General college chat 2024/25

Lambda · Challenger level

RE: US College signings and general college chat 2024/25

Lambda · Challenger level

And Alicia+ does it. The last of our NCAA qualifiers this weekend. They got me a bit worried after going from 8-1 in the MTB to 9-6 but got over the line eventually. smile

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And they did it without a Head Coach at the moment after he suddenly "retired" with immediate effect a week or so ago after 23 years at the helm.

Lambda · Challenger level

To summarise again our qualifiers so far are

Mens Singles
Oliver Tarvet, Lui Maxted, Jamie Connel

Mens Doubles
Oliver Tarvet, Luca Pow, Henry Jefferson, Billy Blaydes & Will Nolan

Women Singles
None

Women Doubles
Grace Piper, Lily Hutchings, Alicia Dudeney

We are healthy in doubles but could do with more in singles. Can Max, Will Jansen, Sofia or Grace help us out and do themselves proud in the final qualifying events? I do worry about Sofia putting all her eggs in the sectionals basket as she'll be competing against players from the strong Carolina regional.

Lambda · Challenger level

With the regionals complete, I thought I'd take a look at who had qualified and how many dangerous players there were that would be a barrier to us getting more qualifiers in singles. I still need to do that as I got side tracked in noticing how many qualifiers were lowly ranked or unranked. This leads me to question whether the move to the fall is getting the best players to the finals.

The caveats to this analysis is that the pre-season rankings are not likely to bear much resemblance to the rankings at the end of this season and that there are some players in the rankings who are not playing the fall.

If my numbers are correct, and on the women's side there's so many unranked I question whether I've missed them in the rankings, then 18 of the 34 women qualifiers and 21 of the 36 men are in the pre-season top 70. The top 70 is where most of those at the NCAAs are usually ranked. 12 of the 34 women qualifiers so far are unranked. It'll be interesting to see what these numbers look like after the final qualifying competitions. There's 34 women rather than 36 as 2 of the regional places were taken by women who had already qualified at the All-Americans. I'm not sure how they get reallocated.

Pre-season ranking	Women	Men
Top 10	5	6
Top 20	8	10
Top 30	9	13
Top 40	11	17
Top 50	14	19
Top 60	14	20
Top 70	18	21
Ranked (top 125)	22	31
Unranked	12	5

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Lambda wrote:
To summarise again our qualifiers so far are

Mens Singles
Oliver Tarvet, Lui Maxted, Jamie Connel

Mens Doubles
Oliver Tarvet, Luca Pow, Henry Jefferson, Billy Blaydes & Will Nolan

Women Singles
None

Women Doubles
Grace Piper, Lily Hutchings, Alicia Dudeney

We are healthy in doubles but could do with more in singles. Can Max, Will Jansen, Sofia or Grace help us out and do themselves proud in the final qualifying events? I do worry about Sofia putting all her eggs in the sectionals basket as she'll be competing against players from the strong Carolina regional.

Good to see Lui and Luca getting good wins on the ITF tour this week.

its probably in this thread, is this period through the NCAA finals all about individual play? And then team play is the post new year focus? And does that mean the players get to play a decent range of ITF events in this period before the finals?

Lambda · Challenger level

I'll start a new thread for next year's signings in due course (unless someone else starts it first), but for now I'll mention here that Charlie Swain and Daniela Piani have committed to South Carolina for fall 2025.

Dannythomas · Lower Club Player

Lambda wrote:
To summarise again our qualifiers so far are

Mens Singles
Oliver Tarvet, Lui Maxted, Jamie Connel

Mens Doubles
Oliver Tarvet, Luca Pow, Henry Jefferson, Billy Blaydes & Will Nolan

Women Singles
None

Women Doubles
Grace Piper, Lily Hutchings, Alicia Dudeney

We are healthy in doubles but could do with more in singles. Can Max, Will Jansen, Sofia or Grace help us out and do themselves proud in the final qualifying events? I do worry about Sofia putting all her eggs in the sectionals basket as she'll be competing against players from the strong Carolina regional.

Hopefully Sofia and Grace make it through. Its obviously disappointing that we have gone from 5 individual womens qualifiers ( Millie, Vic, Angelica, Sofia and Grace ) to possibly none. Partly due of course to our 3 highest ranked players graduating but also the new heavily flawed selection system with its dubious regional pathway and with freshman having little chance to even enter some of the qualifying events. We are certainly not going to see the top 64 players competing against each other which is a shame.

