Rather than append this to last year's great tennis finish by our doubles team in the nationals (Final Four), I'll start a new one for this season.

This is pretty nice. I'm surprised that Nunez is ranked ahead of Biosca, but I guess that's what the numbers show:

ETSU players nationally-ranked preseason

Oh, by the way, the season starts later today (Sat.) at Wake, then at 'bama on Monday:

Season begins, as always, with tough road trips

Girls open the season next Sat. in Blacksburg.

Well......that didn't go so great. 'Course Wake *is* ranked #2 in the country, with the #1-, #2-, and #21-ranked individual players, and the #1-ranked doubles team. Heck, Petros Chrysochos (#1), is on the Cyprus Davis Cup team and has already won about $15,000 on the pro satellite tour. Skander Mansouri has been on the Tunisia Davis Cup team. Both of them have been ranked around #500 in the world at times in the past - and likely will be again after their college careers are over. Borna Gojo, at #4, is a 6'5" freshman Croat who's ranked about #725 in the world, and played in a pro tournament just last month.

We did win a set in doubles and Herrera did beat #21 Christian Seraphim in split sets, a very nice victory there. And Biosca did give Chrysochos a battle. Curiously(?), or suspiciously(?) the scores on the ETSU web site omit a 6-0, 6-0 shutout at #4 singles by Gojo over Miguel Este. And they have the #5 and #6 matches listed as #4 and #5. So if one were to add those up, it would give a final of only 5-1, when in fact it was 6-1. I use the word "suspicious", because the most lopsided loss with the bagels was the one omitted, and then that was 'compounded' by wrongly listing the last two matches. Will be interesting to see if they correct that. If one clicks on "Box Score" on the ETSU page, it does give the full scoring.

Also, Wake beat North Florida earlier in the day 5-2, one those 2 points for UNF being the doubles point.

Alabama tomorrow should be easier than these guys.

The doubles point coming down to a tie-breaker in Tuscaloosa.....
We don't tend to fare well in these situations.

Update before posting: And.....crapola.......we lose it, of course. Biosca was playing with the freshman, Este, at #2.

It's a battle. Albin lost his match, to make it 2-0, 'bama, but the others are very close. Gonzalez and Herrara won their first sets at #3 and #6, and Nunez won his second set, to split, and Biosca is trying to split at #1, but I just don't think we have the horses to win 4 of the remaining 5.

Gonzales won at 6. Este lost 4 and 5 at #4. So it's 3-1 'bama. #1 and #2 are split, and Herrara is fighting to hold on at 3. Tough battle; not over yet. 3rd sets not yet started on 1 and 2.

And.......we lose 4-2. Cancel, who's a freshman from France, beat Nunez 6-3 in the third, to wrap it up, after Herrera had closed out his match to make it 3-2. Biosca was up 3-1 in his match at 1, so, IF Diego could have pulled his out in the third, ETSU could well have won. But he didn't. And once again that dang doubles point bites us - tie-breaker in the 3rd doubles match.
Valiant effort.

'bama is ranked 41st; ETSU 59th(?), so that's about what one would expect. Like in basketball, if we should win the SoCon and go to the NCAA, these losses hurt, but not much, since it was away. But just like in hoops, you don't get many chances to make your mark OOC.

Now, 'bama has to gear up and play Samford in another hour or two. They'll be tired, no doubt.

Remember.......ETSU vs. SoCal in SoCal tomorrow at 4 Eastern - unfortunately at the same time as Chatt comes to Freedom Hall. For those of you not going to that game, you can watch the match on that internet thing. SoCal is ranked 8th.

Well.....that went about as expected - or maybe even slightly worse than expected. USC *has* won 5 national championships in the last decade or so, but I thought we would at least make them worry on a court or 2. We didn't win a set, although Biosca was up 4-3 in the second set when that match was suspended. And we didn't even come close to winning a doubles set.

We showed better against Wake, ranked 2nd, than against USC, ranked 8th. I've got a feeling those rankings might be skewed. We'll see as the season goes on.

I think now we play the Hokies tomorrow.

In tough action, ETSU wins the doubles point and has now won at #5 (not sure who). I think Biosca just lost second set on court 1 to split. So we're up 2-0, but it's FAR from over.

update: We lost at #4 (Este, I think, but not sure), so now it's 2-1.

3rd sets all around. Lost all momentum.....which wasn't all that much anyway...

Biosca loses in 3rd at #1; now 2-2.

Wow. Va. Tech came back to tie match up at 3-3, leaving it to court 3 (I think). And Sn. Robert Herrera wins it, 6-4, 4-6, 7-6 over Harper. The Hokie player fell down on match point, allowing Herrera to put it away. Tough, gritty victory.

Story:

ETSU wins over Hokies in CA

Looks like I had the scores wrong on Herrera's sets, but they didn't have live scoring available. Or perhaps the announcer gave the score wrong at the end. Hard to say. Did my best.

Good thing for once we got the doubles point.

Hokies' spin:

"Hokies "falter""

And maybe that's what it was. Let them think that, if they must.

Well, I don't like to see this, but the ETSU spinmeisters are at it in tennis. Read this (if you so desire):

4 Bucs ranked this week

Ok, that's good. But notice the wording: "Joining Herrera, David Biosca (Sant Fruitos de Bage, Spain) moved into the No. 88 slot in singles play."
But he moved *down* from 65th! I think that wording is intentionally misleading. Much more accurate would have been to say that he dropped down to No. 88.

And remember, I couldn't understand why Nunez was ranked ahead of him in the pre-season poll. Didn't make sense. Well, now he's dropped down to 96th (from 43rd). That's actually probably quite a bit more accurate, and as I speculated, he may have been over-ranked.

The good news is that Robert Herrera has climbed to 69th with his strong start (from not ranked).

