Friday Recap: UCLA and Cal Win Out West, Rain Hampers Play in the Southeast, Ohio State and Penn State deliver in the Big Ten, & More

It was an extremely long day of tennis in Columbia, South Carolina, as rain pushed the schedule at the SEC Tournament back significantly and ultimately shifted play indoors. One of the opening matches of the day, which started at 9am ET, would be a barnburner as South Carolina was trying to pull off its third top-20 upset in the last five days.

The Gamecocks started off the morning by taking the doubles point over No. 13 Texas A&M with Gabriel Friedrich and Harrison O'Keefe winning the deciding tiebreak at No. 1 by a 7-1 score.

Texas A&M rebounded in singles by taking four opening sets but South Carolina's Andrew Schafer was the first one to finish after he defeated Jordi Arconada 6-1, 7-5 at No. 3.

Thursday Conference Tournament Results

Several conference tournaments got underway on Wednesday, with an abbreviated schedule, but they really got going on Thursday with the ACC and SEC having four matches each.

All four matches at the SEC Tournament in Columbia, South Carolina, were hotly contested with South Carolina, Vanderbilt, Ole Miss, and Kentucky the day's winners.

The four matches at the ACC were quite as suspenseful with Virginia Tech rolling over Miami 4-0, Georgia Tech pulling away from Louisville 4-1, Notre Dame holding off Duke 4-1, and NC State edging Clemson 4-2.

Both of the matches in Ojai were 4-0 shutouts with Cal and Stanford overwhelming Washington and Oregon.

Friday Recap: Mayhem in Music City, Nuts in the Emerald City, Gators Win In Starkville, Cal Survives, UAB, LMU, & UNLV Beat Ranked Teams

Another Friday brought us another round of stunning upsets as a pair of top 10 teams went down on the road.

Vanderbilt won its third consecutive match by a 4-3 score as it stunned No. 7 Texas A&M 4-3. The Commodores took the doubles point when Tate Allwardt and Baker Newman knocked off Max Lunkin and AJ Catanzariti 7-6(5) at No. 2.

Thursday Recap + Weekend Preview (3/11-3/13)

There were actually four ranked versus ranked matches on Thursday with the higher ranked team winning three of the four.

No. 4 Virginia went to Tulsa, the site of this year's NCAA Championships, and rolled over No. 26 Tulsa 6-1. Virginia won a pretty tight doubles point by breaking Tulsa's 5-6 service game at No. 3 to claim the point.  Ryan Shane, Collin Altamirano, Mac Styslinger, and Henrik Wiersholm won in straight sets for Virginia at 1, 2, 5, and 6 while Thai-Son Kwiatkowski won a three-set battle over Dylan McCloskey at 3. Tulsa's Juan Matias Gonzalez earned the lone point for the Golden Hurricane with a straight set win at No. 4.

Friday Recap: Ohio St Hammers A&M, Nwestern Overwhelms NCST, OKST survies GAST

Sometimes rematches result in different outcomes and sometimes they don't - tonight's Ohio State/Texas A&M match in Columbus turned out to be the latter. These teams met just five days ago in the National Indoors consolation rounds with Ohio State pulling out a 4-3 squeaker but this evening it was all Buckeyes.

Last week Texas A&M won the doubles point, though Herkko Pollanen didn't play, but tonight with Pollanen playing at #1 with Mikael Torpegaard they and the team cruised past A&M.

Ohio State swapped Martin Joyce and Ralf Steinbach at #5 and #6 and Hugo Di Feo and Chris Diaz at #2 and #3. Texas A&M swapped Jordi Arconada and Shane Vinsant at #2 and #3 which meant both of those matchups stayed the same from the previous meeting. Harrison Adams also returned to the lineup tonight after sitting out on Sunday. (box score from last week is below tonight's box score)

Men's Kick-Off Weekend Regional Previews

There will be 15 men's regionals taking place this weekend with 2 of the 15 getting started on Friday. I'll start off by previewing the USC and Illinois Regionals since they both start on Friday and I'll work my through all 15 of them by Friday evening. Keep checking back for updates since I'll just be adding on to this post. FYI, the numbers beside the school name are each player's current Universal Tennis Rating (UTR) as of 1/20/16. 

