Wooten-Quijada to New Mexico, Assistant Updates, Bucca to Court, Decatur Futures, Maryland Eastern Shore Drops Men’s Tennis

Mississippi State men’s head coach Matt Roberts announced the hiring of Matt Walters as the Bulldogs new assistant coach. Walters played at Arkansas from 2009 to 2012 and had been coaching at the IMG Academy for the last two years. Walters replaces Tanner Stump who took the assistant job at Florida in early June.

Alabama men’s head coach George Husack announced the hiring of Robbie Weiss as the Crimson Tides new assistant coach. Weiss played at Pepperdine from 1985 to 1988 and won the NCAA singles championship his senior year. Weiss’s last coaching job was as the women’s coach at Cornell from 2007 to 2008.  Weiss replaces Ryler DeHeart who was announced yesterday as the new men’s assistant at Florida State.

Rutgers women’s head coach Benjamin Bucca stepped down after 13 years to become a New Jersey Superior Court Judge (never heard that one before). Bucca went 160-128 (.555) in those 13 years but he wasn’t able to get the Scarlett Knights to the NCAA Tournament (Rutgers has never been to the NCAAs).

Thomas College (D3) Director of Athletics David Roussel announced the hiring of Eddie Mathews as the Terriers new women’s coach. Mathews had been the team manager for Florida State’s men’s team for the last several years and was also a development coach at Florida State’s High Performance Tennis Camps. Mathews replaces Jill Cristan who stepped down after two seasons to take a teaching position within the local school district.

The Decatur (IL) Herald & Review caught up with Virginia’s Dustin Taylor and he talked about his role as coach for the USTA’s Collegiate Team and the transition that the guys have to make when everything isn’t structured. Coincidently Taylor earned a promotion today at Virginia getting bumped up from assistant coach to associate head coach.

Taylor has been a busy man and those 7 a.m. open practices are going to be busy because 13 of the remaining 16 guys in Decatur have college ties. Dominik Koepfer (Tulane ’16) pulled off the biggest upset on Wednesday when he beat the top-seed #199 Ramkumar Ramanathan 3-6, 6-3, 6-4.

What a match! Koepfer upsets Ramanathan [1] 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 pic.twitter.com/W0tK2UzEBu

— Ursula Beck Tennis (@BeckProClassic) August 3, 2016

Koepfer will face Jared Hiltzik (Illinois ’16) in Thursday’s Round of 16 after Hiltzik squeezed past Dennis Nevolo (Illinois ’12) 3-6, 6-2, 7-6(6). Rhyne Williams (Tennessee ’11) ousted #376 Facundo Mena 6-4, 6-2 in the first round and will next meet #410 Marc Polmans – Mena was the runner-up two weeks ago in Godfrey and Polmans was the runner-up last week in Edwardsville. Here are the Round of 16 matches:

Dominik Koepfer (Tulane ’16) vs. Jared Hiltzik (Illinois ’16)
Rhyne Williams (Tennessee ’11) vs. Marc Polmans
Gonzales Austin (Vanderbilt ’15) vs. Evan King (Michigan ’13)
Gonzalo Escobar (Texas Tech ’12) vs. Aleksandar Vukic (Illinois Rising Jr)
George Goldhoff (Texas Rising Sr) vs. Tennys Sandgren (Tennessee ’11)
Alfredo Perez (Florida Rising Soph) vs. Tom Fawcett (Stanford Rising Jr)
Roberto Quiroz (USC ’15) vs. Strong Kirchheimer (Northwestern Rising Sr)

Wake Forest commit Sean Hill and Duke’s Ellyse Hamlin won the six-week ITA Summer Circuit points race. Hill edged out Northwestern’s Jason Seidman and Abilene Christian’s Joshua Sheehy while Hamlin overtook Northern Illinois commit Raven Neely in the final week after winning the Cornell regional.

Maryland Eastern Shore became the seventh school in the last year to cut men’s tennis which wasn’t much of a surprise since they didn’t play a single dual-match last season. MES said last year’s matches were cancelled because the program didn’t have enough players and I’m sure the school didn’t do anything to help out the situation. The women’s program will be coming back for another year after going 0-16 and being outscored 110-2. The school will add women’s golf so maybe they’ll give more support to that new program than the ones that have been around for years.  Note – MES made the announcement in late June so that’s why I hadn’t noticed it until now.