With the first dual NCAA Tennis Championships underway, it is now time for
the team preview for the men's tournament.
Perennial powerhouse and no-longer perennial host Georgia is undefeated and
seeded #1. Absent any Pac-10 teams at the top, it is up to Pepperdine to
represent the left coast as the #2 seed. Texas (#3) and the Duke Blue
Devils (#4) from the ACC round out the top four.
Conventional wisdom has Georgia as a giant favorite. The Bulldogs are
not only undefeated but have yet to lose a doubles point all season long.
They also seem to be on a roll, winning their last five matches 4-0. They
are led by a real giant, 6’7” and #2-ranked John Isner.
Pepperdine would probably garner any remaining votes with an outstanding (and
inflated) 32-2 record. (Editor's Note: We're still investigating how the
Waves played so many matches this season? Something smells fishy…) The
Waves' lone two losses this season were to the other two top-three teams: 4-0 to
Georgia in the National Team Indoor finals and 5-2 to Texas in Austin. The
Longhorns are led by coach Mike Center, a NorCal stockbroker in a former life.
Texas is looking at a rematch with Pepperdine in the semis, assuming they can
survive a probable quarterfinal match-up with #6 Ohio State. Finally,
Duke, the Atlantic Coast Conference champions, were placed in the always-tough
4/5 seed quarter, which also includes none other than our Stanford Cardinal (the
#13 seed).
The first big match-up is the fast closing University of Washington Huskies
(who upset #12 Virginia Commonwealth University in the regional) versus the
bunch from Waco, The Baylor Bears. Believe it or not, there is not one
American in either starting line-up, so it comes down to “can my Eastern
Europeans beat your Eastern Europeans?” I pick the more experienced
Eastern Europeans (two seniors/three juniors) from Washington in a huge upset.
Stanford will try to do its version of a “bad taste” party and kick the Blue
Devils out of the dance in a 3 pm match on Saturday at Taube Stadium (weather
permitting). Coach John Whitlinger has his boys peaking, and they should
be fresh and rested having only played 20 dual matches all year (Pepperdine
played 34 matches!). If it worked for Barbaro in the Kentucky Derby, it
might work for the surging Cardinal.
The Illinois/UCLA contest features two recent winners (the Illini in 2003 and
UCLA last year), and you don't want to miss this match-up. Somehow, former
winners seem to prance around a little more than non-winners at the
championships. Call it pride, call it coaching attitude, but there will be
some chemistry happening Saturday at noon at the Taube South.
A good sleeper would be Big 10 champ Ohio State, who has 58,365 students to
select from and has dropped one early season match (5-2 to Notre Dame).
The Buckeyes should be fine against UNC and could then give the #3 Longhorns
(student body is only 50,403) all they can handle in a Sunday morning thriller
at Taube.
The Cardinal men have senior KC Corkery at #1 as well as three “recruits” -
super frosh Matt Bruch, fellow freshman Blake Muller and redshirt junior James
Pade, who is rejoining the squad after skipping 2005. After a stunning
performance in Ojai at the Pac-10 Championships, the men are itching to return
to their former glory and go deep in this year's NCAA's. They will need
lots of hometown support to beat #4 Duke, but the Devils do have six losses on
the season. Duke has a pattern of losing the first encounter and then
getting the “revenge thing” going in the return match. They pulled off
this feat against both Florida State and Virginia. Unfortunately for the
Blue Devils, this tournament format is not two-out-of-three. I'm betting
with my heart on this one, as one of the all-time good guys, John Whitlinger,
wins his first of many Sweet Sixteen contests.
The women's tournament is off to a great start with super first day/night
crowds and beautiful Northern California weather. The #6 “Ramblin Wreck”
from Georgia Tech were the highest seed to be eliminated, falling to #11
Northwestern. Another highlight was the predicted epic marathon which
featured Florida finally prevailing over the Bruins, 4-3. Delayed by 90
minutes on Thursday night, the defending champion Stanford women won a spirited
encounter with TCU.
Note: Mark Hurd, CEO at Hewlett-Packard and featured speaker at the men's
banquet Thursday night, will not be happy with my comments on the
Baylor/Washington match. Mark was a Baylor tennis standout before moving
into the corporate world. However, the Baylor men and Mark have a lot to
live up to after Sally Ride (former Stanford #1 tennis player and, oh yeah,
FIRST WOMAN IN OUTER SPACE) absolutely captivated the women players at their
banquet Wednesday evening. She said she was so happy to talk about her
tennis and not weightlessness in space. I've never seen the roughly 160
young players so entranced by a keynote speaker. If only we coaches could
inspire such bewitchment at team meetings…
(More next week on the individual men's and women's championship)
Frank Brennan was the Stanford Women's Tennis Coach for 21 seasons
(1980-2000), winning an amazing 10 NCAA crowns during that span. He
amassed a remarkable 510-50 (.911) overall dual match record, and his players
won nine NCAA singles and three NCAA doubles titles. Brennan was
Intercollegiate Tennis Association's “Coach of the Decade” for both the 1980's
and the 1990's. Brennan's teams won six consecutive NCAA championships
from 1986-91, reached the Final Four 18 times and registered a then-record
76-dual match winning streak. He was named to the Stanford Athletics Hall
of Fame in 2001 and was inducted into the Intercollegiate Hall of Fame in 2006.
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