USC Regional (Fri/Sat) - Marks Stadium (no live scoring due to construction)

#57 UC Davis [4] at #8 USC [1] – 4pm est/1pm pst – USC Twitter - This will be the dual-match opener for USC with the Trojans expected to start at least 3 freshmen while UC Davis kicked off its season on Wednesday with a 4-0 loss at #18 Stanford. The Aggies return all 6 starters from last year's team including its top player #38 Alec Adamson who had a tremendous fall winning four matches over ranked opponents. I don't foresee UC Davis getting on the board in this one with USC just too strong top to bottom. Prediction: USC 4-0 (Result: USC 7-0)

Thursday Recap: UNC Tops Duke, Ole Miss Fights Back, aTm Rings Up Another Win, Dawgs over Hogs

North Carolina won the big match of the day as they knocked off cross town rival #6 Duke 4-2.   The Tar Heels started off by taking the doubles point as its #3 team of Esben Hess-Olesen and Andrew Gores provided the clincher winning 8-5.  The senior duo had never played an official doubles match before today but were thrown together after fellow senior Oystein Steiro had to sit out with an injury.

Duke quickly tied the match at 1 with Chris Mengel picking up a win when Esben Hess-Olesen was retired with an injury when trailing 5-2 in the 1st.   Just a few minutes later UNC would retake the lead when Robert Kelly laid out TJ Pura 6-0, 6-1 at #6 singles.  I thought Kelly would win going in but I didn't think it'd be like that.  

Brayden Schnur would extend the UNC lead to 3-1 as the Tar Heel sophomore picked up his most impressive win of the year when he knocked off #11 Nicolas Alvarez 6-3, 6-4 at #1 singles.  Raphael Hemmeler would get Duke to within 3-2 after he scored a 7-5, 6-3 win at #3 singles over Brett Clark. 

Duke needed both of the final matches but UNC wouldn't even give them 1 as Ronnie Schneider came back from a set down to beat Jason Tahir at #2 and just moments later Jack Murray would finish off Bruno Semenzato at #4.  

Thursday Preview: Duke/UNC, LSU/aTm, Ole Miss/S Carolina, UGA/ARK

Pretty decent schedule of matches for a Thursday with Duke making the 10 mile trip to Chapel Hill to face North Carolina plus at least 2 of the matches in the SEC should be competitive.  I have the live scoring links below so follow along when they get underway.

#6 Duke (19-3) at #16 North Carolina (16-8) - 3pm est - Live Scoring - North Carolina leads the overall series by a wide margin (89-38) but Duke has won 4 of the last 5 so for North Carolina's sake it's a good thing that Brayden Schnur came back last week.   The Tar Heels went 4-3 in Schnur's absense but upon his return they were able to beat both Boston College and Notre Dame last weekend.  Duke also beat BC and Notre Dame last weekend so both teams are currently riding 2 match winning streaks.

Duke is 16-6 in doubles however they just recently changed doubles pairings after dropping 3 in a row.  Duke switched up its #1 and #2 teams by pairing Nicolas Alvarez with Jason Tahir and Josh Levine with Raphael Hemmeler.  Previously Alvarez and Hemmeler have been teamed up as had Tahir and Levine.   North Carolina is 18-6 in doubles and they've won the point the last 3 times out.

Sunday Preview: Oklahoma/Baylor, Wake/Duke, Ole Miss/Florida + other storylines

Sunday brings us 3 matches between Top 15 teams with the headliner taking place in Indian Wells between #1 Oklahoma and #3 Baylor.  The other 2 big ones are in Oxford where #13 Ole Miss hosts #15 Florida and in Durham where #6 Duke hosts #12 Wake Forest.  It should also be mentioned that all 3 are rematches from earlier in the year with 2 playing each other during the Kickoff Weekend and the other meeting at the National Indoors.  There's a full schedule at the bottom of this post with scoring links as well.

#1 Oklahoma (16-1) vs. #3 Baylor (14-2) - 1pm est/10am pst - This will be a rematch from the National Indoor Semifinals which was a match Oklahoma won 4-2 (box score below).  Baylor had its chances in the match and had Mate Zsiga not let a 6-4, 5-2 lead slip away at #5 singles the outcome could have been different.  The only singles court which projects to be a rematch is at #1 singles and that was the only court that didn't finish last time.  Baylor has been far and away the better team in doubles so the Bears will look to get that early 1-0 lead like they have in every match that the doubles point has been played.  Oklahoma will look to lean on its top 3 in singles as they have all year while Baylor hopes its bottom 3 continues its recent dominance.  Let's take a look at the lineups and records. 

Thursday Recap & Notes: Georgia, South Carolina, & Texas all winners

This morning I got a chance to watch the Fox Sports Oklahoma telecast of Tuesday's Oklahoma/Virginia match and I must say I was impressed with the production of the match and the quality of the announcing.  The version I watched was taped and edited but they did a good job bouncing around from court to court.  They started the telecast a few games into singles and started showing the match at #1 singles but they also showed several games of the Alvarez/Shane match at #2 singles.  After those 2 matches finished up they showed the last 3 games of the Webb/Kwiatkowski match and then showed the last several games of the Bragusi/Aragone match. The only 2 courts they didn't go to were #4 and #5 singles.  I know the match was viewable live for a fee through Oklahoma's site though I don't know if that version had announcers or was just plain old streaming.  I also saw where the match was going to be replayed several times on Fox College Sports so if you have that channel check out a few minutes of the replay.