Regardless.............to have 3 singles players on our team ranked in the top 100 *may* be a first. I don't remember it happening before, but it might have. We'll see how that plays out.

For the girls, Ioanna Markesini dropped from 95th to 105th - but you'd never know it was a drop by reading that article.

All that said, these rankings don't have *too* much meaning this early, but on the other hand, just like in hoops, after the conference season starts, opportunities to play higher opponents are few.

But to write purposely misleading copy for publication loses credibility for the team and the university. I thought they had been doing better the last few years; sorry to see this type of spin creep in. It's just not necessary. It's entirely possible to write positive stories without whitewashing things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnKdOJ9THgw

Cool player spotlight on David Biosca. Seems like one good dude.

Ladies and gentlemens..........I know you guys like your hoops, and the excitement surrounding a tough game. Well let me tell you that this afternoon, your tennis Bucs and the Panthers of Ga. St. tangled up in a doozy at the ETSU courts. There was tension, intrigue, fire, anger, controversy, and down-to-the-wire intense action.

Ga. St. won, after being down 3-0, and one must give them credit for a remarkable comeback and exceptionally strong resilience. I won't take the cyberspace and effort to give a detailed account of the whole match, but will highlight a few items. When it was 3-0, the Panther on court 4 had a close call go his way. The ETSU player asked (politely) for a challenge. Before even hearing the answer, the Panther (Quentin Coulaud) turned around and walked back to pick up a ball, while *yelling* (in English, even tho he's from France) "What's the difference?! You guys are about to win it!". As it turned out, that match was the one that brought Ga. St. to a 3-3 tie 6-4, 7-6.

But the main focus was on court 2, where Diego Nunez and Andrei Andrukhou (from Minsk) were in an all-out WAR. As their match extended into 3 looong sets, ending at 6-7, 7-6, 6-4, the sun set, twilight came and the lights came on. Their match took about 40 minutes longer than any other, and by well before then, everyone in the standing-room only crowd (really) was wound up, along with all the players who had finished. That match was PACKED with intrigue and controversy. I could list a lot of stuff, but, for examples, Andrukhou was penalized first a point for being overruled more than the limit. *Then*, ultimately, a whole game in the 3rd set - but only AFTER Yaser pointed out that that was supposed to happen. The official wasn't going to do it. (And this was after being penalized for cursing earlier.) And I hate to say it, but this guy is a cheater, and deserved the penalties. There was one very important point he stole, I think in the second set tiebreaker, that could have been the deciding swing towards Diego's favor. But it was on the baseline and they just couldn't see it. I could. The dude cheated and lied about the call. Beyond that.............the head official was often mired in controversy. He was trying to officiate that match on the ground, rather than up in the chair. Finally, after Yaser's urging, in the middle of the 3rd set, he climbs up in the chair. Also, Yaser had to remind him to get new balls. Also, he reversed *himself* on an extremely critical call. (Not kidding.) Yaser then took the extremely unusual step of asking for him to be removed and replaced by the secondary official. That was turned down, and not long after, the guy in the chair overruled the other official on a serve call. Then there was a big controversy about a let serve. And this is with about 150-200 people watching. Diego at one point asked the official to have the Ga. St. coach be quiet while he was serving about 15 feet away. And one of the officials kept asking the crowd to be quiet when they were cheering a point on another court - which is ok, really, but it gives you a sense of the tension.

Ultimately, the Belarusian pulled it out. He's a dang good player, and they were evenly matched, but any of you guys who've been around here a while know how much I hate liars. It was one of the better matches one will see in college tennis. After it ended, he was mobbed and tackled by his teammates. (Must have been *their* Super Bowl.) Before watching this match, I didn't have a negative impression of Ga. St. In fact, I loved watched their hoops team upset Baylor in the NCAA's in 2015, with R.J. Hunter winning the game for his coach/father. (I know you all remember that because his father was on a rolling chair after tearing his Achilles heel shortly beforehand. Got major media play back then.) But anyway......those guys are extremely chippy, and maybe cocky. They definitely had an attitude - and it was way abrasive.

I notice Yaser has yet to post his commentary. (Maybe the university is censoring it?) So here's Ga. St.'s take on it:

Ga. St. Panthers claw back to win

As has been the case, ETSU is very strong up top, but weaker than usual 4-6. Yaser and the Ga. St. did the perfunctory 'hug' afterwards, but there will be bad blood between these teams. Kinda too bad they're not in our conference.

More in another post, including the win over UAB yesterday.....

Well, this is quite 'sanitized' and non-confrontational:

ETSU squanders 3-0 lead

The closest thing to 'wink wink nod nod' is the use of "snuck out".

Good to see the women get a tiny bit of revenge (for the guys) on Ga. St. down in Atlanta, 4-3 today. Ga. St. is a very good team, and so this is a nice win.

On the other hand, the guys' match today was moved to Bristol because of the wind and cold (really just the wind), and ETSU lost it 4-2 to the Ospreys. As usual, we struggled in doubles, losing that point, and also being weak on the bottom half of the lineup.

(And as usual, the ETSU article is written a bit overly slanted, but I won't go into that.)

(03-04-2017 04:35 AM)posterformerlyknownasthedoctor Wrote:  Good to see the women get a tiny bit of revenge (for the guys) on Ga. St. down in Atlanta, 4-3 today. Ga. St. is a very good team, and so this is a nice win.

On the other hand, the guys' match today was moved to Bristol because of the wind and cold (really just the wind), and ETSU lost it 4-2 to the Ospreys. As usual, we struggled in doubles, losing that point, and also being weak on the bottom half of the lineup.

(And as usual, the ETSU article is written a bit overly slanted, but I won't go into that.)

If it's an official university release, that's literally their job. It's not going to be unbiased.