US College Signings and General College Chat 2023/24

Lambda · Challenger level

RE: US College Signings and General College Chat 2023/24

DWH · Club Coach

Thanks for all the updates and the links smile

Lambda · Challenger level

Millie Rajecki's NC State R1 match will be delayed as Sofia Johnson's match in the ODU v South Carolina dual has gone to a third set and it's down to Sofia to win against #19 Sarah Hamner to clinch the match for ODU and with it an upset against South Carolina. Sofia came back from 0-3 down in the first set to take it on a tie break and a topsy-turvy 2nd set saw Sofia go behind from 2-0 to 2-5 and then come back to 6-5 before eventually losing the set on a TB.

Elsewhere Vanderbilt women get an expected win. Florida State women cause a mini upset by clinching the doubles point in the Regional Finals at Georgia. Singles just started.

DWH · Club Coach

JonH comes home wrote:
Lambda wrote:
JonH comes home wrote:
i realise I have asked this before, in past years, but humour me and remind me, which Brits have won singles or doubles titles in the NCAA event? Div 1?

Paul Jubb, obviously. But have we other winners that anyone can list, singles and doubles?

Thank you!

On Jubb's LTA profile, they say he was the first Brit to win the esteemed title.
Really?
I had a look at wiki and here is the link to the list of mens individual and team champs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_Men%27s_Tennis_Championship
Indeed, Paul seems to be the only Brit winner, singles or doubles (although 2023 results arent mentioned and I cant recall what happened last year, but dont think we won a title)

The womens list is also linked below and I cant see any British winners (and it does include 2023 winners in this list)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_Division_I_women%27s_tennis_championships
So, indeed, it seems it is just Paul Jubb. It seems like this is a year when someone else could challenge for one of the titles, although it wont be easy!

A few Brits have won the NCAA doubles title. I remembered Lloyd Glasspool won it for the Texas Longhorns with his Danish partner Soren Hess Olesen in 2015. If I recall they actually played Cam in one of the rounds. I had forgotten though that Dom Inglot also won the doubles for UVA with Michael Shabaz in 2009 til I looked at that link.

Also for the women I remembered Nell Miller a couple of years ago (with Jaeda Daniel for NC State) but I had forgotten Eden Richardson (2018, Jessica Golovin, LSU).

Not sure if there are anymore going further back but hopefully the Brits can have some good runs this year. biggrin

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

DWH wrote:
JonH comes home wrote:
Lambda wrote:
JonH comes home wrote:
i realise I have asked this before, in past years, but humour me and remind me, which Brits have won singles or doubles titles in the NCAA event? Div 1?

Paul Jubb, obviously. But have we other winners that anyone can list, singles and doubles?

Thank you!

On Jubb's LTA profile, they say he was the first Brit to win the esteemed title.
Really?
I had a look at wiki and here is the link to the list of mens individual and team champs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_Men%27s_Tennis_Championship
Indeed, Paul seems to be the only Brit winner, singles or doubles (although 2023 results arent mentioned and I cant recall what happened last year, but dont think we won a title)

The womens list is also linked below and I cant see any British winners (and it does include 2023 winners in this list)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_Division_I_women%27s_tennis_championships
So, indeed, it seems it is just Paul Jubb. It seems like this is a year when someone else could challenge for one of the titles, although it wont be easy!
A few Brits have won the NCAA doubles title. I remembered Lloyd Glasspool won it for the Texas Longhorns with his Danish partner Soren Hess Olesen in 2015. If I recall they actually played Cam in one of the rounds. I had forgotten though that Dom Inglot also won the doubles for UVA with Michael Shabaz in 2009 til I looked at that link.
Also for the women I remembered Nell Miller a couple of years ago (with Jaeda Daniel for NC State) but I had forgotten Eden Richardson (2018, Jessica Golovin, LSU).
Not sure if there are anymore going further back but hopefully the Brits can have some good runs this year.

I didnt spot any of those names when I ran through the link! Im having an unobservant day or three!

Lambda · Challenger level

***UPSET***

Sofia does it, running away with the deciding set 6-2 to give ODU the win and upset South Carolina. Many people had SC as potentially upsetting NC State in the Raleigh regional.

Lambda · Challenger level

The men's regionals are done and dusted with the host seeds getting through to the last 16 in 14 of them. The two unseeded teams to make it through, defeating their hosts, were South Carolina defeating 14th seeded NC State 4-3 and Stanford defeating 11th seeded Oklahoma 4-2. With British interest on their rosters, there were wins for TCU (4-0), Virginia (4-0), Wake Forest (4-3), Tennessee (4-0) and Florida State (4-1).

