by Bobby Knight | Jan 21, 2016 | Blog
Last year felt like a season of destiny for Baylor with the Bears hosting the NCAA Championships for the first time in school history but unfortunately it wasn’t to be as their season came to an end in the NCAA semifinals against a team they had already beaten twice earlier in the season.Baylor head coach Matt Knoll is back for his 20th season but this one may be a little challenging after losing Mate Zsiga, Diego Galeano, and Tony Lupieri with the trio accounting for 37% of Baylor’s dual-match wins last season. Knoll brought in two new recruits in the fall, Tommy Podvinski and Jimmy Bendeck, and one in January, Tomas Charlos, to help fill the void...
by Bobby Knight | Jan 19, 2016 | Blog
When you talk about the elite programs in college tennis Oklahoma is one of the first names that comes to mind and that’s all thanks to the recruiting and player development that’s been done by head coach John Roddick and his staff over the last 6 years. Roddick was hired on June 19, 2009 and since then OU has been on an upward trajectory winning 19, 16, 19, 21, 28, and 29 matches in each of the last 6 seasons.After years of being an also-ran in the Big 12 behind the likes of Baylor, Texas, and Texas A&M, the Oklahoma Sooners are now the ones being chased after winning the conference tournament 3 of the last 4 years. In the same 4-year period...
by Bobby Knight | Jan 14, 2016 | Blog
When you think of ideal places to play college tennis the University of California in Berkeley has to be pretty high up on the list due to its strong academics, scenic views, and year-round mild climate. Cal has a recently renovated tennis facility, a tenured head coach, and is in one of the most fertile states for tennis but success in terms of conference and national titles has eluded them for years. The Bears have played second, third, and fourth fiddle to its in-state Pac-12 neighbors Stanford, USC, and UCLA for quite some time with Cal’s last conference title coming all the way back in 1953 when the conference was known as the Pacific Coast...
by Bobby Knight | Jan 12, 2016 | Blog
When you’re in the same conference as Virginia you know it’s going to be an uphill battle to win a conference championship but Wake Forest has come as close to beating the 9-time defending champs as just about anyone else in the last few years. Wake has played for the conference championship in 2 of the last 3 seasons and one of the main reasons is because of its head coach Tony Bresky. The 1998 Western Illinois graduate was part of Brian Boland’s staff during the years when the program went from an also-ran to a perennial powerhouse. Bresky learned how to recruit and put a team together and when he left Virginia after the 2010 season to take...
by Bobby Knight | Jan 9, 2016 | Blog
Despite its early exit in Waco I’d still consider last season a success for Illinois because after years of playing second fiddle to Ohio State the Illini beat the Buckeyes not once, not twice, but three times. Illinois won its second Big Ten Tournament Championship in the last four years and won its first regular season Big Ten Championship since 2005 though they did have to share it with Ohio State and Minnesota. The first and third wins over Ohio State came in tournament play but the second win snapped the Buckeyes 97-match Big Ten regular season winning streak which dated back to 2005.Brad Dancer enters his 11th season as head coach of the Illini and...
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