The doubles point looked like it was Florida’s for the taking after the Gators #2 team of Elliott Orkin and Maxx Lipman cruised to a 6-1 win while its #1 tandem of Diego Hidalgo and Gordon Watson jumped out to a 4-2 lead. With Georgia’s #3 team of Wayne Montgomery and Paul Oosterbaan also winning 6-1 the pressure would go back on Georgia’s #1 team of Austin Smith and Ben Wagland and the undefeated tandem wouldn’t go away as they took 3 straight games to go up 5-4 and were serving for the match. There would then be 3 consecutive service breaks to send the match to a tiebreak. After falling behind 4-2 and 6-4, Georgia’s Austin Smith and Ben Wagland would fight off 2 match points and eventually win the last 3 points to take the tiebreak 9-7 in a match that took 57 minutes.
In singles play Georgia would jump out to a break lead on all 6 courts and would end up taking 5 1st sets with Elliott Orkin grabbing the lone 1st set for Florida at #4. Austin Smith would be 1st off the court with a 6-1, 6-4 win at #2 and then 15 minutes later Paul Oosterbaan would close out his match with a 6-4, 6-4 win at #6 which put Georgia up 3-0. Elliott Orkin would give Florida its only point with a 7-5, 6-2 win at #4 but a short while later Nathan Pasha would clinch the victory for Georgia with a 6-2, 3-6, 6-0 win at #3 singles. The 2 remaining matches were tied in the 3rd set at the time of the clinch.
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Auburn, AL: In the SEC opener for each school, Auburn was able to grab the doubles point and then pick up 4 1st sets to put South Carolina into a hole that they just couldn’t climb out of. Auburn’s Oliver Plaskett provided the clincher at #6 singles with a 6-4, 7-6 win over Thomas Mayronne. The remaining match at #2 was halted with Auburn’s Marko Krickovic up 5-3 in the 3rd so more than likely this would have finished 5-2 in Auburn’s favor had it been played out.
Auburn recap
South Carolina recap
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Ann Arbor, MI: The Dartmouth Big Green ran its record to 7-4 on the year with a 4-3 win on the road at Michigan. Michigan was coming off a win over Memphis but couldn’t duplicate the results against its Ivy League foe.
#50 Dartmouth 4, #52 Michigan 3
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FRIDAY PREVIEW:
The owners of 38 NCAA Division 1 Men’s Team National Championships will meet on Friday afternoon in Los Angeles as the #1 USC Trojans host the #37 Stanford Cardinal.
USC’s media guide shows they lead the all-time series 109-76 with the 1st match played in 1925 while Stanford’s shows USC leads it 63-59 with the 1st match coming in 1967. I’d have to go with USC’s as the more accurate source since I know Stanford was playing tennis long before 1967. Stanford has won 17 NCAA Championships with the last coming in 2000 while USC has won 21 NCAA Championships including 5 of the last 6.
USC has won 8 straight in the series with Stanford’s last win over SC coming back in 2011 at the National Indoors. This USC team is full of experience with the top 4 spots in the singles lineup occupied by seniors along with a junior and a sophomore at 5 and 6. Stanford on the other hand is starting 3 freshmen, a senior, and 2 juniors.
Let’s breakdown the individual match-ups and see if Stanford has any shot at getting close to 4 points against the #1 Trojans.
Stanford freshman #26 Tom Fawcett has turned some heads so far this year with his stellar play which includes 3 wins over top 60 opponents and he is currently the 3rd highest ranked freshman in the latest rankings behind only Duke’s #8 Nicolas Alvarez and Georgia’s #17 Wayne Montgomery. USC senior Yannick Hanfmann just seems to keep plugging along with 11 of his 13 wins over ranked opponents with 8 of those 11 over top 50 opponents. Both of these guys are undefeated in dual match play so somebody has to lose – I’ll take experience over youth.
Stanford’s David Wilczynski has done something you don’t see too often – he has played at every spot in the singles lineup after starting the year at 6 and has since played at 5, 4, 3, 2, and this past Tuesday against Hawaii he played at 1 so that’s 6 different positions in 7 matches. The reason for the upward slide has been strictly performance based as all his dual match wins have been blowouts with the lone loss coming in 3 sets to Cal’s Filip Bergevi. One item to note is that while the wins have been impressive only 1 has been over a ranked opponent (#123 Perez-Blanco). Wilczynski’s opponent will be #20 Roberto Quiroz who already has 7 wins over ranked opponents and 5 of those over top 50 opponents. Quiroz is just too seasoned for the Cardinal freshman and will take this one in 2.
Stanford’s John Morrissey spent the last 2 years playing atop the Cardinal singles lineup but has been pushed down to #3 after a slow start to the year in conjunction with the strong play of both Fawcett and Wilczyns
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