I looked at the men’s bracket last night now I’ll take a look at the women’s bracket. Florida, which has been No. 1 all season, was named as the No. 1 seed with North Carolina grabbing the No. 2 despite finishing No. 4 in the final rankings which will be published on Thursday. If the committee would have gone solely off ranking then Ohio State would have been No. 2, Vanderbilt No. 3, and North Carolina No. 4. The other change came at No. 6 with Texas Tech jumping Stanford despite Stanford having almost a 3 point lead in the ITA rankings. It’s also interesting to note that all five of these changes revolved around Power 5 Conference Champions.
Usually teams are moved if there are head-to-head results between them but we don’t see teams moved too often when there isn’t a direct line H2H. I reached out to Marie Scovron, NCAA’s Assistant Director of Championships and Alliances, and she told me that while ITA ranking is used they also looked at other criteria such as strength of schedule, record against common opponents, and wins over NCAA teams.
After reviewing that criteria I found that when looking at North Carolina and Vanderbilt the Tar Heels had one more win over teams that qualified for the NCAA Tournament (17 to 16). When looking at common opponents with different outcomes I saw that North Carolina beat Texas Tech, Ohio State, and Michigan while Vanderbilt lost to all three. Vanderbilt did defeat Florida twice while North Carolina lost to Florida. The strength of schedule component is determined by ITA ranking so Vanderbilt should have won that category. When looking at these three categories it looks like North Carolina wins 2 to 1. So after North Carolina jumped Vanderbilt they then jumped Ohio State due to the 4-3 win at the National Team Indoors.
When looking at Stanford and Texas Tech I notice that Texas Tech has four more wins over NCAA tournament teams (15 to 11) and when looking at common opponents Texas Tech defeated Pepperdine while Stanford lost to Pepperdine. Stanford wins the strength of schedule due to the higher ITA ranking but Texas Tech wins 2 categories to 1.
The final spot in the field went to Tulsa at No. 40 with the Golden Hurricane having to sweat it out after getting upset by South Florida in the final of the AAC Tournament. Alabama would have been the first team out however it wasn’t eligible for selection due to its sub .500 record of 8-16 so that meant that Florida International was the first out. The Panthers went 21-2 on the season however that second loss came to Rice in the finals of the Conference USA Tournament and it just didn’t have enough other quality wins to move up in the rankings.
When the committee placed the No. 2, No. 3, and No. 4 seeds in each regional they tried to slot them within 400 miles of home (if possible) while also avoiding a host with the same conference affiliation.
If each regional winner were to advance to Athens the the final 16 pairings would be:
Regional with three conference champions: Florida, Baylor, Oklahoma State, Pepperdine, Texas Tech, Stanford, Michigan, Duke, and North Carolina.
There will be three first round rematches (Arkansas/Wichita State, UCLA/UCSB, South Carolina/North Florida) with Arkansas, UCLA, and South Carolina winning those regular season meetings 4-0.
There are two first round matches that will take place on both the men’s and women’s side with Stanford and Idaho playing in Palo Alto and Oklahoma State and UMKC playing in Stillwater.
Singles Lineup Notes
- #1 Florida has Anna Danilina at No. 4 and Brooke Austin at No. 5 – was reversed in the conference tournament though Danilina played higher throughout the season
- #6 Texas Tech has Sabrina Federici at No. 4 and Sarah Dvorak at No. 5 which is what they had in the conference tournament after Dvorak played 4 for most of the year and Federici played 5.
- #9 Oklahoma State has Katie Stresnakova at No. 5 and Lena Ruppert at No. 6 – was reversed in the conference tournament.
- #10 Michigan has Alex Najarian at No. 3 and Chiara Lommer at No. 4 – was reversed in the conference tournament
- #14 South Carolina has a completely different lineup from what they put out during the SEC Tournament. In the SECs it was Horvit, Martins, Dailey, Chinallato, Berg, and Folland. For the NCAAs it’ll be Martins, Horvit, Cline Dailey, Chinellato, Berg, with Folland at 7.
- #16 Baylor has Theresa Van Zyl at No. 4 and Angelina Shakhraichuk at No. 5 – was reversed in the conference tournament though Van Zyl played higher throughout the season
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Where did you find the information on the team's lineups (who's playing at #4 or #5 spots for Florida, etc.)? Do they have to set the order of their lineups, and play with that order throughout the NCAA tourney?
The lineups were posted briefly yesterday at this link (http://www.ncaa.org/championships/division-i-mens-and-womens-tennis) for the coaches to review and then will come back down later today until all the challenges have been settled. They actually came down last night but just came back up a little while ago. Challenges are due by 5 p.m today and teams have until Sunday evening to respond.
The lineups that get posted are for the first and second round but can be altered for teams that advance to the Round of 16 – once they are set for the Round of 16 they stay the same through the final.
That is smart, nothing worse then the stacking that used to happen in college gsme, and of course still does in usta league play
Since men's and women's combined to a single location no school has swept both championships. Ucla and Usc came closest with a championship in one and a semifinal loss in the other. The best chance for that to avail itself this comes from Ohio State. The only other team with chance is UNC. No other team has even a remote possibility of a dual championship.