NCAA 1st Round Previews: Oklahoma & UCLA Regionals

NCAA Interactive Bracket & Printable Bracket - all times EST.

Oklahoma Regional

Headington Family Tennis Center - Norman, OK

[1] Oklahoma (24-2) vs. [49-64] New Mexico State (11-13) - Friday 5pm - Not a whole lot of analysis needed for this one with the #1 team in the country playing the WAC champs who come in with a losing record.  This will be Oklahoma's 27th match this year but only the 2nd against an unranked opponent - Purdue was the other.

NCAA Singles & Doubles Selections

Here is who was chosen for NCAA Singles Tournament along with what their current ITA ranking and current Universal Tennis ranking.

The Atlantic 10, Big South, and Colonial lost its automatic bid due to not having any players ranked inside the top 125 while the Sunbelt gained a spot with South Alabama's Daniel Leitner ranked inside the top 100.  

There is also a list below of alternates below - last year 4 alternates made it into the field due to withdraws.  1 of the automatic qualifiers, North Florida's Jack Findel-Hawkins, hasn't played since March 13th so if he can't go that would open up a spot for Florida Gulf Coast's Jordi Vives if he stays inside the top 125 - he was 123 last week.

It looks like the cut-off to make the field as an at-large was an ITA ranking of #58

The guys with the highest UTR to miss out are Virginia's Collin Altamirano #7, Illinois's Aleks Vukic #24, USC's Eric Johnson #25, Texas A&M's Arthur Rinderknech #28, UCLA's Martin Redlicki #30, Texas A&M's AJ Catanzariti #32, Oklahoma's Alex Ghilea #33, Illinois's Tim Kopinski #40, Ole Miss's Stefan Lindmark #41, and Old Dominion's Carlos Lopez Villa #43, Illinois's Aron Hiltzik #47, and Virginia Tech's Amerigo Contini #48. 

What's Coming Up & Interesting NCAA Facts & Notes

Between now and the start of the 1st round on May 8th I'll preview 2 regionals per day. I'll start off with the Oklahoma and UCLA regionals and finish with the Virginia Tech and Baylor regionals.  I'll list the projected starting lineups with current player rankings and current Universal Tennis Rankings and I'll also make my predictions on each.

Some interesting facts and stats:

The doubles point plays a large roll between winning and losing and it seems to mean that much more when tournament time rolls around.  It's interesting to see a pair of top 20 teams in the bottom 4 in winning percentage. 

NCAA Tournament Men's Field

Master Lineups (pre-challenge)

All Times Eastern:

Norman Regional
[1] Oklahoma* vs. [49-64] New Mexico State - Friday 5pm
[17-32] Northwestern vs. [33-48] Harvard - Friday 2pm

UCLA Regional
[17-32] Texas Tech vs. [33-48] UC Santa Barbara - Friday 1pm
[49-64] FGCU vs. [16] UCLA* - Friday 4pm

Austin Regional
[9] Texas* vs. [49-64] Navy - Friday 2pm
[17-32] California vs. [33-48] Texas A&M Corpus Christi - Friday 11am

Athens Regional
[17-32] Florida State vs. [33-48] Troy - Friday 11am
[49-64] Winthrop vs. [8] Georgia* - Friday 2pm

NCAA Tournament Women's Field

Master Lineups (pre-challenge)

USC Regional
[1] USC* vs. [49-64] Youngstown State
[17-32] Virginia Tech vs. [33-48] Long Beach State

Lubbock Regional
[17-32] LSU vs. [33-48] New Mexico
[49-64] New Mexico State vs. [16] Texas Tech*

Charlotteville Regional
[9] Virginia* vs. [49-64] VCU
[17-32] South Carolina vs. [33-48] Princeton

Waco Regional
[17-32] Rice vs. [33-48] Tulsa
[49-64] Northwestern State vs. [8] Baylor*

NCAA Tournament Field Projections

If the committee follows my final ranking projections and uses H2H for adjacent teams this is what the field could look like at 5:30pm eastern.  Tune in to find out - NCAA Selection Show.

