Whitman Stuns Cruz (and other weekend results)

Whitman Junior, Jeff Tolman

#29 Whitman 6, #6 Santa Cruz 3

I was going to try to hold off on posting about this weekend until it was over, but what happened last night needs writing about. Whitman beat Cruz 6-3, and the box score doesn't even make it look like an upset (I got this off Coach Northam's blog because it's not on the ITA website yet. you can also read about the match at http://www.whitmantennis.net):

Doubles

• Matt Tesmond/Conor Holton-Burke def Devin Nerenberg/Eli Scandalis 8-1
• Jeff Tolman/Andrew La Cava def Erik Rosner/Ian Stanley 8-6
• James Rivers/Sam Sadeghi def Sam Rodgers/Erich Koenig 9-7

Singles

• Andrew La Cava lost Devin Nerenberg 6-3, 6-4
• Jeff Tolman def Erich Koenig 6-3, 6-4
• Conor Holton-Burke def Andre Halabi 7-6, 6-0
• James Rivers lost Erik Rosner 4-6, 7-6, 6-4
• Sam Sadeghi lost Bryce Bettwy 5-7, 6-2, 10-7
• Adriel Borshansky def Sam Rodgers 6-2 6-4

Normally, with a colossal upset, you see a doubles sweep followed by two tight victories. This isn't that. From Northam's blog, it seems like this match was a lot closer to being 8-1 Whitman than 5-4 Cruz. Whitman had a match point at #4 singles, and you can see from the score line that they came close at #5.

There are two ways to look at this result. You can look at it and say, "Cruz lost its edge when it lost Hansen, and is now clearly overrated. They will probably finish the season outside the top 15 for the first time in forever." Or you can say, "Whitman must be much better than we thought they were. They're bound to be tough on their home court, so let's not overreact to the Cruz loss and just give Whitman some credit." In reality, it's probably a combo of both, but I want to cover both sides of it.

Cruz

It didn't seem like this would be a down year for Cruz. They were supposed to return 5 out of 6, and, even though they lost an all-time great in Pybas, they added Nurenberg, so that shouldn't hurt them too much. Unfortunately, they also lost Parker Larsen for some reason, and I think that loss really has them reeling. Cruz has always been one of the best doubles team, and without Larsen and Pybas, they lose their #1 team from last year. That's hard to recover from. I want to take it easy on Coach Parmelly, but I just don't think Hansen would have let his team go down 0-3 in a hostile environment. No matter how tough you are, you can't come back from that against a good team.

The upswing of all this is that Cruz desperately, desperately needs a win against Trinity at Indoors. If they can get it, they can write this loss off as a bit of a fluke like that loss to Cal Lu two years ago, and everything will be right in the world. If they lose, the mumbles and grumbles about Hansen will only get louder. This is a program with a lot of tradition, and I think D3 was overreacting a little bit last night when he said something along the lines of "this is the beginning of the end of the golden age of Cruz tennis," but they need to do better and fast.

Whitman

I think it's only appropriate for me to just eat my words about Whitman. I was wrong. They won, and they looked good doing it. Looking at their results from this year, they have clearly been playing great tennis this whole time. They beat Hawaii-Pacific (ranked #22 in DII) earlier this year, and they've given some DI teams a tough time. Still, just like with the Cruz situation, I don't think people should overreact. I don't think it's safe to consider Whitman a top 15 team yet. The last couple years, they've had some big wins against Pomona and Trinity (Tx), so in a way, we already knew that they were capable of playing like a top 10 team one out of six times. Each of the past two years, however, they've followed up their big win by laying a huge egg. Two years ago, they lost to Redlands by an uncompetitive 7-2 score after beating Pomona, and last year they lost to Texas-Tyler 6-3 after beating Trinity.

That said, Whitman has what might be the most important weekend in program history this weekend when they travel to Virginia to play Mary Washington, Rhodes, and Kalamazoo. These matches weren't on the D3 calendar, but they're on the Whitman website. Honestly, I think Whitman will probably drop at least one of these three matches, which will murder their chances at a top 15 ranking. They will be under a lot of pressure to back up their big win, and they will have to beat three good teams far, far away from home. Even if that happens, this is a great win for a program that's long on heart and short on talent. I would love to see what Whitman could do with some better recruits.

Other Weekend Results

#7 Kenyon 8, #19 Case Western 1

http://itarankings.itatennis.com/TeamMatch.aspx?scseId=228778&page=lr

I'm a little tired of typing at this point, so I'll keep this brief. I was wrong, again. I'm not off to a good start with this prediction thing. It looks like Case isn't actually ready for the big time, as they got killed by Kenyon, and there's no way you can look at this score line and say that it was close. Kenyon got two easy wins in doubles, and the third one looks solid, aswell. Then, Kenyon demolished Case at three of the singles positions. Burgin and Williams are off to great starts, and the Lords are getting contributions from their freshman already. I think this recruiting class could help these guys make the push into the final four. We'll know more after today's match.

#12 NCW 7, #19 Case Western 2

http://athletics.case.edu/sports/mten/2011-12/files/case-ncm.htm

This boxscore confirms that Case just isn't ready to move into the top 15, but I'll talk about NCW first. Why can't they play doubles!? I don't get it. Their singles lineup is so strong, and they can sweep anyone outside the top 15 off the singles court. Why can't they put together cohesive doubles teams. It doesn't make any sense. They need to turn their doubles around if they want to become the team they think that they already are. Right now, their doubles is preventing them from moving into the top 10. Other than that, their singles lineup looks great. They absolutely demolished Case, and I think the relatively easy wins at the bottom of the lineup are an especially good sign because I didn't know how deep they were (it's hard to tell how good their bench players are when they're all international)

With regard to Case. I was wrong. Oh boy, was I wrong. They didn't even compete with Kenyon and NCW in singles. It's clear that they can still play good doubles, but even a doubles sweep won't help if you can't win a singles match. Hopefully they can turn it around this week before they play Depauw. If they lose that one, their chances of making NCAAs will fall from slim to none.