The match of the day today was #6 Arizona at #9 Florida State. Arizona won 6-1. From a British viewpoint #22 Jamie Connel (FSU) gave #5 Colton Smith (ARIZ) a run for his money but ultimately went down 3-6 5-7. Interestingly there was no #9 Craig Corey in the line up for Florida State.

Elsewhere the matches were fairly routine practice matches
Oli Tarvet picked up a routine 0 & 1 win as San Diego defeated Oklahoma State 4-1

Will Jansen got a 2 & 1 win on court 1 for Ohio State as they defeated Xavier 4-0. Anthrop and Aidan Kim were absent from the Buckeyes line-up today.

Auburn men played two matches yesterday to open their spring season against Mercer and North Alabama. Will Nolan and Billy Blaydes continued their successful doubles partnership with 2 wins. Will then made has maiden appearance as Auburn's No 1 with 2 wins 0 & 4 and 5 & 1. Billy also got 2 wins 1 & 2 and 0 & 2, playing at 3 in the first match and 2 in the second match.

Isabelle Lacy made her collegiate debut at court 6 with a 2 & 2 win as Virginia won 7-0 against James Madison in their final warm up match.

Anjali Kotecha (FGC) made her collegiate debut yesterday with a 1 & 5 win on court 3 as Florida Gulf Coast defeated Middle Tennessee State 5-2. She's also currently a set up as FGC take on Minnesota.
(Isabelle and Anjali are our only January starters this year that I know of.)

Jaquelyn Ogunwale (Miami) played some impressive tennis as she won the 1st set 6-1 today. But it all went awry when she was serving for the match at *5-4 in the 2nd. She lost that game and the next 8 to lose 6-1 5-7 0-6. Perhaps with no one on the team to back her up, the pressure of leading the team as a freshman and needing to get a singles point has taken its toll. Miami had only 5 available players today, giving FIU a head start who with a doubles set and singles match awarded to them by default they only needed to win 1 doubles set and 2 singles matches to take the dual, which they duly did defeating Miami 4-0. Miami need Alexa Noel badly.

Savannah Dada-Mascoll - despite the success and history making she made during the fall with her doubles partner, achieving the highest ever doubles ranking and first NCAA doubles qualifiers for App State, that successful partnership has been split up. Nevertheless over yesterday and today, she's got 2 doubles wins with her new partner on court 2 and 2 singles wins leading the team on court 1, 1 & 4 yesterday against Virginia Commonwealth's No 1 and 1 & 1 today against Temple's No 1.

NC State women played another routine match last night which I would not otherwise have commented on (11 of the 12 singles sets were won by bakery products with the Paskauskas sisters both winning 0 & 0, it was that easy) other than it gives a better idea of their singles order for the season with top 700 WTA Laki making her collegiate debut. Laki played on court 1, Kristina played on Court 3 and Gabia played on court 6. Other than being surprised that Zampardo was not higher up the order than 5, this is more like the order I was thinking pre-season. Kristina played doubles with Laki, leaving no room for Jasmine in either singles or doubles. With no one graduating at the end of this year and Victoria Osuigwe joining next year, its hard to see how Jasmine can get into the playing line up in the next couple of years.

Thanks for the updates

The ITA Kickoff weekend takes place this weekend. As well as the ceremonial start to the spring season this also serves as the qualifying competition for the National Indoor Championships. 56 teams will be battling it out in 14 groups of 4 for each of the men and women, although at least 3 women's teams have withdrawn from the weekend. The groups were selected by draft in June. The top 14 teams by ranking at the end of last season are selected to host a group and the 15th ranked team downwards choosing which group they want to play in, hence some lopsided groups. The winners of the 14 groups join the 2 hosts of the National Indoors (Baylor and SMU for the men and Northwestern and Illinois for the women)

The ITA event page with links to a high level scoreboard, individual live scoring and live streams is here. Cracked Racquets will also have several streams covering multiple sites on their youtube channel.

Many of the host teams should walk through to win their groups.