Seeds 1-16:
1. Oklahoma
2. Baylor
3. Virginia
4. Illinois
5. TCU
6. Texas A&M
7. USC
8. Georgia
9. Texas
10. Duke
11. Ohio State
12. Wake Forest
13. North Carolina
14. Ole Miss
15. Virginia Tech
16. UCLA

Championship Sunday Recap - Part 2 (Big East, Big Sky, Big West, Horizon, MAAC, Southern, Southland, Summit, WAC)

Big East:

St. John's repeated as Big East Champions with a 4-2 win over #2 Marquette.  The Red Storm took the doubles point with 8-5 wins at 1 and 3 and then Lucas Hejhal extended the lead to 2-0 with a 7-5, 6-2 win at #1. Marquette answered with wins from Kris Trukov and Mackenzie Stearns at 4 and 5 to tie it at 2 but St. John's Robert Livi would put STJ back up 3-2 with a  6-4, 2-6, 6-3 win at #3. STJ's Erick Reyes would came back from a set down to clinch at #2 singles with a 5-7, 6-3, 6-1 win over Vukasin Teofanovic.

2015 Conference Tournament Central

There will be 31 automatic bids handed out on the men's side for the upcoming NCAA Championships with the winners of the below conferences each getting 1 of those 31. The list of winners is at the very bottom of this page.

Week of April 20th

Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) (Cary, NC) - April 22-26 - Virginia is defending champion. Participants: Virginia, Virginia Tech, Duke, North Carolina, Wake Forest, Louisville, Florida State, Notre Dame, Georgia Tech, NC State, Miami, Clemson, Boston College.

Championship Sunday Recap

I didn't think Oklahoma and Baylor could top some of their previous meetings but they sure tried their best today.  In a match that was delayed multiple times by weather it was #1 Oklahoma doing the unthinkable and beating #2 Baylor for the 4th time this year and for the 2nd time in Waco.

Baylor came out strong in doubles and jumped out to early break leads at 1 and 3 while Oklahoma got the early break lead at 2.  While Baylor's #1 team of Julian Lenz and Diego Galeano would pull away for a quick 6-1 win its #3 team of Vince Schneider and Felipe Rios would lose its early 3-1 lead and would find itself down 4-3.  After an exchange of holds Oklahoma's Jose Salazar and Axel Alvarez would break the Vince Schneider serve from 15-40 to take the match 6-4.  Schneider actually double faulted on match point.

Final Ranking Projections

I crunched the numbers twice and below is what I came up with.  If the NCAA seeding committee goes off the rankings then UCLA would get to host with Columbia missing out by a few points.

With the at-large cutoff at 42 it appears that Tulane and Dartmouth will be the first 2 out with Georgia Tech, Tennessee, and San Diego State just sliding in.

There is still some guesswork involved because since I only know who was ranked in the top 75 if someone has a win or multiple wins over teams ranked outside the top 75 then it's possible that I could over/under estimate points.  I've been pretty close all year but a small error on the first run could be compounded by the second run.

Championship Sunday Preview: UVA/Wake, ILL/OSU, OU/BU Once More

Championship Sunday is here and 2 of the 3 will be available over the air with Fox Sports 2 televising the Big 12 Championship LIVE and ESPN3 covering the ACC Championship (weather permitting).  The Virginia/Wake Forest match gets underway at 10am so it should be over by the time Oklahoma and Baylor tie it on for a 4th time. Illinois also has a live stream of the Big 10 Championship although they don't have sound and the picture is just so-so.

#1 Oklahoma (23-2) at #2 Baylor (21-4) - 1pm est - This will be the 4th match of the year between these 2 with Oklahoma having won the first 3.  I'd expect nothing more than epic fight to the finish and at this point anything is possible.  Below are the box scores of each of the previous matches starting with the most recent and working back to the National Indoors in February.  

