Matches of the Week - Week #7
Welcome back to some regularly scheduled programming! Last week, I previewed the ITA Men’s Kickoff Weekend for Cracked Racquets. You can see how poorly some of my takes aged there. Now that Indoors has wrapped for both the men and women, we’re officially into regular season action across the country and I couldn’t be more excited for these two matches – one of which I’ll catch in person!
Tweet me @JTweetsTennis with how you think these matches will pan out and what other matches you’re watching closely this weekend!
Time: Saturday, February 27th at 1pm ET
Harvard surprised everyone at the ITA Kickoff Weekend by knocking off Pepperdine in the first round. Harvard made the trek to USC’s region after getting walloped by Virginia and was facing off against a Pepperdine team who was coming off of a respectable 5-2 loss to Stanford and then an upset over Arizona. Harvard, now 7-2, kickstarted their spring campaign with a 4-3 win over Pepperdine. They’d go on to lose to USC the following day but have since earned wins over Michigan, Princeton, and Columbia – all top 40 teams.
Is Northwestern this season’s Texas? Northwestern is a quiet 10-2 on the season, four of those wins coming in a 4-3 fashion, a staple of Texas’s success last season. The Wildcats lost to Memphis and UNC but will enter this match against Harvard on a 6 match win streak.
Also, if anyone from Northwestern or Harvard is reading this, can you please update your stats page? Northwestern only has one match through 1/20/22 and Harvard hasn’t updated since March 2020. It made writing about these teams much harder than need be.
3 key questions
1. Is Brian Shi one of the best #3s in the country and is he on the portal?
Brian Shi has had a remarkable start to his senior season; he’s 6-0 in singles play and the highest-ranked player on the Harvard roster. He clinched Harvard’s upset over Pepperdine by beating #32 Andrew Rogers, he was the lone win against Virginia (def. Bar Botzer) and also took down #98 Jacob Bickersteth in their win over Michigan. Speaking of transfer Bar Botzer, it feels like Brian Shi is a prime candidate for the transfer portal. He’ll have two years of eligibility after this year (Covid year and no Ivy season in 2021) that can't be used at Harvard (Ivy rules). Similar to some of his Ivy league peers (Princeton's top 2 are headed to UNC) or Botzer, Shi could use those years at a NCAA title contender.
2. Who has the stronger bottom of the lineup?
Both team’s match calculus this season has been pretty similar: doubles, strength at the top of the lineup, and find one win more if they need to. Harvard has relied heavily on their top 3 of Von Der Schulenberg, Walker, and Shi, all of whom have come up clutch in big matches this season. The Crimson’s bottom of the lineup hasn’t been as reliable but it still might be stronger than Northwestern’s who has also relied on doubles and the top singles positions. Looking at their shared opponent of Princeton, both teams took doubles and the top 2 singles positions. The difference was that Princeton swept Northwestern at #4-6 while Harvard played them even.
3. Will the streaming of Harvard matches improve?
Great news: Harvard matches are streamed on ESPN+! Bad news: They appear to only show court 1. That was the case when Harvard took on Michigan in Cambridge. I’m hoping we get access to all 6 courts this weekend; it was a bummer not be able to watch Harvard’s win over Michigan which came down to third sets at #2 and #3…both just out of sight of the camera. Here’s to better coverage of the highest-ranked battle this weekend!
Projected Lineups
Players in bold are projected to win by UTR.
Prediction
Time: Friday, February 25th at 12pm ET
This is a matchup of the two most recent NCAA champions: Stanford ‘19 and Texas ‘21. That fact alone makes this match intriguing but there’s so many other storylines behind this match. Stanford, having only played 5 matches this season, enters the weekend ranked #64 - one of, if not the, lowest ranking in program history. This is an absolute must-win match for this untested Stanford squad if they want to salvage their ranking in May.
Texas, like Stanford, is a young team despite the pedigree. All of their players are freshmen or sophomores. The Longhorns have lost two of their last three matches which, to most, wouldn’t be a lot but when you compare to last year’s team who only lost 1 match…this qualifies as a losing streak.
I’m really looking forward to seeing this match in person (but it shouldn't be at noon on a workday...come on)!
Texas has lost three of their last four doubles points. That’s as many doubles points as they lost in their 32 matches last season. Winning doubles is critical given how deep all of these teams are and Texas needs to find answers so they’re not finding themselves in a 0-1 hole going into singles too often. Despite the lackluster performance at Indoors, Coach Joffe rolled with the same teams in their match against NC State: Collins/Zeynalova, Stearns/Chavatipon, and Ovrootsky/Zamarripa. Continuity didn’t pay off for them; they lost 6-1 at both #2 and #3 doubles. I’ll be curious to see if Coach Joffe continues with these same pairings or tries to find better combinations with the Big 12 season around the corner. The Longhorns will get a good doubles test in Stanford who, while still untested, has several ranked doubles teams based on success in the fall.
2. Who wins at the bottom of the lineup?
We’re all familiar with the 6 names we’ll see at the top of the lineup. For Texas, it’s all sophomores who played a major factor in last season’s title run: Peyton Stearns, Kylie Collins, and Charlotte Chavatipon. For Stanford, it’s freshmen Connie Ma and Alexandra Yepifanova joined by junior Angelica Blake. While we haven't seen Ma or Yepifanova in too many dual matches, they announced their arrival to college tennis with impressive fall performances, both cementing themselves into the top 30 of the ITA singles rankings.
I think this match will be decided by the bottom of the lineup and we still don’t know much about either team’s strength there. Texas has two freshmen, Sabina Zeynalova and Vivian Ovrootsky, at #4 and #5, and the Longhorns anchor their lineup with sophomore Malika Rapolu at #6. Zeynalova was 1-0-2 at Indoors while Ovrootsky was 1-1-1; it remains to be seen if they can live up to Chavatipon and Collins at those same positions last year.
For Stanford, they’re also pretty green at the bottom of the lineup. We’ll likely see sophomore India Houhgton at #4 who only played three matches last year and freshman Valencia Xu at #5. Like Texas, there's a little more experience for the Cardinal at #6 in senior Sara Choy.
Depth won Texas their championship last year and it’s been a calling card for Stanford in most of their title runs. We’ll find out on Friday who has more answers there.
3. Can Collins and Chavatipon turn things around?
Charlotte Chavatipon and Kylie Collins went a combined 42-4 last season in singles, primarily at the #4 and #5 positions respectively. They’re currently 8-6. Granted, both are playing higher in the lineup this season (Collins at #2, Chavatipon at #3) but the results are underwhelming and quite surprising. Pre-season it would’ve been hard to choose a better top three on paper than Texas and the only question was how well did the new additions slot into the bottom of the lineup. Texas can’t repeat as national champions if they’re not reliably getting points in singles and doubles from these two. There’s a lingering feeling that, eventually, both will start to play better. Let’s see if that comes to fruition this weekend.
UTR predicts Texas will take #1-#5. I can see one lineup switch happening for both teams. For Texas, we could see Chavatipon move down to #4. She was moved down for the final match of Indoors and got a win at #4 against Cal. I think that would actually make sense for Texas; they're probably favored against whoever Stanford plays at #4 so I like their chances to get two points if Zeynalova plays #3 and Chavatipon at #4.
For Stanford, this is the same lineup we’ve seen the last few matches. Ana Geller was in at #4 for the ITA Kickoff Weekend but was pulled after going 0-2. India Houghton has played at #4 since, which feels more like a placeholder to keep Xu and Choy at #5 and #6, both of whom fit the bottom of the lineup archetype when it comes to play style.
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