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USTA Rankings, Conference Tournament, Coaching News, D2 NCAA Selections, NAIA Rankings

by | Apr 27, 2017 | Blog

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The latest USTA Top 25 is out with both the Wake Forest men and Florida women remaining at No. 1. The men’s top five stayed the same with UCLA surging up to No. 6 after defeating USC last week while USC actually comes up one spot to No. 7 after the loss. Cal moved up four spots to No. 8 after knocking off Stanford, idle Texas A&M moved up two spots to No. 9, while Oklahoma State fell four spots to No. 10 after Oklahoma whipped them. South Florida was the only newcomer in the top 25 while Tulane dropped out after UCF blanked in the AAC Tourney. 

The women’s top three remained the same with Vanderbilt and Stanford swapping spots for No. 4. I personally thought Vanderbilt should have been No. 1 after defeating Florida twice in the last week en route to winning by far the deepest conference in the country.

Pepperdine’s win over USC helped boost the Waves ranking up two spots to No. 6, Oklahoma State came up two spots to No. 7 after roughing up West Virginia and Iowa State, Georgia fell two spots to No. 8 after losing to Auburn, Texas Tech came up one spot to No. 9, and Georgia Tech fell three spots to No. 10 after falling to Duke. Auburn made the biggest jump by rising six spots to No. 16 after beating Georgia while Texas A&M dropped the most at four spots after losing to LSU. Both USC and LSU entered the top 25 while Florida International and TCU departed. 

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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).

USTA MEN’S TOP 25   USTA WOMEN’S TOP 25
Rank School Votes Prv Chg Rank School Votes Prv Chg
1 Wake Forest 149 1 0 1 Florida 144 1 0
2 Virginia 145 2 0 2 Ohio State 143 2 0
3 Ohio State 138 3 0 3 North Carolina 138 3 0
4 North Carolina 130 4 0 4 Vanderbilt 137 5 1
5 TCU 128 5 0 5 Stanford 126 4 -1
6 UCLA 119 10 4 6 Pepperdine 118 8 2
7 USC 101 8 1 7 Oklahoma State 110 9 2
8 California 99 12 4 8 Georgia 103 6 -2
9 Texas A&M 98 11 2 9 Texas Tech 100 10 1
10 Oklahoma State 96 6 -4 10 Georgia Tech 95 7 -3
11 Baylor 89 7 -4 11 California 89 11 0
12 Texas 88 9 -3 12 Michigan 87 12 0
13 Georgia 85 13 0 13 Duke 83 14 1
14 Oklahoma 81 16 2 14 Baylor 74 13 -1
15 Florida 61 15 0 15 South Carolina 60 15 0
16 Michigan 54 17 1 16 Auburn 53 22 6
17 Stanford 53 14 -3 17 Arizona State 52 17 0
18 South Carolina 40 18 0 18 UCLA 44 16 -2
19 Oregon 35 21 2 19 Texas 41 20 1
20 Columbia 30 19 -1 T20 Arkansas 32 19 -1
21 Mississippi State 28 20 -1 T20 Mississippi State 32 21 1
22 Georgia Tech 24 22 0 22 Texas A&M 31 18 -4
23 South Florida 22 NR – 23 USC 20 NR –
24 Northwestern 10 23 -1 24 Kentucky 17 23 -1
25 Cornell 9 24 -1 25 LSU 9 NR –
Receiving Votes: Illinois (6), Kentucky (1), Tulane (1), UCF (1) Dropped Out: Tulane
Receiving Votes: Oregon (5), TCU (4), FIU (1), Rice (1); Dropped Out: FIU, TCU

 

 

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Conference tournament action fired back up today with the opening rounds played in the ACC, SEC, Pac-12, and Atlantic 10. The higher seed won all the women’s matches except in the ACC where the bottom two seeds, #13 Virginia Tech and #14 Louisville, defeated #12 Boston College and #11 Syracuse. 

On the men’s side there weren’t as many matches with #12 Vanderbilt defeating #13 Alabama in the SEC’s only match while #5 Stanford defeated #8 Arizona and #6 Utah defeated #7 Washington in the Pac-12.  All conference tournament results are available on my conference tournament central pages. 

 
 
As the season comes to a close the coaching carousel opens up for business. There are already huge openings at USC (W) and Virginia (M) and last Friday a strong mid-major came open when Terri Sisk announced that she was not returning for a tenth season at Tulane. Sisk went 120-75 in those nine seasons while leading the program to six winning seasons including a strong 22-7 season this year. Other current openings are at East Tennessee State (M), Incarnate Word (M), UMass (W), and Northern Arizona (W) – probably a few more that I’m missing too.
 

 
The USTA announced that the US Open National Playoff will no longer be held which marks the end to the tournament after seven years. The yearly event started off as a way to give the weekend player a chance, albeit a small chance, at earning a wild card into the US Open but as the note mentioned it turned into a chance for lower ranked pro players to run through a sectional. It’s still too bad that the event had to end.
 

 
The NCAA Division II Men’s and Women’s Tennis Committee released the list of the top teams in each region that will be advancing to the preliminary rounds of the 2017 NCAA Division II Men’s Tennis Championship. Here is the men’s list and the women’s list. There were several teams that made it with a .500 record and one, District of Columbia, made it with a 6-7 record however one of those losses was to Georgetown (D1) so DC had a .500 record against D2 or lower schools. One of the schools that made it with a .500 record was Georgia College (Southeast Region #7). Georgia College actually had a 10-11 record after finishing up its conference tournament on Saturday but scheduled a last-minute match against Morehouse on Sunday which it won 6-0 with just about every match finishing 6-0 or 6-1 with one 6-2. I’ve made my opinion known on the .500 rule but I’d like to think that after you finish your conference tournament you shouldn’t be able to schedule any more matches – by that point you either have the required record or you don’t. 
 

 
The NAIA released its latest rankings with the Georgia Gwinnett men and women holding down the top spots. The GGC men have been No. 1 in every poll dating back to May 5, 2014 and will be seeking their fourth consecutive national title this year. The rankings releases are available at these links – men & women.