On the mens side the closest group is at Florida State (Connel). In the opening round in this group is South Carolina (Thomson) and San Diego (Tarvet), the 16th and 15th ranked teams in the latest coaches rankings. This group was scheduled to be outdoors, which would favour San Diego, but the cold snap northern Florida is experiencing is likely to force it indoors. I would favour San Diego to come out of this group if it was outdoors. Whether going indoors hampers them I'm not sure. As an ITA event I assume they are using Dunlop balls and nobody wants to play Ollie Tarvet with Dunlop balls that fluff up very quickly. If this ends up being Florida State v San Diego we could see Tarvet play Jamie Connel or Corey Craig, that latter of who he beat in a marathon at the All-Americans in September.

Wake will easily progress at home, but it will be interesting to see if Charlie Robertson makes his debut. Some have suggested he could play as high as 3 in the line up and it sounds like there is quite a bit of excitement in the US of his signing.

On the women's side there are a few more groups of interest. Florida host Miami, Louisiana State and Florida International. The favourites to progress from this group has changed in the last couple of weeks. With Florida and Miami not playing a full team last week they potentially face the prospect of going out in the first round if they have to forfeit a doubles set and singles point this weekend. LSU have 3 top 600 WTA players at the top of their line up after adding a couple of top 500 WTA players to their roster in the last couple of weeks including Canada's Kayla Cross WTA265 (singles) and WTA183 (doubles), although I notice she is currently in the heavily delayed W75 in Florida at the moment.

NC State, rising 4 spots to 10 in the latest coaches rankings, play Ohio State (15) at Tennessee. Ohio State don't have any British players, but they do have Nao Nishino (Surrey/Surbiton High School) who's 14-5 in her college career. Ohio State and NC State had the first 2 picks in the draft and both chose here. Any of NC State, Ohio State or Tennessee could qualify from here but NC State are currently the highest ranked team in the group.

Georgia Tech (Bilchev, Given) were due to play Florida State in Malibu, but FSU could not travel due to the Florida weather closing the airport, so GT will now play Pepperdine's opponents Arizona instead. Pepperdine progress directly to the final for the group. Florida Central (Rylatt) and Columbia have both withdrawn from the UCLA group, leaving just two teams in that group. The match of the kick off weekend is likely to be Virginia (5) v Duke (7) in Virginia in the only top 10 match up of the weekend. Isabelle is unlikely to play as she is Virginia's No 7 or 8. Duke have Liv Hovde on their roster, but she is yet to play as she has not yet had eligibility confirmed.

The first upset of the weekend goes to Ohio State women as they slaughter NC State and dump them out of qualifying for the National Indoors 4-1. The result isn't a shock but how easily they won is. Ohio State took the doubles point 2 sets to 1. Kristina+ playing Nao Nishino+, with Nao+ winning 6-1. In singles Kristina didn't play. Whether that was down to injury, illness or coach's choice is unclear, but it meaned 4, 5 and 6 moved up a spot with Gabia playing Nao at 5 and Jasmine coming in at 6. Nao was far the better player (and I was very impressed with her in doubles too) and came within 2 points from defeating Gabia with the score 6-1 5-4 *30-0 when Ohio State clinched the match with Jasmine losing 2 & 4.

In Virginia, Isabelle did actually play in singles at position 4. Virginia were up 3-0 and it was a race to finish first between her and courts 5 and 6 to get the clinch point. Isabelle took her opportunity to win her match 2 & 1 with an ace and get the clinch point for Virginia.

Elsewhere Hannah Read (San Diego) lost 5 & 1 as Auburn won 4-1. Dani Hack (Maryland) lost her doubles and singles matches as Maryland lost to Texas 4-0. Luca Bluett (Santa Clara) lost as 4 & 3 as Kentucky advance 4-1. Matt Rankin (Kentucky) was scheduled to play at 6, but didn't get to start his match as Kentucky with only 4 indoor courts clinched the match on 3 of the 4 singles to start.

Currently in action is San Diego men against South Carolina at Florida State. In doubles Ollie Tarvet+ beat Connor Thomson+ 6-3. They are also playing each other in singles on court 1 with the match tied 5-5 in the first set. There is no stream so I assume the match has been moved indoors.



