General college chat 2024/25

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

RE: General college chat 2024/25

LordBrownof · Futures level

Wow, Charlie really thrown in at the deep end of college tennis.

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

JonH comes home wrote:
Lambda wrote:
The final of the mens National Team Indoor Championships will be between the TCU Horned Frogs and the Wake Forest Demon Deacons. It will be TCUs 4th consecutive National Indoors final.

Wake Forest d. Texas 4-3
3. No. 121 Pierre-Yves Bailly (TEX) def. No. 98 Charlie Robertson (WFU) 6(4)-7, 6-3, 6-1
6. Luca Pow (WFU) def. Sebastian Eriksson (TEX) 6-2, 7-5

TCU d. Stanford 4-0
It was a close doubles taking an hour to play with Jack+ losing 5-7, Lui+ winning 7-5 against Max+ and the third and deciding doubles won by TCU in a 9-7 tie break.
1. #18 Jack Pinnington (TCU) vs. #31 Samir Banerjee (Stanford): 6-4, 4-5, unfinished
2. #6 Pedro Vives (TCU) def. #114 Max Basing (Stanford): 6-4, 6-3
3. #9 Lui Maxted (TCU) vs. Kyle Kang (Stanford): 6-4, 1-6, 1-1, unfinished

Final
The expected match ups in the final featuring our guys are
1. #2 Lui Maxted / Pedro Vives (TCU) Vs #30 DK Suresh / Stefan Dostanic (WFU)
2. Jack Pinnington / Cooper Woestendick (TCU) Vs #3 Luciano Tacchi / Luca Pow (WFU)

1. #18 Jack Pinnington (TCU) Vs #17 Stefan Dostanic (WFU)
3. #9 Lui Maxted (TCU) vs #98 Charlie Robertson (WFU)
6. Luca Pow (WFU) Vs Albert Pedrico (TCU)
Thanks Lambda - good to see so many Brits in the final! is that tonight ?

Interesting that Pedrico plays down at 6, his ATP ranking is pretty strong in the 700's, it looks like.

Lambda · ATP qualifying

Wake Forest are the 2025 Men's National Team Indoor Champions. It always felt coming into this that whoever would win the doubles would win the title and so it proved, but not before a TCU comeback after they looked down and out after losing doubles and 4 1st set singles. It came down to a decider on the top court between JPJ and Dostanic. The commentary said that JPJ felt a tweak in his abs in his match yesterday and perhaps that ultimately took its toll.

Doubles is won by Wake Forest 1-0
Wake Forest take 4 1st sets, it looks a tall order for TCU.
Luca (WFU) at 5 makes it 2-0 Wake Forest
Lui (TCU) at 3 pulls one back 2-1 Wake Forest
Vives (TCU) at 2 levels 2-2
Xilas (WFU) at 4 puts Wake back in front in a 11-9 2nd set tie break 3-2 Wake Forest
Woestendick (TCU) at 5 levels again in a 3 set win 3-3
Seconds later PJ wins the 2nd set to take the deciding match to a 3rd set
Dostanic (WFU) gets an early break 2-1 in the third.
And that proves decisive as Dostanic clinches to give Wake Forest the title 4-3

Wake Forest def. TCU 4-3
1. No. 30 Suresh/Dostanic (WFU) def. No. 2 Vives/Maxted (TCU) 6-2
2. Pinnington/Woestendick (TCU) def. No. 3 Tacchi/Pow (WFU) 6-4

1. No. 17 Stefan Dostanic (WFU) def. No. 18 Jack Pinnington (TCU) 7-6 (7-3), 5-7, 6-4
3. No. 9 Lui Maxted (TCU) def. No. 98 Charlie Robertson (WFU) 7-5, 6-3
6. Luca Pow (WFU) def. Al Pedrico Kravtsov (TCU) 6-2, 6-3

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Congrats to Luca on being part of the winning team and for winning his singles!

Thanks for the reports and updates, Lambda.