2015 Big Ten Tournament

Big Ten Conference (Champaign, IL) April 23-26 - Ohio State is defending champion. Participants: Illinois, Ohio State, Minnesota, Northwestern, Indiana, Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan St, Penn St, Wisconsin, Michigan, Purdue

Thursday Schedule 
#8 Iowa 4, #9 Wisconsin 0 
#5 Indiana 4, #12 Purdue 2
#10 Nebraska 4, #7 Michigan State 3
#11 Michigan 4, #6 Penn State 2

Pac 12 Tournament

Pac-12 Conference (Ojai, CA) April 22-26 - UCLA is defending champion. Participants include USC, UCLA, Cal, Stanford, Washington, Oregon, Utah, Arizona

Wednesday Schedule 
#5 Oregon 4, #8 Arizona 1
#6 Washington 4, #7 Utah 0

Thursday Schedule 
#4 California 4, #5 Oregon 3
#3 UCLA 4, #6 Washington 0

Saturday Recap: Oklahoma & Baylor Win Thrillers, Blow Out City in ACC & B1G, USC Holds On, Mountain West Surprises, Buffalo Dancing

What a day of tennis in Waco - 2 semifinal matches played simultaneously on adjacent courts with both coming down to a 3rd set tiebreak to decide it and they both finished within seconds of each other.

It's too bad those FoxSports cameras weren't in operation today because it was rough trying to watch the conclusion of the Baylor/TCU match due to the streaming video being reduced to freeze-frame video.  As a side note, for those that were wondering, it was confirmed today by Baylor that PlaySight will be installing new HD cameras with sound in time for the NCAAs so the viewing public won't have to be subjected to any more of the current setup.  Click on this link for a preview of the kind of clarity that you'll see - choose Indian Wells during daylight hours.  PlaySight operated the streaming for Virginia Tech and did the streaming for the National Indoors at the MidTown Athletic Club in Chicago and at Indian Wells for the BNP Paribas Collegiate Cup.

Saturday Preview: Conference Semifinal Saturday + Pac 12 Championship

It's go time for the ACC, Big 10, and Big 12 with each conference down to the semifinals of their conference tournaments plus the Pac 12 has reached its Championship match.

ACC:

#5 [1] Virginia vs. #16 [4] North Carolina - 10am est - Virginia won both the regular season meetings with the Wahoos beating UNC 6-1 in Charlottesville and blanking them 4-0 at the National Indoors in Chicago.  Neither match was particularly close though the match at UVA was the better of the two with UNC taking 3 sets and losing several 7-5.

Friday Recap: Georgia Tech Does It Again, UNC Rallies Past Duke, Big 12, Pac 12, & More

Another action packed day of college tennis is in the books and it was the ACC giving us the 2 best matches of the day as Georgia Tech and North Carolina both pulled out 4-3 thrillers.

I'm big fan of the schools that take the time to put an audio or video interview out on twitter shortly after the match finished.  TCU has done a great job all year getting a 30-second interview with David Roditi out on twitter and the last few days Georgia Tech has done the same with Kenny Thorne.  It's always better to hear the comments from someone as opposed to reading them.  I'm also a fan of school's posting video clips of match points - just gives you a feeling that you're there and lets you see the emotion from the players after a big win.

ACC:

In one of the early matches Georgia Tech came out of the gates like a bull seeing red. GT took the doubles point by winning at 1 and 3 and then took the opening set on 4 of 6 singles courts.  GT's Eduardo Segura finished first with a 6-2, 6-2 win over Jai Corbett at #6 but VT's Joao Monteiro would trim the GT lead to 2-1 with a 6-1, 6-3 win over Nathan Rakitt at #3.  Christopher Eubanks would make it 3-1 GT with a 6-3, 7-5 win over Andreas Bjerrehus at #1.

Friday Preview: Conference Tournament Quarterfinals

Most of the conference tournaments have reached the quarterfinals so its time for the rubber to hit the road as the higher seeds start to face a little heat.  Below I'll take a look at the matches in the ACC, Big 12, Pac 12, and Big 10.  I'm not seeing any upsets in these 4 conferences although the match between Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech could be very, very close.

The Mountain West Network has wall-to-wall coverage of every match on both the men's and women's side and I must say that I've been very impressed with the production they've put out so far. If you haven't checked it out yet make sure you do sometime today, tomorrow, or Sunday.  The announcers are knowledgeable and easy to listen to, they have decent graphics, they keep shuffling between courts, and the picture quality is very good.  I've not seen anything else better this year and that includes what I've seen on the Pac 12 Network, Fox Sports, and ESPN3.  Several of the conferences have done a nice job at least getting the Championship match on TV this year however no other conference have broadcast every match like the MW is doing.  2 thumbs up MW - nice work!!

