Friday NCAA Tournament Recap; All National Seeds Win; Miami & Ga Tech Win Thrillers & Princeton Takes Out Northwestern; Florida State & South Florida Men Advance; UCSB Edges Texas Tech; South Alabama Likes Starkville; Vandy Edges Notre Dame
The opening day of the 2019 NCAA Tournament was plagued by rain at many sites but despite the delays most of the matches went according to plan with all the national seeds in action advancing though in the 2 vs. 3 matches (I know they don’t refer to them that way anymore but I will) there were several close ones. All 16 men’s sites were supposed to complete their first round matches on Friday but rain wiped out play in College Station at the indoor-less Texas A&M Regional so they’ll play on Saturday and Sunday. 7 of the 16 women’s sites played on Friday with the matches in Stillwater being played indoors while Kansas and Denver started outdoors but moved indoors in Lawrence.
I’ll start off with the closest women’s matches of the day which took place in Stillwater and Nashville.
NCAA Reveals Team Brackets & Singles/Doubles Selections
The NCAA released the Division 1 men’s and women’s brackets on Monday evening with very few surprises. As it was a year ago, geography playing a major role in deciding who went where with some regionals much tougher than others while a few were much weaker than others. On the men’s side, Columbia, which is the No. 16 national seed, will welcome in Monmouth, Bryant, and Penn State which in the past would have been a 4, 4, and 3 regional seed. Baylor and TCU have the toughest regionals in terms of ranking with both welcoming in teams that would have had regional seedings of 2, 3, and 3.
On the women’s side Kansas (No. 14) has the toughest draw with Denver, Florida, and Boston College coming to town which would have been a 2, 3, and 3 regional seed. Kansas and Denver met in last year’s NCAA first round in Malibu with Kansas winning a close 4-3 match.
If all the host teams were to advance this is what the Super Regionals would look like the weekend after next.
NCAA Selection Day Is Here
All the conference tournaments have been completed and now we wait to see who will be selected to participate in this year’s NCAA Championships. The committee will announce its selections at 6 pm and 6:30 pm eastern tonight with the men announced first and the women second. I listed all the automatic qualifiers down below and you can check out College Tennis Ranks and Slam.Tennis for their projections.The singles and doubles selections will be made on Tuesday.
Sunday Men’s Recap: Wake Wins ACC; Baylor The Beast of the Big 12; Mississippi State Repeats; South Florida & Middle Tennessee Pull Off Surprises
Championship Sunday brought us several good matches with some decided in third set tiebreaks while others weren’t as close as we thought they’d be. The two matches pitting the highest ranked teams took place in Cary (NC) as No. 4 Wake Forest met No. 5 Virginia while No. 2 Texas and No. 8 Baylor rumbled in Lawrence (KS).
Wake and Virginia split regular season meetings with each winning at home so Sunday’s rubber match was expected to be close. The doubles portion of the dual was definitely close however many of the singles matches had lopsided finals. Wake wrapped up No. 2 doubles with a 6-3 win and they served for the match at No. 3 up 6-5 however Virginia would break back and Gianni Ross and William Woodall would go on to win the tiebreak 7-3. The decider at No. 1 doubles also went to a tiebreak with UVA’s Brandon Nakashima and Henrik Wiersholm jumping out to a 4-1 lead en route to winning it 7-5.
Wake fought back in singles and claimed four opening sets of which they’d ultimately close them all out in straight sets.
Virginia’s Aswin Lizen put the Hoos up 2-0 with a 6-4, 6-0 win at No. 6 but Wake followed suit with fairly quick wins by Melios Efstathiou (6-3, 6-1) at No. 5, Rrezart Cungu (6-2, 6-2) at No. 4, and Borna Gojo (6-4, 6-2) at No. 1.
Wake had a 3-2 lead but Virginia’s Brandon Nakashima was closing in on a win at No. 2 leading Wake’s Petros Chrysochos 7-6, 5-1 while Henrik Wiersholm was nearing a split at No. 3 after taking a 5-1 lead in the second set tiebreak against Bar Botzer. However both Chrysochos and Botzer would fight back with Chrysochos winning five straight games to take a 6-5 lead while Botzer took seven of the next eight points to close out Wiersholm 7-5, 7-6(6) to clinch the championship.
Saturday Recap: Tennessee Stuns Florida; Virginia Edges North Carolina; Kansas Over Oklahoma State; Plus More Conference Tournament Action
Semifinal Saturday in the major conference tournaments brought us one huge surprise as the SEC men’s host and top seed Florida was stunned by Tennessee 4-3. The Gators were riding a 15-match winning streak but Tennessee seized the early momentum after rolling through the doubles point with a 6-1 win at No. 1 and a 6-3 win at No. 2. Florida rebounded quickly in singles with Oliver Crawford, Alfredo Perez, and Duarte Vale winning in straight sets at No. 1, No. 5, and No. 6 to put the Gators in front 3-1. Tennessee countered with a straight set win by Scott Jones at No. 3 but things looked grim for the Vols when Luca Wiedenmann trailed Andy Andrade 5-3 in the third at No. 4. However the Volunteer junior would hold for 4-5, break from 30/40 for 5-5, hold for 6-5, and then break from 15/40 to win 6-4, 3-6, 7-5.
The deciding match at No. 2 between Tennessee sophomore Adam Walton and Florida freshman Sam Riffice went back and forth in the final set with several breaks being exchanged. Riffice broke Walton to go up 3-1 however Walton would break back and hold for 3-3. Walton broke again to go up 5-4 but Riffice would break back for 5-5. Walton broke for 6-5 and then he served it out from 40/15 to win it 1-6, 6-3, 7-5.
Tennessee
Conference Tournament Updates
I’ve been traveling a lot over the last week due to a death in the family so I’m hoping to be back in the swing of things with tennis on Friday. I do have my conference tournament pages updated with all brackets and current results plus I have my live scoring page fully updated as well. Slam.Tennis has a ton of useful information as well including an interactive scoreboard and brackets so make sure you keep that open in a separate tab.
Mid-Week Recap: Rybakov Delivers TCU Win Over Texas A&M; Pepperdine Tops USC; Duke Too Much For NC State; New Rankings Released; Packed Weekend Slate
A trio of top 15 matches highlighted the mid-week slate with the TCU men, Pepperdine women, and Duke women all coming through with wins.
TCU earned a hard fought 4-3 win at home over No. 8 Texas A&M. The Horned Frogs won a pivotal doubles point with wins at No. 1 and No. 2 and then each team took three opening sets in singles. Texas A&M’s Valentin Vacherot tied it up with a straight set win at No. 3 but TCU made it 3-1 with a three-set win from Luc Fomba at No. 5 and a straight set win from Sander Jong at No. 6. Texas A&M’s Barnaby Smith made it 3-2 with a 4-6, 6-1, 6-2 win at No. 4 and Juan Carlos Aguilar tied it up with a 7-6, 7-5 win at No. 2. TCU senior Alex Rybakov won the decider on senior night with a 7-6, 6-7, 6-3 win over Hady Habib.
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