by Bobby Knight | May 17, 2021 | Uncategorized
The opening day of play at the beautiful USTA National Campus in Orlando wrapped up late Sunday night with Duke pulling off the one seeding upset of the day in a 4-3 win over UCF. Duke entered the match, on the home courts of the No. 9 seed UCF, as one of the three unseeded teams but most considered this to be a 50/50 match. UCF got off to a great start in doubles and took early 3-1 leads on all three courts and would eventually close out No. 2 doubles by a 6-3 score. However the Knights wouldn’t be as successful holding on to the lead on the other two courts. Duke’s No. 1 team of Meible Chi and Margaryta Bilokin reeled off five straight games,...
by Bobby Knight | May 16, 2021 | Uncategorized
In years past if you advanced to the D2 finals site you started in the Round of 16 but due to COVID the field was trimmed and thus we go straight to the Elite 8. Usually each of the 8 regions are split into two regionals but this year there was just 1 per region so that’s how we ended with 8 instead of 16. The men will be playing three straight days starting on Tuesday so it’s going to be survival of the fittest in the hot desert sun with temperatures expected to be in the mid to high 90s. The top two seeds, Columbus State and Barry, are the only two remaining that have won a National Championship. Columbus State won the title in 2018 while Barry...
by Bobby Knight | May 15, 2021 | Uncategorized
The men will fire things up on Monday morning at 10:00 am ET with play expected to go well into the night. The only rematch from a regular season meeting will be the All-SEC affair between Texas A&M and Mississippi State. This will be the first time Arizona has made a Round of 16 appearance and it’ll also be the first time that a Round of 16 has been contested without UCLA whose 43-year streak came to an end after an opening round loss to Northwestern. The winners of Monday’s matches will advance to the quarterfinals which will be held on Thursday. For a full recap of how each team earned its spot in the Sweet 16 you can read my opening round...
by Bobby Knight | May 14, 2021 | Uncategorized
Unlike two years ago when the Super Regionals were played at campus sites, this year due to COVID we will see them contested at the USTA National Campus in Orlando. Five of the eight Super Regional matches in 2019 were regular season rematches but this year there are zero. The reason for this is several conferences limited travel plus there were a handful of teams (Georgia, Florida State, Cal) that either opted out or wouldn’t have qualified for the reduced size Kickoff Weekend and subsequent National Team Indoors back in February. For a full recap of how each team earned its spot in the Sweet 16 you can read my opening round recap at this link. [3]...
by Bobby Knight | May 13, 2021 | Uncategorized
The women played Friday and Saturday this past weekend with 13 of the 16 national seeds advancing to the Sweet 16. The last time 3 regional hosts exited prior to the Sweet 16 was 15 years ago in 2006 when #10 California, #13 Pepperdine, and #15 Clemson went home early USC may have entered the NCAA Tournament with an ITA ranking of No. 35 but that didn’t stop the Trojans from pulling off a pair of upsets to advance to Orlando. In USC’s opening round match against No. 22 Oklahoma, the Trojans came back from a 3-1 deficit to pull off a thrilling 4-3 win. Both Dani Wilson and Constance Branstine came back from a set down to win identical 4-6, 6-4, 6-3...
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