by Bobby Knight | May 21, 2021 | Blog
It’ll be an SEC versus Big 12 kind of day on Friday after a pair of schools from those two conferences advanced to the NCAA Semifinals. By far and away the thriller of the day was the showdown between defending national champion No. 4 Texas and Pac-12 Tournament Champion No. 12 USC. Going into Thursday’s matches, Texas was the only team that had managed to come back after dropping the doubles point but the Horns knew they didn’t want to attempt that feat again against a deep USC’s singles lineup. USC got off to a good start in doubles and went up early breaks on 1 and 2 while the match at 3 stayed on serve. USC’s Bradley Frye and...
by Bobby Knight | May 20, 2021 | Uncategorized
For the third consecutive season it’ll be a Columbus State/Barry final on the men’s side after both teams advanced with impressive victories in the quarterfinals and semifinals. Top ranked Columbus State, which won its first-ever title in 2018 (in Surprise, AZ) with a 5-4 win over Barry, extended its winning streak to 32 matches after shutout wins over #29 Cameron and #6 Hawaii Hilo. In the quarterfinals against Cameron, the Cougars won the doubles point going away and then added quick straight set wins in singles from Tommaso Schold, Javier Cueto Ramos, and Justin Welz at 3, 4, and 6. CSU was also leading on each of the three other courts that...
by Bobby Knight | May 20, 2021 | Uncategorized
The women came to play on a windy Wednesday in Orlando with two of the top four seeds getting sent home early while the top two seeds managed to avoid the upset bug. The match of the day came in the late afternoon block as No 4 UCLA and No. 5 Pepperdine squared off for the fourth time this season. UCLA had won two of the previous three meetings, while winning the doubles point quite handily in each of those three matches, but it’d be the doubles point that would ultimately be the Bruins undoing on Wednesday. All three doubles courts were seesaw affairs with no lead safe. Pepperdine’s Shiori Fakuda and Taisiya Pachkaleva jumped out to a 4-1 lead at...
by Bobby Knight | May 18, 2021 | Uncategorized
The quarterfinals are upon us with the top 5 seeds still alive in the women’s draw while the men still have the top 4 seeds remaining. The feature matchup on Wednesday will be the fourth meeting of the season between No. 4 UCLA and No. 5 Pepperdine. The Bruins took two of the previous three and in the one they dropped they had a pair of starters that sat out. NC State is making its first appearance in the quarterfinals and will try to hand Georgia just its second defeat of the season while the Bulldogs are trying to get back to the semifinals for the second year in a row. Florida State has never been past the quarterfinals and if this is the year it...
by Bobby Knight | May 18, 2021 | Uncategorized
What a thrilling day of action it was on Monday with three of the eight men’s Round of 16 matches finishing with a 4-3 final score. Two of the top eight national seeds went down and a third came back from 3-0 down to escape. The morning session brought us two of the 4-3 matches with a pair of SEC teams moving on – one was expected to win while the other was not. Georgia, seeded No. 11, entered the match against No. 6 North Carolina as fairly heavy underdogs but a big win in doubles helped set the tone for the rest of the match. North Carolina’s William Blumberg and Brian Cernoch rolled to a 6-1 win at No. 1 doubles while Georgia’s...
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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