Elegant Point · Satellite level

Dannythomas wrote:
Hopefully Sofia and Grace make it through. Its obviously disappointing that we have gone from 5 individual womens qualifiers ( Millie, Vic, Angelica, Sofia and Grace ) to possibly none. Partly due of course to our 3 highest ranked players graduating but also the new heavily flawed selection system with its dubious regional pathway and with freshman having little chance to even enter some of the qualifying events. We are certainly not going to see the top 64 players competing against each other which is a shame.
I was wondering about the logic behind this decision Wondering if we will see more Freshmen choos to start in Jan having spent the Fall playing ITFs?

Lambda · Challenger level

Elegant Point wrote:
Dannythomas wrote:
Hopefully Sofia and Grace make it through. Its obviously disappointing that we have gone from 5 individual womens qualifiers ( Millie, Vic, Angelica, Sofia and Grace ) to possibly none. Partly due of course to our 3 highest ranked players graduating but also the new heavily flawed selection system with its dubious regional pathway and with freshman having little chance to even enter some of the qualifying events. We are certainly not going to see the top 64 players competing against each other which is a shame.
I was wondering about the logic behind this decision Wondering if we will see more Freshmen choos to start in Jan having spent the Fall playing ITFs?

Maybe its because I'm relatively new to college tennis but I don't understand these comments? I would have thought the current pathway gives more freshman more of a chance of qualifying for the NCAAs than the old way. I've seen plenty of freshman competing in the qualifying competitions this year and in the main draws too, presumably due to the changes to how the pre-season rankings are made up which were made so not to disadvantage freshman in the NCAA qualifying competitions. 6 women and 2 men that have qualified out of the 36 so far are freshman. None of this is to say I'm defending them, but of the many flaws in this pathway to the NCAAs this isn't one I've seen.

I do agree we are not going to see the top 64 at the NCAAs. There are some weak qualifiers, some of whom will be lucky to end the season ranked. They do seem to have devalued the NCAAs and it seems to me that the All-Americans will be more prestigious competition than the NCAAs if they continue down this road.

Dannythomas · Lower Club Player

Lambda wrote:
Elegant Point wrote:

Dannythomas wrote:
Hopefully Sofia and Grace make it through. Its obviously disappointing that we have gone from 5 individual womens qualifiers ( Millie, Vic, Angelica, Sofia and Grace ) to possibly none. Partly due of course to our 3 highest ranked players graduating but also the new heavily flawed selection system with its dubious regional pathway and with freshman having little chance to even enter some of the qualifying events. We are certainly not going to see the top 64 players competing against each other which is a shame.
I was wondering about the logic behind this decision Wondering if we will see more Freshmen choos to start in Jan having spent the Fall playing ITFs?
Maybe its because I'm relatively new to college tennis but I don't understand these comments? I would have thought the current pathway gives more freshman more of a chance of qualifying for the NCAAs than the old way. I've seen plenty of freshman competing in the qualifying competitions this year and in the main draws too, presumably due to the changes to how the pre-season rankings are made up which were made so not to disadvantage freshman in the NCAA qualifying competitions. 6 women and 2 men that have qualified out of the 36 so far are freshman. None of this is to say I'm defending them, but of the many flaws in this pathway to the NCAAs this isn't one I've seen.

I do agree we are not going to see the top 64 at the NCAAs. There are some weak qualifiers, some of whom will be lucky to end the season ranked. They do seem to have devalued the NCAAs and it seems to me that the All-Americans will be more prestigious competition than the NCAAs if they continue down this road.

Most incoming freshmen , by virtue of them having no opening season ranking, will have to start at , for example,the prequalifying stage in the All Americans which would entail winning at least 10 matches to earn an NCAA spot . And then they otherwise have to rely on regional qualification for which there is no logicaL basis . Why should weak regions get as many spots as the strong ones ? Under the previous system qualification for what was then the end of season individuals selection was mostly based on a players achievements over the whole year which gave freshmen as much chance as qualifying as anyone else and gave them chances to ease themselves into college tennis. I havent analysed how our British freshmen have performed in the fall events but I suspect they have found it tough . I definitely agree with your second paragraoh !

