Stanford wins the Big Slam, Ohio State makes it 200 straight, Wake toogood, Ivy League no joke + My Sunday Preview

I knew it'd be hard for today's matches to follow up those from Friday but while a few of them came up short in the drama department the one that didn't was the "Big Slam" in Berkeley as Stanford pulled out a classic 4-3 win over rival Cal.  

Cal jumped out to the early lead by taking the doubles point with a 7-5 win at #3 doubles in the clinching match.  Stanford welcomed freshman David Hsu back into the singles lineup at 5 which shifted Nolan Paige to 6 while Cal made a switch at 5 and 6 and moved Greg Bayane up from 6 to 5 and dropped Wikberg from 5 to 6.  After dropping the doubles point the momentum shifted back to Stanford in singles as the Cardinal took 4 opening sets and managed to finish 3 of them off in straights as Tom Fawcett, John Morrissey, and "Rollin" Nolan Paige won at 1, 3, 6 to give Stanford a 3-1 lead.  Cal would answer back with wins from Filip Bergevi and Greg Bayane at 2 and 5 to tie it up at 3.  

All focus was centered on #4 singles where Cal freshman J.T. Nishimura had opened up a 5-2 lead in the 3rd set over Stanford junior Maciek Romanowicz and Nishimura was serving for the match. Nishimura fell behind 15-40 in his service game and after getting it back to the deciding point (40-40), which was also a match point, he would put a shot into the net to give Romanowicz the break. Romanowicz went up 40-15 on his 3-5 service game but then Nishimura hit a two-handed forehand winner to make it 40-30 and followed that up with a backhand winner past a drawn in Romanowicz to bring up the deciding point (40-40).  Nishimura chose the ad-court to receive the serve on what would be his final match point and Romanowicz landed his 1st serve out wide and as the outstretched arm of Nishimura deflected it back in play Romanowicz closed in toward the net and hit a volley into the open court for the hold.  Nishimura would now serve for the match for a 2nd time up 5-4 and he would quickly get broke at love as Romanowicz continued to play aggressively while Nishimura tightened up and had difficulty keeping the ball in play.  Romanowicz would then hold at 40-15 to go up 6-5 and would then race out to an 0-40 lead on the Nishimura serve. After a Romanowicz error made it 15-40 Nishimura wouldn't be able to keep the next one in play and with that Stanford had stunned its rival 4-3.

Ohio State Makes It 200 In A Row At Home - Or Did They?

This past weekend Ohio State ran its record breaking home winning streak to 200 when they defeated South Florida so after the win I wanted to look back and see who they had beaten during the streak. At first I thought there was probably already a list out there somewhere due to how impressive the streak is but when I looked around I came up empty.  So I said ok I'll just go to Ohio State's website and go through the schedules for each year and do a little cut and paste and then sort them by opponent and whatnot.  So that's what I did starting with the Purdue win on April 6th, 2003 and by the time I reached the South Florida win from this past Sunday I was ready to sort them out but I figured before I sorted them I wanted to make sure I had all 200 listed.  I had the spreadsheet count them and to my surprise it didn't return 200 entries but only 199 so that's when I started going back through each season to see what I missed but after looking them all over I still kept coming up with 199 and not 200 (chart is further down this page).

Buckeye 200, Deacs Win, Wolfpack Depth, Frogs Rule, Northwestern Comes Back

Ohio State just doesn't lose at home and they proved it again on Sunday winning for an unbelievable 200th time in a row as they handily beat a Top 25 South Florida team 4-0.  The streak began all the way back on April 6th, 2003 with a win over Purdue and has grown and grown as the years have gone by.  During the week I'm going to compile a list of everyone that Ohio State has beaten at home in the last 12 years so look for that no later than Wednesday.  Here is a good article that Colette Lewis wrote on the streak back in 2013.

In my opinion the biggest surprise for Ohio State this year has been the play of Chris Diaz at #1. Last year the Columbus native struggled in the middle of the lineup and went just 11-15 in dual match play but this year he has more than held his own Roberto Cid, Shane Vinsant, Or-Ram Harel, and Lukas Ollert.