Special from
College Tennis Today
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What a wild and crazy week it was in Athens - with one match after another going down to the wire. But when the dust finally settled and the umbrellas were put away, Virginia had won its third straight NCAA National Championship.
Virginia may have entered the NCAA Tournament as the No. 2 seed, but in many people's eyes, including mine, they were the odds-on favorite to win the title. In my opinion, Virginia's side of the draw was definitely the tougher of the two with both
Ohio State and
TCU lurking as potential semifinal opponents. The other side of the draw had some good teams, but more of them fit into the darkhorse category where making the final was most likely going to be the ceiling.
The play on the court was the main storyline but the weather turned into a close second with the quarterfinal, semifinal, and final rounds each experiencing significant delays. Despite the weather issues there was only one men's match that was played in its entirety indoors, and that happened to be the finals.
Let's go back through the week that was and see how the champion was crowned.
Round of 16
The higher seeds got all they wanted and more during the Round of 16. Three lower seeds won their matches, while a fourth low seed was a third-set tiebreak away from making it four.
The Wake Forest side of the draw saw the top seeded Demon Deacons roll over No. 16 Stanford 4-0, which set up a quarterfinal match against No. 9 North Carolina. The Tar Heels had already defeated No. 8 California once during the regular season and in the late match on Thursday they made it twice with a 4-1 win.
The other two matches pitted a PAC-12 school versus a SEC school. Fifth-seed UCLA, which was playing without its top player Gage Brymer, overwhelmed No. 12 Texas A&M 4-1 in a match that was really one-sided. The tournament host Georgia, seeded No. 13, pulled off the biggest upset of the opening day when it knocked out the No. 4 seed USC 4-3. The Bulldogs, which lost to USC 4-0 early in the season, rallied from a 3-2 deficit with Wayne Montgomery and Jan Zielinski each pulling out wins in a third set.
