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...
by Bobby Knight | May 28, 2015 | Blog
Well its time to put the 2014-15 season in the rear-view mirror and start looking ahead to next year. There are 4 teams (TCU/USC/Texas/Duke) in the final top 10 that will have to replace 4 starters so those teams could face an uphill climb next year to return to the top 10.The new recruits section is from tennisrecruiting.net so its possible some of those guys may not end up where they are currently showing. Several teams will probably have some guys coming in from outside the U.S. so we probably won’t know any names until the schools put out a release or we see the name on the roster in August/January.I’m sure we’ll also see some guys...
by Bobby Knight | May 14, 2015 | Blog
It was a wild and crazy Thursday with it taking 6+ hours to complete the opening matches due to a series of rain/lightning delays. Both the Oklahoma/UCLA and Georgia/Texas matches started outdoors and were finished indoors due to 3 rain delays and lastly a lightning delay.Before I go through the matches I wanted to thank you guys on twitter for Periscoping some of the key points in the indoor matches where there wasn’t streaming video available. Big shout out to Jeff McMillan and Drew Mastin who both did a great job letting me and many others follow the end of the Oklahoma/UCLA and Georgia/Texas matches. Jeff also had footage of many of the key...
by Bobby Knight | May 12, 2015 | Blog
[4] Illinois (27-4) vs. [13] North Carolina (23-10) – Thursday 1pm – Illinois is coming off a 4-0 win over Green Bay and a 4-2 squeaker over #33 Drake while North Carolina blanked William & Mary and then won fairly comfortably over #20 Mississippi State 4-1. North Carolina welcomed Esben Hess-Olesen back to the singles lineup at #6 after he missed all but a handful of matches with injury troubles. Illinois won the regular season meeting 4-3 in a match that North Carolina played without its #2 Ronnie Schneider though Hess-Olesen was in at #3 so the bottom half of the lineup stayed the same. The only singles rematches will come at...
by Bobby Knight | May 10, 2015 | Blog
After a wild and crazy first round of the NCAA Tournament, we had a more tame second round with 9 of the 16 matches being shutouts. 14 of the top 16 seeds advanced with Columbia and South Florida pulling off the mild upsets. #17 Columbia punched its second ever ticket to the Round of 16 with a 4-1 win over #14 Ole Miss. Columbia took the doubles point with wins at 2 and 3 but Ole Miss would take four opening sets in singles. Ole Miss’s Nik Scholtz would even the match at 1-1 with a straight set win over Winston Lin at #1 but Columbia’s Ashok Narayana and Shawn Hadavi would close out their respective matches in straight sets at 3 and 5 to put...
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