For the women's bracket, some regions have completed with wins for Stanford (4-0), Pepperdine (4-1) and USC (4-0) who progress to the last 16. Unfortunately, after securing a surprise doubles point Florida State then lost 4 straight singles to Georgia.

The bulk of women's matches yesterday were in the opening round. NC State breezed comfortably through their dual with SC State with bakery products dished out on almost every singles court. They face ODU today with No 1s. Millie Rajecki and Sophia Johnson almost certainly lining up on opposite sides of the net in both doubles and singles. It'll be interesting to see how Sofia matches up to Millie, as in my opinion, Sophia's 116 ranking understates where she is in college tennis and is more reflective of that she doesn't have opportunity to play top opponents too often. However, this match may not be the one to tell us with Sofia having yesterday's 3 setter in her legs. That said, with a win over the #19 yesterday, I'd expect to see a big jump for her in the final season rankings at the end of the month. I'm also pretty sure Millie's doubles win yesterday was her 100th college doubles win, but NC State have gone quiet on that milestone in recent weeks after regularly mentioning through March that she was closing in on it, so I await confirmation. There were also wins yesterday for Florida, Georgia Tech and Vanderbilt. An honourable mention for unranked Holly Fischer (Harvard) who put up a fight against her 20th ranked opponent from Texas and was 3-6 *5-6 unfinished when Texas got the clinch point. Unfortunately, the match was moved indoors with no cameras so I didn't get to dip in to watch.

Today's matches - all women
5pm (14) Florida (Dudeney) v Miami Stream | Scores
5pm (12) Ohio State v Vanderbilt (Staff) Stream | Scores
7pm (9) Texas v Georgia Tech (Bilchev) Stream | Scores
7pm (15) NC State (Rajecki) v Old Dominion (Johnson) Stream | Scores

Lambda · Challenger level

Miami knocked out Florida
Vanderbilt caused an upset defeating Ohio State with Holly Staff dominant at singles 5.
Georgia Tech nearly defeated Texas, but lost 4-3. Kylie Bilchev came back from being bageled in the 2nd set to win the 3rd 6-2 and level the dual 3-3, leaving just Given Roach at 6 in a rare singles outing still playing. She served for the match at 6-4 5-3 when Georgia Tech were 1-3 down but couldn't serve it out and lost the set 7-5. Having not played singles since beginning of February prior to this weekend, 3 sets proved too much and she was suffering physically in the third with cramps and lost the set to give Texas the win.
NC State cruised to victory over ODU, with Rajecki winning in straight sets over Johnson.
Apologies to Esther Adeshina for overlooking her and Tennessee, who also progress to the Super-regionals.

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Hi Lambda - for the national team championships, i read they run from May 17-19. Would I be correct in assuming those are between the final 8 teams in both mens and womens? When do the super regionals take place and are they a straight 16 team knockout round, no round robins or the like? Presumably this coming weekend?

-- Edited by JonH comes home on Tuesday 7th of May 2024 08:50:06 AM

Lambda · Challenger level

That's right. The super regionals are the last 16, knockout taking place this Friday or Saturday. The winners progress to the Team Championships at Stillwater, OK next week.

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Lambda wrote:
That's right. The super regionals are the last 16, knockout taking place this Friday or Saturday. The winners progress to the Team Championships at Stillwater, OK next week.

Thank you!

Elegant Point · Satellite level

In other competition news:

The 2024 UTR Sports National Invitational Tennis Championship (NIT Championship) is officially underway at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla. Taking place May 5-8, eight mens and eight womens teams are competing for post-season national titles (see the preview here).

All matches are being aired on Amazon Prime Video, free for Prime members. Apologies if Ive missed anyone, not kept up with the newbies unless they are siblings of older players (Alex O)

May 7: Tulsa, Pacific Advance to Men's Final

No. 2 Pacific def. No. 3 Liberty, 4-0

Doubles
No. 1 Justas Trainauskas/Ran Amar (PAC) def. Thando Longwe-Smith/Rafa Marques da Silva (LIB), 7-6(3)
No. 2 Tommy Czaplinski/Tiago Silva (PAC) def. Deji Thomas-Smith/Chase Robinson (LIB), 6-3
No. 3 Matija Samardzic /Romeo Hadzimehmedovic (LIB) def. Christof Schaertlin/Andre Rodeia (PAC), 6-3
Pacific wins the doubles point

Singles
No. 1 Justas Trainauskas (PAC) vs. Rafael Marques da Silva (LIB), 4-6, 6-3, 0-2 (unfinished)
No. 2 vs. Tiago Silva (PAC) vs. Deji Thomas-Smith (LIB), 4-6, 6-0, 4-2(unfinished)
No. 3 Terence Das (PAC) def. Thando Longwe-Smit (LIB), 6-4, 6-3
No. 4 Ran Amar (PAC) def. Rodrigo Santiago (LIB), 6-3, 6-3*
No. 5 Andre Rodeia (PAC) vs. Chase Robinson (LIB), 6-7(3), 1-1(unfinished)
No. 6 Tommy Czaplinski (PAC) def. Matija Samardzic (LIB), 6-2, 7-5
*Clinch

