chappell (TCU 13.82)  5-7, 6-4, 2-3 DNF

3. #76 Guillermo Nunez (TCU 13.72) def. #26 Dane Webb (OU 14.32) 6-3, 6-2

4. #65 Alex Ghilea (OU 14.15) def. Arnau Dachs (TCU 13.91) 6-2, 4-6, 6-4

5. Spencer Papa (OU 13.81) def. Will Stein (TCU 13.30)  6-4, 6-3

6. Florin Bragusi (OU 13.51) vs. Facundo Lugones (TCU 13.64) 6-3, 6-7(5), 3-2 DNF

Doubles competition

1. #6 Webb/Alvarez (OU) def. #19 Chappell/Stein (TCU)  6-1

2. Harris/Ghilea (OU) def. Norrie/Johnson (TCU)  6-3

3. Papa/Bragusi (OU) vs. Blake/Lugones (TCU) 3-4 DNF

Match Notes:

Order of finish: Doubles (1, 2), Singles (3,5,1,4)