Lambda · ATP qualifying

Congratulations to our Players of the week this week as awarded by their conferences

Oliver Tarvet (San Diego) - West Coast singles
Sophia Johnson (Old Dominion) - Sun Belt singles
Hannah Smith+ (DePaul) [2nd consecutive week] - Big East doubles team for defeating 2 ranked teams including #18 Lily Hutchings+
Will Burridge (Drexel) - Coastal Athletic singles
Oliver Hague+ (William & Mary) [2nd consecutive week] - Coastal Athletic doubles team

Some Players of the week as awarded by their conferences from earlier weeks this year that I've come across
Alice Brook+ (Louisiana Tech)
Andrea Pineda (North Dakota) [peak performer of the week]
Oliver Tarvet [singles & doubles]
Luca Bluett+ (Santa Clara)
Jamie Connel (Florida State)
Eleanor Nobbs+ (DePaul)
Josh Reynolds (Hofstra)
Sam Nicholson (UNC Wilmington)
Francesca Davis+ (William & Mary)

Lambda · ATP qualifying

With the latest rankings we have the first computerised team rankings of the year and gives us the top 75 for the first time. There's no big surprises in the men's team rankings at first glance. Wake Forest take over the Number 1 ranking a long way ahead of the rest of the pack with their ranking score. Maybe a little surprising that Ohio State are 3rd and Texas 4th. Going into the Indoor Nationals, Wake, Texas and Virginia were regarded as the best 3 teams, and although TCU got to the final they were seen to be in the much weaker half of the draw and so I don't think opinions have really changed as to who the best 3 teams are even though the rankings says otherwise.

Team
1. Wake Forest (Robertson, Pow, Thursfield)
2. TCU (Pinnington-Jones, Maxted, Swan)
3. Ohio State (Jansen)
4. Texas
5. Virginia (Hopper)
6. Stanford (Basing)
7. San Diego (Tarvet)

Selected others
18. Baylor (Koenig, Bowden)
19. Alabama (Jones)
25. USC (Weightman)

In singles I was hoping that Ollie might have sneaked up to be No. 1 but instead he falls to No 4., partly as a result of TCU's Vives and Arizona's Colton Smith increasing their ranking scores. Ollie has a couple more opportunities to pick up wins that will contribute to his ranking ahead of San Diego's conference season, most notably San Diego's schedule will pit him against #3 Colton Smith tomorrow and #1 Michael Zheng in a month's time. The only other of note is that Will Jansen and Charlie Robertson drop out of the top 125.

Singles
4. Oliver Tarvet (San Diego) 14-1
11. Lui Maxted (TCU) 17-6
22. Jack Pinnington-Jones (TCU) 4-3
43. Jamie Connel (Florida State) 14-6
59. Roan Jones (Alabama) 17-3
79. Raffaello Papajcik (Denver) 12-5
80. Max Basing (Stanford) 8-5
83. Derrick Chen (Cal) 12-5
110. Connor Thomson (South Carolina) 2-2
114. Anthony Wright (UNC) 12-10
124. Will Nolan (Auburn) 10-4

GB remains strong in doubles with 5 players on 4 teams in the top 10. Surprisingly, Ollie not only retains the No 1 ranking from Lui despite Lui being the NCAA champions and having defeated Ollie last weekend, but the gap in the ranking scores between the top 2 widens such is the peculiarity of the college ranking system.

Doubles (top 20)
1. Oliver Tarvet (/Klaassen) [USD] 13-2
2. Lui Maxted (/Vives) [TCU] 17-3
3. Luca Pow (/Tacchi) [Wake Forest] 21-4
9. Billy Blaydes / Will Nolan [Auburn] 18-3
14. Henry Jefferson (/Nirundorn) [Florida] 8-4
16. Freddy Blaydes (/Ratiu) [Georgia] 12-5

Lambda · ATP qualifying

Things are much different with the first women's computerised rankings compared with the coaches polling that they were previously based on. There is a lot of shuffling around, and 3 things of particular notice to me are Stanford at 34 after being in the coaches polling top 4 for all except the poll last week. The other 2 notes are that Miami and Florida State are not ranked in the top 75 teams. Miami (Ogunwale) was expected after their roster problems and going 1-4 so far this year, but I'm stunned Florida State (Shaw, Bissett) is not ranked. But perhaps I shouldn't be surprised as I was looking at the schedule at the weekend and my thought was their non-conference schedule was very weak with little opportunity to pick up decent ranking points.

