Tagged with: Brian Boland, USTA College Tennis Poll

Late Tuesday afternoon news started to circulate that University of Virginia men’s head coach Brian Boland was departing to take over as the new USTA Player Development Head of Men’s Tennis and on Wednesday morning it was officially confirmed. Boland will finish out the current season at Virginia and will then relocate to Orlando where he’ll serve under USTA Player Development General Manager Martin Blackman. Boland took over as head coach at Virginia in 2001 and since then his teams have won over 400 matches while winning three of the last four NCAA Championships and completely rewriting the record books at both Virginia and in the ACC. The USTA’s release also includes a Q&A while Virginia’s release has several great quotes with a few of them below. I also embedded Boland’s press conference from earlier today where he talked in more detail about his decision to head south. 

 

“For the past sixteen years, my family and I have considered it a privilege and a blessing to call Charlottesville our home and the University of Virginia men’s tennis program our life,” Boland said. “From day one, we believed in the University and the University believed in us. I will forever be indebted to our athletics director, Craig Littlepage, for taking a chance and granting me the opportunity to lead this program in 2001 at the age of 29. I am also appreciative of every administrator, assistant coach, student-athlete, staff member, donor and fan whose unwavering support and commitment allowed our program to be successful. For this, my family and I will always be truly grateful.

“After much consideration and many conversations over a long period of time with my wife Becky, I have decided to resign at the end of this season and accept the role of head of men’s tennis for USTA Player Development at the newly constructed USTA National Campus in Orlando, Florida. I consider this next step in my career to be the absolute highest honor and the ultimate responsibility that can be bestowed upon any tennis coach in the United States. I plan on doing everything in my power, together with the entire USTA and the private sector, to make sure American men’s tennis regains its position as the global leader on the ATP Tour, in the Davis Cup and in the Olympics. Lastly, with the recent move of my parents to Florida, where several other of our family members currently reside, this decision gradually developed into the right one for not only my career, but most importantly for my family as well.

 

 

The USTA also had its usual Wednesday release of the new Top 25 with both Virginia and Florida remaining in the top spots. There was no change in men’s top 11 and really just minimal movement throughout the top 25. TCU made the biggest jump coming up four spots from No. 20 to No. 16 while South Carolina moved up three spots from No. 25 to No. 22. Mississippi State and Kentucky each dropped three spots to No. 19 and No. 20 respectively.

The women’s top three stayed the same however Stanford jumped Georgia for No. 4 which was kind of surprising since Stanford only played and beat Hawaii while Georgia beat a pair of top 25 teams in Mississippi State and Ole Miss – not sure what my fellow voters were thinking with that one. The only other change in the top 10 was Texas Tech jumping Cal for No. 7 with the Red Raiders coming off wins over Baylor and Texas. South Carolina made the biggest jump coming up three spots from No. 21 to No. 18 after defeating both Arkansas and Missouri on the road. Texas A&M fell the most with the Aggies dropping down five spots from No. 19 to a tie for No. 24 after losing to Baylor and LSU. 

No teams dropped out of either poll though Tulane did enter on the men’s side in a tie for No. 25 with Illinois. I’m surprised the Oregon men didn’t crack the top 25 especially since they just beat Tulane two weeks ago. I had Oregon at No. 23 and Tulane at No. 25 in my ballot with Illinois dropping out. 

Voter ballots available to the public: Bobby, Dallas Oliver (TRN), Bruce Waschuk (UTR Men/Women)

USTA Poll Information: there are eight college tennis “experts” on the voting panel, including yours truly, and each of us ranked 25 teams from numbers 1 to 25, with the first-place team receiving 25 points and the last-place team receiving one. When voting we were to consider strength of schedule, Top 25 wins/losses, road wins/losses and personnel adjustments for each program while also basing our vote on performance, not reputation or preseason speculation. For control, the highest and lowest outlying ranking for each team on the ballot was removed. Therefore, the maximum number of points a team can receive is 150. First-place votes were not tallied. 

Voting Panel: Casey Angle (former ITA championships director), Virgil Christian (USTA College Tennis), Granger Huntress (Texas College Tennis), Bobby Knight (College Tennis Today), Dallas Oliver (Tennis Recruiting Network), Mike Patrick (former University of Tennessee women’s coach), Lisa Stone (Parenting Aces) and Bruce Waschuk (Universal Tennis Rating).