-- Edited by Lambda on Friday 24th of January 2025 08:48:44 PM

What a match it must have been between San Diego and South Carolina. After San Diego had taken the doubles point, South Carolina went on to win the 1st set in 5 of the 6 singles matches. Ollie getting San Diego's only set. South Carolina got their first point on court 5, but all the other matches went to a deciding set. San Diego went on to get the singles wins on the top 3 courts to complete the singles turnaround. Ollie defeated Connor 7-5 3-6 6-0. They will play Florida State tomorrow who progressed with Jamie Connel getting a singles win.

Charlie Robertson made his debut for Wake Forest in doubles but he didn't appear in the singles line up. In his doubles match he should have won being 5-2 up, but they let the Charlotte opponents back in, and it was 5-4 when Wake Forest won on the other 2 doubles courts to take the doubles point.

Grace Piper was on fire today. Winning doubles with a bagel and the first set of her singles with another bagel and putting USC up 2-0 with a 6-0 6-4 singles win on court 1. Immi Haddad on court 4 got the 1st set of her doubles but went behind in the 2nd set, she was making a comeback when the 4 points required for USC to clinch the match against Penn were clinched on other courts.

Kylie Bilchev+ got a doubles win for Georgia Tech against Arizona at Pepperdine but Given Roach+ lost the deciding point at *5-6 to give the doubles point to Arizona. Kylie was back in the team at 6 after missing the last 2 matches, but lost the match 3-6 6-7(4) to give Arizona the win 4-0. Given was at 4 and her match was unfinished early in the third set. I still struggle to understand what is going on with Kylie to see such a massive drop in form to have fallen behind all the returning players. She would have been winning matches at 6 easily last year. It was so sad watching her, nowhere near the player I watched in April and May.

Lots of our players in action yesterday.

Those that played and won on Friday played the final qualifying round match yesterday, which for those with our players were Wake Forest, San Diego and Kentucky on the men's side and Virginia and USC on the women's side.

Both Wake Forest and San Diego won their matches and qualify for the National Indoors at Baylor (Waco, Texas) and SMU (Dallas, Texas) on the weekend of 14 to 18 February (Both sites host the early rounds and Baylor host the SF and F.)

Wake Forest won 4-0 against Memphis. It was one of the closest contested doubles points you're likely to see but Luca and Tacchi won again and are 5-0 in team-play this season. Luca also won his singles match at 4 in straight sets to extend his winning run in completed matches to 24. Charlie Robertson didn't find a place in the team today.

Kentucky also qualify for the National Indoors, but Matt Rankin at 6 again didn't get on court to play his match.

San Diego defeated Florida State 4-2. Tarvet+(USD) was leading Connel+ (FSU) in the doubles when Florida State took the doubles point. There was no Corey Craig in the Florida State line up so Jamie Connel faced Ollie Tarvet at the top of the order, with Ollie coming out a comfortable 1 & 0 winner.

In the women's finals, Virginia qualified for the National Indoors at Northwestern (Chicago, Ill) and Illinois (Champaign, Ill) but USC did not.

In the top 10 dual, Virginia (5) beat Duke (7) 4-3, but as Virginia fielded what in their view is their strongest line up, there was no place for Isabelle.
USC (11) were upset at home to Auburn 2-4. USC were dominant in the doubles with Grace and Fairclough winning 6-1, the only game they lost in the 2 doubles sets they played this weekend. USC have looked really strong in doubles in these early weeks. Grace faced NCAA finalist DJ Bennett at 1 and although she went up an early break to lead *3-1 in the first, DJ showed why she is an NCAA finalist to come back to defeat Grace 3 & 2. Immi has secured her place at the 4 spot, but although saving 4 match points at 3-5 *0-40 in the second, she ultimately lost 2 & 4. USC now do not play again for 3 weeks.

For those interested in how Nao Nishino (Ohio State) got on, she got a dominant ranked win against #54 Vanesa Suarez 1 & 3 to give Ohio State a 2-1 lead. Tennessee have 5 of their 6 singles players in the top 125. The Buckeyes came very close to upsetting hosts Tennessee with a 3-2 lead and needing 1 of the 2 matches to go to 3 sets. Despite being a break up on 1 of those matches for much of the set, Tennessee prevailed. Nao seems to have a very promising college career ahead of her. Shame she's not British, but I'll probably check in on her from time to time.