• The KillerFrogs

TCU Men's Tennis 2021-2022

FrogUltimate

Active Member
Norrie is at the Madrid masters this week. Unfortunately he got an absolutely nightmare draw. He’s the first seeded player to not get a first round bye. He gets Kwon this morning (not bad) and then Isner if he wins (not bad). But then the fun begins by drawing Alcaraz. And even if he pulls off that miracle, Nadal is next.
 

Jared7

Active Member
Opening vs Drake. Utah/Ole Miss the others in our pod.
Middle Tennessee gets the 16 seed despite being 19 in computer rankings, so that would be our opponent if we advance.
I'm not sure why it's Drake. They're 85th, well above many automatic bid teams, like Tennessee Tech, Fairleigh Dickinson, DePaul, South Carolina State, Navy, Youngstown State, ACU, Alabama State, New Orleans, Monmouth, Radford, Western Michigan and UNC-Wilmington. Unlike some of those, they have a winning record (13-10); they got hot at the end of the season and are riding a 4-match win streak and 8 W's out of the last 9. They won the Summit League. They're best W is probably the final against #66 Denver and maybe Wichita State earlier. They've gone 3-4 against some good teams (Nebraska, Wisconsin, Utah State, Vanderbilt and Alabama), but couldn't quite pull off the upset. They've played 11 matches against ranked teams and are 1-10. They certainly won't be favored but they do have a pulse. I was expecting a bigger walkover than that for the top seed.

All-time we're 1-1 against Drake, winning 4-3 in 1993 and losing 1-4 in 2013.
 
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Jared7

Active Member
Opening vs Drake. Utah/Ole Miss the others in our pod.
Middle Tennessee gets the 16 seed despite being 19 in computer rankings, so that would be our opponent if we advance.
Utah is a good team. They started out on fire and didn't lose until mid-March, riding a 16-match win streak, with ranked W's over Tech, UCSB, Gonzaga and Denver but hit major bumps in the road when Pac12 play started; losing to Stanford, USC, Arizona, Cal and UCLA, as well as Harvard and San Diego. Overall, they're 20-7. Franco Capalbo, Francisco Bastias and Geronimo Busleiman are their top players. We're 6-2 all-time against the Utes and haven't seen our ex-conference mates since the MWC when we last beat them in 2011 (7-0).
 

Jared7

Active Member
We are more familiar with Mississippi's Nikola Slavic, Finn Reynolds and John Hallquist Lithen than the others in our regional having already faced them this season. Ole Miss is 16-12 on the season - they have been good but not elite most of the year. They have ranked W's over NC State, A&M, Oklahoma, Mississippi State, Arkansas and Vanderbilt and ranked L's to TCU, Florida, Baylor, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina, Georgia, USC, Auburn (twice) A&M and LSU. They were torched 6-1 by Florida and Tennessee, 4-1 by Baylor and we barely won 4-3 at home early in the season. We're 8-5 all-time against Mississippi from 1983-2022, including the last 3 straight under Roditi. We won in February with singles W's from Aguilar (over Reynolds), Jong (over Lithen) and Vives (over Englehardt) and with the doubles point. Fomba "lost" 7-6, 3-6 0-1 (11-13) when they played it out.

Based on their pedigree and the level of competition they've played this year, I think they're the favorite against Utah.
 

Jared7

Active Member
It's like baseball. We host a regional of 4 teams (Drake/Utah/Mississippi). If we advance, we will then host a super-regional, which is projected to be Middle Tennessee State, but they're not hosting their regional even though being #16. It's instead at NC State. So we'll see. Beyond that, the 8 winners of the supers advance to the Nationals, which this year is in Champaign-Urbana.

Line-ups can not change after being set and any appeals resolved. Throughout the tourney. Except for "injuries." The #6 spot can pretty much be changed whenever.
 

Jared7

Active Member
The Cracked Racquets podcast highlighted what they thought were national issues. Wolverine Alex Gruskin thought that Michigan should have been 4th and Ohio State 5th. He kept coming back to that over and over again and said "I know I'm going to be accused of bias, but.." and the [ What the heck? ] was implied. Yeah, he's biased. But maybe he has a point. Not that it matters all that much because it's 4 and 5. Halioris obsessed on those bizarre charts which determine optimal driving distance for participants having to travel v. the "integrity of the draw" criterion. Otherwise, they barely mentioned TCU. The top seed. Baylor's got ACU but also potentially A&M. SMU might get a shot at Texas. Texas at Michigan seemed to be of interest to Gruskin because it's an ex-Michigan coach. But Middle Tennessee is the big story - leaping to 16th via a combination of the common opponents rule and H2H that iced out Zona and San Diego from a potential hosting slot. And then having to go to NC State for their own regional due to some murky facilities issue. They also interviewed Bret Masi, the former Tech coach now at USC. Tech was left out?
 

FrogUltimate

Active Member
So whatever is going on in Gray's weird schedule, he suddenly appears at the Nottingham futures this week as the #2 seed. He won the 1st set in his opening match 6-2, but down a break in 2nd set.
 
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