Today's match between Georgia and Tennessee was originally scheduled to be broadcasted on ESPN3 however recent weather delayed installation of the proper cables back to the Tennessee studio (per UT blog).

Saturday Preview - Illini/Irish, Bruins/Cardinal, Gators/Gamecocks

Compared to what we'll see on Sunday (Virginia at Baylor, Wake Forest at Texas, Vanderbilt at Ole Miss) Saturday should be fairly tame day with just 1 matchup between top 15 schools.  Below are the best ones that I saw on the docket so check them out if you get a chance.

#34 South Carolina (8-6) at #17 Florida (5-3) - 1pm est. - Live Scoring - South Carolina comes into this one on a 3-match losing streak which includes a 4-2 loss on Thursday to Auburn while Florida is coming off a tough 4-1 loss to Georgia. Florida is 4-4 in doubles while South Carolina is 11-3 with both dropping the doubles point the last time out. Here's an interesting stat that you don't see too often for a team at this level - South Carolina is 0-13 at the #1 singles spot this year.  Most likely that streak will stay intact tomorrow because I'd be surprised if Hidalgo didn't beat Koch.  

Bulldogs Bite The Gators, Auburn Over South Carolina, Big Green Beats Big Blue, Stanford/USC Preview

The big match of the day in Gainesville had a close doubles point but once Georgia got the early lead it never looked back and ended up pulling away for a 4-1 win.

The doubles point looked like it was Florida's for the taking after the Gators #2 team of Elliott Orkin and Maxx Lipman cruised to a 6-1 win while its #1 tandem of Diego Hidalgo and Gordon Watson jumped out to a 4-2 lead.   With Georgia's #3 team of Wayne Montgomery and Paul Oosterbaan also winning 6-1 the pressure would go back on Georgia's #1 team of Austin Smith and Ben Wagland and the undefeated tandem wouldn't go away as they took 3 straight games to go up 5-4 and were serving for the match.  There would then be 3 consecutive service breaks to send the match to a tiebreak. After falling behind 4-2 and 6-4, Georgia's Austin Smith and Ben Wagland would fight off 2 match points and eventually win the last 3 points to take the tiebreak 9-7 in a match that took 57 minutes.

Down Goes #1, UNC unable to finish, Vandy wins 4-3 again, & a look ahead to Saturday

What a start to the weekend it was with 2 thrillers taking place 100 miles apart as Texas A&M took out the new #1 Oklahoma 4-3 in College Station while Texas's Lloyd Glasspool refused to lay down as Texas knocked off North Carolina 4-3 in Austin.  

We'll start off in College Station where #1 Oklahoma came to town expecting to waltz all over Texas A&M but the Aggies had other plans as they took the all important doubles point and were then able to pick up 3 1st sets and ultimately pulled off the stunner when freshman Arthur Rinderknech came back from a set down to knock off Oklahoma freshman Spencer Papa 6-7, 6-3, 6-1 at the #4 spot. Oklahoma swept the top 3 spots in the lineup and usually if you do that you've got to feel pretty good about your chances but Texas A&M was able to lock down the bottom 3 plus take the doubles point so there you have it - upset city.  

aTm recap
OU recap

#13 Texas A&M 4, #1 Oklahoma 3

George P Mitchell Tennis Center

Singles competition

1. #11 Axel Alvarez (OU) def. #45 Shane Vinsant (TAMU) 6-4, 6-2

2. #26 Andrew Harris (OU) def. #43 Jeremy Efferding (TAMU) 6-4, 6-1

3. #31 Dane Webb (OU) def. #36 Harrison Adams (TAMU) 6-7 (4-7), 6-1, 7-5

*4. Arthur Rinderknech (TAMU) def. Spencer Papa (OU) 6-7 (5-7), 6-3, 6-1

5. #51 AJ Catanzariti (TAMU) def. #63 Alex Ghilea (OU) 7-6 (7-5), 6-1

6. Max Lunkin (TAMU) def. Jose Salazar (OU) 6-4, 6-2

Doubles competition

1. #8 Shane Vinsant/Harrison Adams (TAMU) def. #5 Dane Webb/Axel Alvarez (OU) 6-4

2. Andrew Harris/Alex Ghilea (OU) def. #13 Jeremy Efferding/Jordan Szabo (TAMU) 6-3

3. AJ Catanzariti/Arthur Rinderknech (TAMU) def. Spencer Papa/Florin Bragusi (OU) 7-5

Order of finish: Doubles (1,2,3); Singles (1,2,6,5,3,4)

*Clinched Match