After the release of the latest Oracle/ITA rankings,  I wanted to do a comparison between those and the most recent Universal Tennis Ratings. Below is a chart of the top 25 men and women sorted by UTR and ITA rankings.

Here are some men’s ranking notables:

• There are 6 men in both the ITA and UTR top 10
• Andrew Harris at No. 2 in the UTR chart while unranked by the ITA; he is of course unranked by the ITA because he hasn’t played a collegiate match since last year’s NCAA tournament. 
• Kentucky freshman Ryotaro Matsamura is No. 9 in the UTR rankings while No. 108 in the ITA; Matsamura just joined the team in January and has been playing at No. 2 in the lineup so that’s why he’s further down than he probably would be had he played the fall.
• UCLA’s Mackenzie McDonald is the UTR No. 1 and ITA No. 9 while Tulane’s Dominik Koepfer is the ITA No. 1 and UTR No. 7.
• Virginia’s Henrik Wiersholm is the UTR No. 18 while unranked in the ITA. Henrik didn’t play the fullest schedule in the fall and he dropped his only match to a ranked opponent (VT’s Monteiro). He hasn’t played a ranked opponent in dual-match play which isn’t too surprising since he is down at No. 6 in the singles lineup. 
• Virginia’s Alexander Ritschard is the UTR No. 21 while ranked No. 80 by the ITA; Ritschard went undefeated in the fall but hasn’t played since due to a shoulder injury

Here are some women’s ranking notables:

• There are 8 women in both the ITA and UTR top 10
• Virginia’s Danielle Collins is the UTR No. 1 and ITA No. 4 while Hayley Carter is the ITA No. 1 and UTR No. 2.
• The largest variance between UTR and ITA is Florida’s Josie Kuhlman who is No. 25 in the UTR rankings and No. 108 in the ITA. Kuhlman is 3-7 against ranked competition so that’s why she’s lower in the ITA though only one of the seven losses wasn’t competitive hence the higher UTR. 

In case you missed it, Universal Tennis released its Top 10 Americans in college tennis which of course is based on its Universal Tennis Ratings. I wrote the bios for three men and three women so if you hadn’t seen it give it a read. There’ll be other UTR Top 10s coming out in the coming weeks so keep an eye out for those – I’m guessing that Canada may be next.

Eric Butorac has been writing for UTR’s Blog and all his pieces have been very good reads. The last one was about his experience in transferring from Ball State to Gustavus Adolphus and also gives everyone some insight on why guys/gals transfer from one school to another.

Last weekend there were a number of future, current, and former collegians that were participating in the Davis Cup for their respective countries. I made a list of the players in one of my posts last week and Dominic Tinodi at the Smarthlete did a nice job recapping several of the Davis Cup ties.

The ITA released its attendance race figures for the month of February with Virginia holding down the the top spot, 753 vs. Wake Forest on a Saturday, and two of the five after hosting the National Team Indoors. TCU had the second biggest crowd for its Saturday match against Cal Poly while Illinois was third with 712 for a Saturday match against TCU. Tulsa’s Saturday home contest against in-state rival Oklahoma was fifth with 650 fans while Michigan’s Friday night home match against in-state rival Michigan State was sixth with 649 fans. It’s great to see that 526 fans showed up on Martin Luther King Day to see Middle Tennessee State’s new facility for its match against Nashville neighbor Vanderbilt. Also a great job by Air Force in drawing 500 fans for its Saturday afternoon match against Wichita State. You’ll notice I underlined the day of the week – if you want the fans to show up the matches have to be scheduled at convenient times.

Just 1 old guy made an interesting comment last week (above) about Miami streaming matches on ESPN3/WatchESPN so I reached out to Miami’s SID to find out how they are able to do it. Below is a quote from Miami’s Associate AD for Communications, Jason Layton.

“Broadcasting on ESPN3 has been new to Miami in the last year.  Last spring we began construction on a control room in our athletic department.  Starting in more of a temporary fashion with 12 baseball games on ESPN3 last spring and the control room was completed over the summer.   During the summer we added a full time production department that handles all of the broadcasts.  Last fall we broadcasted all of our soccer and volleyball matches.  We had 15 women’s basketball and 5 men’s basketball games in the winter and are now into our spring schedule with 35 baseball, 7 men’s tennis and 7 women’s tennis matches in addition to 2 track meets.  Our next two tennis matches are this Sunday (men’s vs FSU and women’s vs Notre Dame).

For those that weren’t aware I spent last weekend in Des Moines, Iowa, watching Drake host Iowa, Michigan State, and Cornell on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Several were probably wondering what I was doing there so I thought I’d let everyone know how that trip came about.

I met Drake head coach Davidson Kozlowski last April at the Missouri Valley Conference Championships which happened to be held here in St. Louis. I decided to cover the championship match between Drake and Wichita State for my site, which was only a few months old at the time, and Davidson appreciated the coverage so we kept in touch (if you ever clicked on the picture on my twitter profile you’ll notice that’s Davidson and I holding the MVC Trophy).

Davidson liked my coverage of the the Illinois/Virginia match from a few weeks ago and thought it’d be great if I could come up to Des Moines and give Drake some more exposure and cover a few of its matches in the same manner. He got in touch with me early last week and invited me up to Des Moines with several potential dates and he let me know he’d make it worth my while. It just so happened that last weekend worked well for me so I was able to make the 330 mile drive up on Friday for the weekend matches.

If there are any college coaches reading this I wanted to let you know that I’m available, so if you have a match or two you’d like me to cover shoot me an email (bobbyk@collegetennistoday.com) and we’ll see what we can work out. Ideally to get the most bang for your buck a Friday/Sunday or Saturday/Sunday set of matches would probably work best. I’m also available the weekend of April 22-24 if there’s a conference that would like extra exposure for its tournament. I’m in discussions right now with a conference for the following weekend (April 29-May 1) so that weekend appears to be off the table.

I also started up a Facebook page a few weeks ago and am currently at 70 likes so let’s see if I can get up to 100 by the weekend. If you’re a FB user click that like button for me – thanks!!