Now to the conference previews:

#9 [5] Duke (22-5) vs. #16 [4] North Carolina (20-9) - 12pm est - These teams met just 2 weeks ago with North Carolina pulling off the mild upset 5-2.  Both teams look like they'll have the same singles lineup though Josh Levine will likely play at #6 for Duke instead of TJ Pura who lost 6-0, 6-1 in the last meeting.  Duke definitely didn't enter the ACC Tourney with much momentum after getting stunned by Georgia Tech 4-3 last Sunday.  Duke's #1 Nicolas Alvarez didn't play on Thursday against Miami and it's possible he won't play in this one due to an injury.

Thursday Action: Early Upsets in the ACC & Mountain West & Late Drama in the Pac 12 and B1G

It was a day of close matches as we saw several lower seeds pull off upsets.  In the ACC, #75 Clemson beat #32 Louisville 4-3 and #55 Georgia Tech hammered #35 Notre Dame 4-0.  In the Mountain West unranked Nevada sent #67 Utah State packing win a 4-2 win and Boise State did the same to #69 Fresno State by knocking them off 4-0.  In the Big Ten, Michigan beat #48 Penn State 4-2 and Nebraska came from behind to beat Michigan State 4-3.  In the Pac 12, #50 Oregon looked like it was going to upset #25 Cal but the Bears rallied to win 4-3.  Read about each match below.

Clemson lost the regular season meeting against Louisville at home by a 5-2 score though none of the singles matches were repeats this time around.  Louisville won the doubles point last time with Clemson taking it this time.  Clemson got wins from Alejandro Augusto, Luke Johnson, and Hampton Drake with the freshman from Hilton Head providing the clincher at #6 singles by taking the 3rd set 6-0.  Below are some interviews from Clemson's youtube:

Winthrop Is Dancing & A Look Ahead Towards The Weekend

Winthrop won the Big South Championship for the 2nd year in a row with each of those Championship matches coming against Campbell and both finishing with a 4-2 final score.  All 3 doubles courts went to a tiebreak with Winthrop pulling through at 1 and 2.  5 of 6 singles courts went 3 sets with Winthrop's #1 Tremayne Mitchell and #2 Dylan Comerford pulling away late and it was freshman Ruben Franzanti providing the clincher at #5 by winning a 3rd set tiebreak 7-1 over Jonathan O'Neal.  Campbell got a straight set win from Marthinus Visser at #6 and a 3-set win from Nicolas Rakitin at #3 in a losing effort.

BACK-TO-BACK CHAMPS! Men's Tennis captures second straight conference crown. #ProtectTheNest pic.twitter.com/o3ZHGPuOAe
— Winthrop Athletics (@WUEagles) April 21, 2015

4/21 ITA Rankings Have Been Released - Top 10 Breakdown (All Rankings On Same Page)

Oklahoma stays at #1 in the ITA Men's rankings for the 8th week in a row and for the 9th time in the last 10 weeks.

The top 2 (UNC/USC) stays the same in the women's rankings but Cal moves up from 4 to 3, Vanderbilt moves up from 9 to 4, and Florida falls from 3 to 5.  .  

Below I'll breakdown the Top 10 on the men's side looking at the 9 best wins that were used in the rankings this week along with other quality ranked wins.  You'll notice some of the quality wins are ranked higher than a top 9 win and that is because I used the new ranking so that you can see what changes will be made next week.  I also listed the point totals gained from the best wins and losses to come up with the computer score.  

Sun Shining On Florida Gulf Coast + A Look Back At A Few More From Sunday

Florida Gulf Coast was the big winner today as the Eagles earned its first ever NCAA berth by defeating North Florida 4-3 in the finals of the Atlantic Sun.  The teams met in the regular season 2 weeks ago with FGCU winning 7-0 but FGCU figured it wouldn't be as easy this time around despite UNF playing without its injured #1 Jack Findel-Hawkins (13.32).  The match, held in Jacksonville at UNF, started on Sunday but before the rain came UNF captured the doubles point by winning a pair of tiebreaks at 2 and 3.  Usually when you have the top 2 seeds playing for a conference championship you expect several 3-setters but all 6 singles matches finished in straight sets with no set closer than 6-4.

