And before you all say, “it’s ‘in Tennessee’, not ‘on’”, I know.
It was brought to my attention that during the pick ‘em I completed last night, I had Texas beating Tennessee, then Georgia beating Tennessee in the next round. The reason was I kept flip-flopping. My heart said Texas, but by head was screaming Tennessee.
There’s no denying I want Texas to win (and yes, a Texan, Max Stevens is on the Tennessee roster), but I think the final nugget that sent me over the top was trying to figure out why Trinity was left out of the DIII championships. WTF?
Yes, in all the analysis of Trinity, it became apparent that they played a weaker DIII schedule than the teams they were being compared with. (There overall schedule was probably tougher since they played several DII schools that will be in the tournament). In their BIG matches, Trinity collected very few quality wins.
Texas reminds me of Trinity. Their schedule is pretty good, but if you look deeper, who have they beat? They have wins over A&M (twice, of course they lost the conference match for the Lone Star Cup), Texas Tech, Oklahoma State, Rice, Tulsa and Florida State. They have lost all of their matches against better competition: Virginia, Baylor (twice), USC and Stanford.
This was supposed to be a Texas team that only lost one player and gained a new body or two and would make a run. They just haven’t been able to get it all together at one time and play like the team everyone expected. Against Baylor last week, they wake a terrific run after losing the doubles point. Against UVa, they jump out to the lead, but can’t hold on.
Damico has been an anomoly. The guy who couldn’t close the deal all of last year and most of this spring seems to be one of the few guys who found his form as the season wore on. Kutrovsky has been playing great, Corrie is good, but hasn’t been able to jump into that great category since the UVa match. Sajous. Not sure what to say here. Real bad early this spring to serviceable now. Zavala has been decent, but got crushed in a few big matches and need a confidence boost. He’s got the game to be solid at 5-6. Varela is injured and I am not sure if he will even play singles this week. That leaves Jonah Kane-West. Kanye was en fuego during the Big 12.
I will reserve all judgement on this Texas team until the end of the tournament and will support them wholeheartedly. They have the talent to push anyone on a good day — even Ohio State, who everyone seems to think is thing to win this thing (except me and the diluted UVa fans). For the meantime, I will hold off on writing that article, “Which University of Texas team underperformed the most this season, men or women?”
TWITTER ALERT
It appears that Twitter has decided to do a major update tomorrow (Friday) and the window is from 2p-3p Pacific. WOW! I guess that will slightly interrupt some of the afternoon tweets on matches. Per NCAA rules, all host teams must play the second match of the day. I for one am planning on being at the UT-Sacred Heart match that starts at 2p Central. That gives the Horns two hours to lock it up before I enter the black hole of tweets. (They are also planning an outage on Monday-http://status.twitter.com/post/104738920/planned-maintenance-tomorrow-monday)
QUICK THOUGHTS ON RECRUITING
I have heard some strange stories about recruiting lately. It seems that although the NCAA has changed a few rules here and there, bitterness and a dark side are still hanging over the sport. The whole numbers game seems a bit much when you are working with just 4.5 scholarships, as the men do.
The math just doesn’t seem to add up for some teams.
After the season is over, I am going to begin a series of posts on what I think can be done to improve the sport.
I MAY BE AN IDIOT
A friend of mine called to explain why I am an idiot for picking Wake Forest as my only non-favorite to advance to the Sweet 16. Like I said, I really don’t have much of a reason. Oh well. I look back and kind of think the same thing, but you never know.