Doubles
No. 1 Alex Okonkwo/Thiago Gale (TLS) vs. Guillaume Dalmasso/Christian Lerby (SCU), 5-6(unfinished)
No. 2 Gus Tettamble/Timothy Carlsson Seger (TLS) def. Lukas Maskow/Tiago Boschmans (SCU), 7-5
No. 3 Vova Zakharov/Thiago Pernas (TLS) def. Sebastian Buxman/Arjun Honnappa (SCU), 6-3
Tulsa wins the doubles point

Singles
No. 1 Thiago Pernas (TLS) vs. Christian Lerby (SCU), 6-1, 7-6(3)
No. 2 Guillaume Dalmasso (SCU) def. Callum Gale (TLS), 6-2, 6-2
No. 3 Volodymyr Zakharov (TLS) vs. Sebastian Buxman (SCU), 3-6, 7-5, 1-1(unfinished)
No. 4 Timothy Carlsson Seger (TLS) vs. Lukas Maskow (SCU), 2-6, 6-2, 5-5(unfinished)
No. 5 Alex Okonkwo (TLS) def. Tiago Boschmans (SCU), 6-3, 6-2
No. 6 Gus Tettamble (TLS) def. Alex Watanabe Eriksson (SCU), 3-6, 6-2, 6-0*
*Clinch

With Tulsa easing past Santa Clara in the morning on Tuesday and Pacific shutting out Liberty, it will be the No. 1 vs. the No. 2 seed in the men's final on Wednesday. All seedings were based on UTR Power 6 ratings.

https://www.utrsports.net/pages/utr-nit

Lambda · Challenger level

The Super Regionals are played over the next couple of days with British interest equally spread over both nights.

British interest is led by what many regard as the eagerly anticipated re-match of last year's semi-final between Stanford and NC State, which is likely to feature Angelica Blake playing against Millie Rajecki at the top of the order. Stanford will want to take revenge for last year's defeat and will want to give the Taube Tennis Centre a fitting send off in the last ever match there. For one of Angelica or Millie it will be their last ever team match for their respective team. Stanford should win, but NC State will have the added incentive of getting Millie to the last 8 to give her more opportunities to keep her #2 ranking.

The lead men's match is South Carolina at Virginia. Doubles will likely see the #5 ranked pair including James Hopper play against Toby and Jimmy Story. Virginia is 12-1 at home this season, but that solitary loss was to South Carolina. However, that was indoors and Virginia hasn't lost a home match outdoors for 3 years. South Carolina's best chance is for some rain to take it indoors.

Make no mistake: There is no love lost between USC and Pepperdine. That's not me saying that. It is Pepperdine's preview. Pepperdine already have 2 wins against USC this season and have won the last 14 meetings between the schools. Pepperdine should win, but whether Conway plays for them is an open question. She didn't play last week and as she has entered the transfer portal may not be selected, although she was submitted at 6 in the squad lists for this round.

As last week cracked racquets will be providing crosscourt coverage on their YouTube channel, although they are not covering the women's Stanford/NC State match. Links to dedicated streams and scoring are in the previews. |Edit: Links to all streams and live scores: Women Men

Friday
9pm Men (3) Virginia [Hopper] v South Carolina [Samuel, Story] Virginia preview
9pm Women (6) Pepperdine [Conway] v (11) Southern California [Piper, Haddad] Pepperdine preview | USC preview
10pm Men (6) Wake Forest [Pow] v Stanford [Basing] Wake Forest preview | Stanford preview
10pm Women (2) Stanford [Blake] v (15) NC State [Rajecki] Stanford preview | NCS preview

Saturday
6pm Men (7) Tennessee [Monday] v (10) Florida State [Connel]
6pm Women (5) Virginia v Vanderbilt [Staff]
9pm Men (4) TCU [Pinnington-Jones, Fearnley, Maxted] v (13) Duke
9pm Women (1) Oklahoma State v (15) Tennessee [Adeshina]

-- Edited by Lambda on Friday 10th of May 2024 04:15:59 PM

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Based on volume Im gonna support TCU for the mens in this event! And may the best womens team win that has a Brit in it!

Dannythomas · Lower Club Player

Surprisingly comfortable 4-0 win for Stanford over NC State and a fine 6-3 6-3 win for Angelica over Millie in her final match played at Stanford. They play Georgia in Oklahoma NCAA quarter finals. Ill let Lambda do the rest of the recap !