4/21 ITA Rankings Preview

The top 2 stays the same though Baylor narrowed the gap from 10 points to 7 points after picking up wins over Texas and Texas Tech last week. Texas A&M surged up from 6 to 3 by adding 3 top 25 wins after beating LSU, Mississippi State, and Georgia in route to the SEC Championship.  Illinois drops 1 spot from 3 to 4 after getting stunned by Minnesota - had the Illini not lost they would have been #3 with 70.44 points.  Virginia drops 1 spot from 4 to 5 though they'll have a chance to add some top 15 wins next week in the ACC Tournament.  

This week's rankings use each team's top 9 best wins and they will be the last set of published rankings before the NCAA Tournament field is announced on April 28th.  The rankings will be run next week by the ITA but they just won't be published until May 1st - I guess this is done so everyone won't know if they deviated from the rankings when doing the seeding.  I'll do my best to run them next week but it's the toughest of the year because they actually get run twice - once like normal using the 4/21 rankings as a base - then after finishing those they re-run them using the new rankings as a base.  I should be able to narrow down the Top 20 with pretty good accuracy because most of their wins are over top 30-40 teams.    

Minnesota was the big winner last week moving up 10 spots from 33 to 23 after picking up wins over then #3 Illinois and #27 Northwestern with both matches decided by a 3rd set tiebreak.   

Sunday Recap: Texas A&M Weathers The Storm & Drake Rises Out Of The Valley

Championship Sunday (Part 1) lived up to the advance billing with the SEC and Missouri Valley delivering heart pounding thrillers.

When #1 and #2 play you expect to see a great match and that's what Georgia and Texas A&M delivered on Sunday afternoon in College Station.  Texas A&M got off to a fast start in doubles by going up early breaks at 2 and 3 and once A&M had the lead on those courts they would not relinquish it the rest of the way.  The A&M #3 duo of AJ Catanzariti/Arthur Rinderknech finished first winning 6-3 then just as Georgia's #1 team of Austin Smith and Ben Wagland were 6-3 winners A&M's #2 team of Jeremy Efferding and Jordan Szabo would clinch the point with a 6-3 win themselves.  

Texas A&M carried the momentum from doubles over to singles as they jumped out to early break leads at #1, #5 and #6 singles while Georgia got the early break lead at #4. Texas A&M's AJ Catanzariti would take the first set at #5 and Shane Vinsant and "Artillery" Arthur Rinderknech would get late breaks to take the opening set 6-4 at #2 and #3.  Georgia's Ben Wagland cruised to a 6-2 opening set at #4 and both Austin Smith and Paul Oosterbaan would come back from a break down to claim the opening sets at #1 and #6.  Smith was down 4-2 before rallying to win the set 7-6(5) while Oosterbaan came back from 5-2 down to take the set 7-5.

2015 SEC Tournament Central

The SEC Tournament which will be held in College Station, Texas starts on Wednesday, April 15th and runs through Sunday, April 19th.  The Championship match will be shown on ESPN3.

The lineups listed below are the official submitted lineups by each time with the only changes coming from injuries.

Sunday Preview: SEC Championship + Daily Schedule

It all comes down to today in the SEC with the regular season co-champs meeting in the finals of the conference tournament.  Texas A&M has the big advantage of playing at home but Georgia has already beat A&M once this year though that was in Athens. The winner will move up to #3 in the rankings next week in addition to having the title of SEC Tournament Champions.  It ought to be a good one so let's take a look at the numbers.

#1 Georgia (21-3) at #2 Texas A&M (20-4) - 1pm est - Live Scoring & ESPN3 & Georgia Blog - Georgia won the regular season meeting in Athens 4-1 (box score below) but only 1 of the singles matches will be a repeat.  Texas A&M will definitely have the crowd behind it since the tournament is in College Station but whether that'll be enough to push Texas A&M to the top won't be known until later today.