by Bobby Knight | Mar 18, 2015 | Blog
There are 2 big tournaments that get started over the next 2 days with both in the state of California.The higher profile one is in Indian Wells where 3 of the top 4 teams in the country will be in action at the BNP Paribas Collegiate Challenge. Play starts on Friday and finishes on Sunday. Current ITA Rankings of Participants: #1 Oklahoma, #3 Baylor, #4 USC, #20 Tulsa, #28 California, #29 Columbia, and both BYU and Purdue are unranked.The University of San Diego and San Diego State host the annual Hilton San Diego Mission Valley Spring Classic which has a pretty even field with many of the teams ranked within just a few spots of each other....
by Bobby Knight | Mar 18, 2015 | Blog
After dropping a 4-3 thriller to Ohio State earlier in the year at the National Indoors, Texas reversed its fortune today and took out #11 Ohio State 4-1 in a match that the Horns seemed in control of just about the entire way. Ohio State was 15-3 in doubles coming into this one but Texas got the point by winning at 2 and 3 by scores of 6-4 and 6-2. With the nearly unbeatable Soren Hess-Olesen at 1, Texas knew it had at least 1 point in the bag and Soren quickly delivered that point with his 17th consecutive win with a 6-1, 6-3 thrashing of Chris Diaz. The Buckeye junior had one opening in the match after going up 2-0 in the 2nd but Hess-Olesen...
by Bobby Knight | Mar 17, 2015 | Blog
Oklahoma stays at #1 in the ITA rankings for the 3rd week in a row and for the 4th time in the last 5 weeks. OU’s win last Tuesday over Virginia kept it atop the rankings because had they lost Illinois would have moved to #1. Oklahoma’s top 5 best wins are over #3 Baylor, #4 USC, #9 Virginia, #10 North Carolina, and at #11 Ohio State. The Sooners also own wins over #12 Wake Forest, #13 Ole Miss, #14 Northwestern, plus a 2nd win over #10 North Carolina so that means they have wins over everyone ranked from 9-14 which means they are positioned very well for the next several rankings where an additional best win is added each week starting...
by Bobby Knight | Mar 16, 2015 | Blog
In terms of rankings today’s TCU win over Illinois was an upset, but I don’t think too many would call it completely unexpected with Illinois playing its 3rd Top 20 opponent on the road in as many days. I’m guessing the Illini’s energy tank was much closer to E than it was to F while TCU was likely beyond ecstatic having the chance to host a top 5 team on its home courts. TCU did play on Sunday against Michigan and while the score-lines today were a little closer they really wasn’t much of a difference. They are both listed below so you can take a look at them. TCU took the doubles point without too much resistance by...
by Bobby Knight | Mar 16, 2015 | Blog
Definitely going to be some big movement in the rankings this week with several teams picking up keys wins while some took some rough losses. This week’s rankings are the last set to use each team’s top 5 best wins and then starting next week with the March 24th rankings they’ll use each team’s 6 best wins and then every subsequent week after that they add 1 more best win to get up to 9 by April 14th.Wake Forest will have the biggest jump within the top 20 as the Demon Deacons will move up from 19 to 12 on the strength of a pair of wins over Florida State and Louisville. Tulsa also makes a big move from 29 to 20 after...
by Bobby Knight | Mar 16, 2015 | Blog
The beat goes on for #4 Illinois as the Illini rolled into College Station today and rolled out several hours later with a 4-2 win over #9 Texas A&M. Illinois was without its #1 Farris Gosea for the 2nd day in a row but just as they did against Texas the rest of the guys rallied and got it done. The day didn’t start off too well for Illinois as Texas A&M rolled at 1 and 2 doubles winning both courts by a 6-2 score. Interesting comment below from Dancer about him feeling they played better doubles today than yesterday despite winning yesterday and losing today.Both teams slightly altered their singles lineups by switching 5 and 6 but...
by Bobby Knight | Mar 15, 2015 | Blog
Another day brings another big match for Illinois as the Illini will try to make it 2 Top 10 wins in as many days after making the 100 mile trek from Austin to College Station. What’s still unknown is whether we’ll see the Illini’s #1 Farris Gosea but I’d have to say that I would be more than surprised if he was available for action today. For Texas A&M to take this one they’ll need to play much better than they did on Friday night against a Vanderbilt team that was down its #1 while for Illinois to take it they’ll need to play with the same urgency and tenacity that they played with yesterday against Texas. The...
by Bobby Knight | Mar 15, 2015 | Blog
Saturday was a great day for college tennis with the 2 biggest matches of the day broadcasted on TV with The Longhorn Network showing Texas/Illinois while the Pac 12 Network showed USC/UCLA. The only thing that kind of stunk a bit was the fact that the 2 matches were being played simultaneously so while I did switch back and forth a bit I primarily stayed with the Texas/Illinois match because of how close it was throughout. When the starting lineups were posted 30 minutes before the start of the Texas/Illinois match I had to do a double take because I didn’t see Farris Gosea’s name anywhere. I was hoping the guys on the Longhorn Network would...
by Bobby Knight | Mar 14, 2015 | Blog
They’ll be 3 really good ones on Saturday with LA, Chicago, and Austin the places to be. What’s so great is that 2 of these 3 will be on TV with the Pac 12 Network carrying the singles portion of the USC/UCLA match and with the Longhorn Network carrying the Illinois/Texas match in its entirety.It’ll be interesting to see if USC can snap out of its recent funk or if UCLA can ride the comeback of Gage Brymer to an upset win. It’ll be interesting to see how Illinois looks after a 2 week layoff and whether they’ll switch up 1 and 2 singles in an attempt to sweep the top 2 spots. It will also will be interesting to...
by Bobby Knight | Mar 14, 2015 | Blog
Well the big match of the day was actually a good bit closer than I thought it would be after noticing that Vanderbilt was without its #1 singles player #10 Gonzales Austin who also makes up the #1 doubles team in the country with Rhys Johnson. I still haven’t seen anything official from anyone on why AJ didn’t play but if I had to guess I’d say he was under the weather which I can relate to. The one thing I don’t get is how neither of the school’s press releases bothered to even mention the fact that Austin didn’t play. I mean if the starting quarterback on the football team didn’t play it’d have to...
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