Team
1. Georgia
2. Virginia (Lacy)
3. UNC
4. Auburn
5. Michigan

14. NC State (Paskauskas, Paskauskas, Conway)
18. USC (Piper, Haddad)
19. Clemson (A. Davis)
20. Central Florida (Rylatt)

Selected others
29. San Diego (Read)
33. Georgia Tech (Roach, Bilchev)
37. Furman (Jess Dawson)
40. Florida (Dudeney, Neilsen-Gatenby)
42. Old Dominion (Johnson)

Sofia drops out of the top 10. But Isabelle enters the rankings at 60 (and would be higher if she had a full set of wins that count).
Singles
11. Sofia Johnson (ODU) 15-5
43. Grace Piper (USC) 9-8
60. Isabelle Lacy (Virginia) 4-1
63. Imogen Haddad (USC) 13-7
73. Gabia Paskauskas (NC State) 12-6

In doubles, Alicia remains our highest ranked doubles team with Rachel Gailis although they haven't played together since the NCAAs. Pleasing to see Hannah Smith and Jess Dawson in the rankings. Pleasing also to see Eva Shaw make an entry but the fact she and partner are unbeaten in 7 matches playing at line 1 but ranked only 86 demonstrates the weakness of Florida State's schedule.
Doubles
6. Alicia Dudeney (/Gailis) [Florida] 8-1
9. Grace Piper (/Fairclough) [USC] 12-4
35. Savannah Dada-Mascoll (/Romanichen) [App State] 13-3
45. Millie Bissett (/Juliana Parra Romero) [Florida State] 6-3
46. Lily Hutchings (/Berlanga) [Tulsa] 13-3
49. Hannah Smith (/Goncharov) [DePaul] 5-2
64. Jess Dawson (/Hitchc0ck) [Furman] 7-2
84. Given Roach (/Cruz) [Georgia Tech] 14-9
86. Eva Shaw (/Juliana Parra Romero) [Florida State] 7-0

Lambda · ATP qualifying

Unfortunately in what should have been the men's match of the day between #3 Colton Smith and #4 Ollie Tarvet, Ollie retired at 1-4 *0-30 with a foot injury I think. He had taken an injury time out with mandatory point penalty before the previous game, but clearly was restricted in movement and lost it to love. After a couple of points on his own serve it was clear there was no point in continuing and he shook hands.

Lambda · ATP qualifying

Congratulations to Ollie, Lui and Luca who are named on the Men's National Indoor Championships All-tournament team, voted on by the 16 head coaches at the championships.

No. 1 Singles: Oliver Tarvet, San Diego
No. 2 Singles: Pedro Vives, TCU
No. 3 Singles: Lui Maxted, TCU
No. 4 Singles: Ioannis Xilas, Wake Forest
No. 5 Singles: Cooper Woestendick, TCU
No. 6 Singles: Luca Pow, Wake Forest

No. 1 Doubles: Stefan Dostanic/Dhakshineswar Suresh, Wake Forest
No. 2 Doubles: Samir Banerjee/Alexander Razeghi, Stanford
No. 3 Doubles: Franco Capalbo/Ioannis Xilas, Wake Forest

Lambda · ATP qualifying

Conference play started this weekend for some teams and it will start for other teams at various points over the next month.

Virginia (women) and Georgia Tech won their opening conference matches on Friday and played each other today. Kyle Bilchev and partner played a very good doubles match to give the NCAA doubles champions a scare, but a deciding point serve that dribbled over the net won the set 7-5 for Virginia, giving them the doubles point.

Isabelle was originally down to play Given Roach at singles 4, but Virginia withdrawing their No 2 moved her up to 3.
Isabelle's match went unfinished in the 3rd set (as it did on Friday).

Given got an excellent 6-1 6-4 win over Collard, one of her best singles wins in college tennis.

Sadly Kylie has not featured in Georgia Tech's singles line up for the last month and only appeared twice in singles this year. It appears she is totally out of favour for singles and she may have played her last college singles match, which is a real head scratcher. There is nothing in her doubles play that suggests she has an injury that prevents her playing singles.

Virginia wins 4-2.

Lambda · ATP qualifying

Mens action was fairly quiet over the weekend. TCU trained in freezing conditions outdoors last week as they switch to playing outdoors. Lui got his 149th and 150th wins in college tennis (85 doubles, 65 singles) and JPJ clinched the match for TCU against Pepperdine. Only saw a little bit of this as I dislike TCU's streaming as they don't have on screen scores and I can't make out what's on the scoreboard so it's difficult to follow if your watching multiple courts and trying to follow dual matches elsewhere.

Stanford played the first match in their new covered facility that will be their home this season while Taube Tennis Centre is redeveloped in to, they say, a state of the art college tennis facility. So far this season they have been playing home matches on rec courts. The match was against UC Irvine and Max was unfinished in the third after losing the opening set.