Lambda · Challenger level

As I understand it that freshman will have no college results to be ranked and enter fall events on a fair level has tried to be addressed by placing more emphasis on WTN for rankings and entry to fall competitions. They've replaced the non-returning players from last season in the rankings with enrolled players ordered by WTN rather than moving those that ended last season outside the top 125 up. That gives the top 4 men (from a relatively weak intake) and top 8 women freshman a ranking, including Talia. The top woman freshman that's playing the fall did get direct entry to the main draw of the AAs and did qualify there for the NCAAs. I'll give you its far from perfect and still puts freshman at a disadvantage as by being further down the development curve than established college players they'll have lower WTNs, and that their pre-season ranking may be lower than their ranking will be at the end of the regular season, but at least they've tried to address it to some degree. I agree it would be better if it was based on performance over the college year. And you won't get any arguments from me on the regionals.

Gabia P has really impressed as a freshman for NC State, coming through pre-qualy and qualy to be the last NC State woman standing at the All-Americans and only losing in 3 sets to Anabelle Xu in the main draw. She had an unfortunate draw in the regionals playing and losing to the top seed in the 2nd round but with a respectable score. Talia did double bagel the 9th qualifying seed but then narrowly lost her next match and surprisingly wasn't entered in singles at the regionals. I don't recall any of our male freshman doing anything noteworthy, but, with respect to them, I don't think we have a particularly strong intake on the men's side this year.

Lambda · Challenger level

Sofia had qualified for the sectionals for the last chance for the NCAAs, but it was announced Friday will instead represent the Sun Belt conference at the Conference Masters. Sun Belt chose their representatives based on the highest ranked player on the unpublished rankings of fall results not to have already qualified for the NCAAs, which is what I hear is what many conferences are doing. I think this will make Sofia's job all the more harder to qualify. I am really puzzled why she didn't try to qualify at the regional.

Dannythomas · Lower Club Player

Lambda wrote:
Sofia had qualified for the sectionals for the last chance for the NCAAs, but it was announced Friday will instead represent the Sun Belt conference at the Conference Masters. Sun Belt chose their representatives based on the highest ranked player on the unpublished rankings of fall results not to have already qualified for the NCAAs, which is what I hear is what many conferences are doing. I think this will make Sofia's job all the more harder to qualify. I am really puzzled why she didn't try to qualify at the regional.

Yes Lambda dont your last 2 posts show how ridiculously complicated and unbalanced is the new NCAA individuals qualification system ? The old qualification system wasnt broke so why fix it ? Whereas it seems the new system was broke before it even started !
Plainly moving the event to the fall was done for the benefit of the tournament organizers. It certainly wasnt done for the benefit of the players.

-- Edited by Dannythomas on Sunday 27th of October 2024 11:12:57 AM

Lambda · Challenger level

While some conferences are using rankings to select their participants at the Conference Masters, some of the lower conferences ran a Conference Championships over the weekend to select their participants.

One such conference is the American Athletic Conference, where the Championship winner was Alex Okonkwo (Tulsa).

For winning the Championship he will represent the AAC at the Conference Masters.

Tulsa's report:
As an unseeded participant, Okonkwo made history as the conference's first-ever men's singles champion in the inaugural event.

Hailing from Maidenhead, England, Okonkwo dominated UTSA's Danijal Muminovic in straight sets, 6-2, 6-0. Okonkwo won the final 11 games of the match to win the championship, bolstering Tulsa's long history of conference championship success.

Okonkwo won five consecutive matches to take home the trophy, two of which were over seeded players and four of which were won in straight sets. On Thursday, he defeated UAB's Noah Malige (6-4, 6-4) and No. 6 Francisco Llanes of South Florida (6-1, 7-5) to advance to Friday's quarterfinals. From there, he earned a 6-3, 6-4 win over Temple's Martim Marujo and then escaped No. 10 Luka Petrovic of Tulane in three hard-fought sets, 1-6, 7-6 (4), 6-3 during the semifinal round Saturday. Okonkwo's tiebreaker victory in the second set of that semifinal win saved his championship run.

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Well done Alex! Is he related to Oliver Okonkwo? Old brother?