Alicia Dudeney playing No 2 singles got an excellent 3 set victory against Auburn's No 2, coming back from losing the 1st set. Her fall doubles partner, Rachel Gailis defeated the #2 ranked DJ Bennett in 3 sets to give Florida the top 2 courts. Auburn have been strong this year, which is why they are ranked 4. This was Auburn's first match outdoors, while Florida have been playing outdoors at home when the weather allows. It was a very competitive tie at Auburn, with 5 of the 6 courts going to 3 sets showing that although Florida are a long way down the rankings after having injury issues early in the semester, they are very under-ranked. The only singles that didn't go to 3 sets was Talia at No 3 singles. She was competitive in the 1st set but lost the second easily. She has now lost 4 of her last 5 matches in a similar circumstances of being very competitive in the 1st set and then losing her way. Despite Florida getting the top 2 courts Auburn got the doubles point and the bottom 4 courts to get a 5-2 win. Also, despite Alicia and Rachel having a strong fall season and being the #6 ranked doubles team, that was a partnership that was a product of the previous coach. The new coach has decided to go in a different direction and they are not playing together, Rachel is instead playing with Talia at No 2 doubles. Alicia plays at No 1 doubles.

Also, congratulations to Savannah Dada-Mascoll (App State) who has completed the non-conference season unbeaten 7-0 at No 1 singles. App State open their conference season against Old Dominion in a couple of weeks, so Savannah's next singles match should be against Sofia Johnson. In doubles, after being split up at the beginning of the semester, Savannah has been reunited with her doubles partner from the fall season in recent weeks with similar success from the fall. As with singles Savannah+, should play Sofia+ at No 1 doubles next time out.

I'll finish with an observation. The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) (women) and Southeastern Conference (SEC) (men and women) opened their conference season's this weekend. All the ACC matches were played to clinch-clinch (stopped at 4 points), whereas nearly all of the SEC matches were played out. Not sure whether it is an ACC rule that matches stop at 4 and SEC are encouraging matches to be played out or whether it is the coaches choice (as it would be in non-conference play). It's quite an interest cultural or strategic difference if its the coaches choices.

Lambda · ATP qualifying

Charlie is struggling to adapt to college tennis. After the excellent promising singles debut weekend when he picked up 2 wins against quality opponents, he has not won since and is on a 6 match losing streak. Yesterday Wake had a double header against two lowly opponents, UNC Wilmington and Gardener-Webb, as practice for transitioning to outdoors. Wake won both matches 5-2.

In the UNCW match Charlie played at No 3 singles against Joseph Wayand, a transfer from NC State, losing 6-7 (10-12), 6-3, 2-6. Against Gardener -Webb he played No 2 singles against Kim Niethammer losing 3 & 3. Wake did not play Dostanic in either match and did not play Suresh in singles in the 2nd match, so effectively Charlie has been moved down to No 4 singles. Charlie did pick up a couple of doubles wins playing with Suresh in both matches.

Luca played at No 5 singles against UNCW winning 2 & 1, and No 3 singles against GW winning 2 & 2. Luca is now 12-2 this semester.

Graduate student Harry Thursfield got a rare outing against GW at No 5 singles winning 4 & 1. His position here, considering Wake did not play 3 of their regular singles line up, implies he is their singles No 8.

Wake open their ACC conference season on Friday at home to Stanford and then host Cal on Sunday. It's going to be some getting used to, Stanford and Cal, two Pacific coast teams being in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Some more information came out on Charlie's signing. Although his signing was not announced until mid January he had committed to Wake Forest in mid November when the signing window opened. The announcement was held back for him to work through some eligibility issues according to the Head coach.

9vicman · Satellite level

@lambda is it common in collegiate tennis for players to join at different times of the year? Thinking of Charlie Robertson here.

Lambda · ATP qualifying

9vicman wrote:
@lambda is it common in collegiate tennis for players to join at different times of the year? Thinking of Charlie Robertson here.

Yes, they can join in September or January as long as they are enrolled at their college for the start of the relevant semester. January joiners will usually be either those that have made a late decision to go to US college or be those that defer entry to play junior or pro tournaments during the autumn. Last year we had Eva Shaw, Imogen Haddad and Jasmine Conway among others join in January. Some coaches will hold spots open to recruit for January, especially if they are chasing a particular player. I only have last year to compare this January's recruitment to, but from that and from everything I have heard and read this year has been a bit different from previously. Usually January recruits would typically be known in December. This year there has been a several late announcements and, especially on the women's side, a lot more mid ranking pro players joining causing lots of delays in them being able to play while their eligibility is sorted out.