Since the last point was going on between O'Keefe and Herrera when Gonzalez lost, that point counts, too, to make it 5-0.

Gamecocks overwhelm ETSU in NCAAs

----------------------

They have not announced what they're going to do about the coaching situation. I suspect Sander will do a search, but don't know how extensive it will be. Ricky was voted by the other coaches COY, so Sander would have (maybe) a hard time overlooking him. But on the other hand......SOO much depends on recruiting connections, especially overseas in our case. Obviously Ricky doesn't have remotely near what Yaser had in that department, so that could be a deficit. My guess is that Sander will weigh the other applicants against Ricky, and just see how he feels about that. Although I have tremendous faith in Sander in the major sports, I have no idea how deep his knowledge is about the tennis landscape. I suspect not all that deep, but with all *his* connections, perhaps he can find a gem. Without an indoors tennis facility (which was promised in the initial master plan over well 10 years ago), many coaches won't be enticed, and that gives us a somewhat limited upside, both for coaches and players. How the fans' extra giving to the tennis program with Yaser in charge will hold up is very hard to say, as his personal connection to literally hundreds of locals was a huge factor in drawing in donations.

For the record, UNC bounced the Gamecocks out the next day, 4-1:

USC falls to UNC

Our singles participant (female persuasion):

Markesini loses in 3

I really hate to pick on whoever is writing this fluff, but this is just so egregious:

1) He/she/they write the score incorrectly: "6-4, 6-0, 6-2". Obviously, that must have been a men's professional tennis match and one guy won all 3 sets. Come on! And then off course that error is repeated in the text body. AND THEN OF COURSE it's repeated a THIRD time at the bottom in "Match Result".

2) He/she/they felt the need to write "South Carolina’s Mia Horvit" twice in the body, when the second time merely writing "Horvit" would have been preferred.

3) He/she/they write: "The second set of the match belonged to Horvit as she claimed a 6-0 win behind two aces and five errors by Markesini." Really? Markesini only committed five errors the whole set? But lost all 6 games? Just no way that's accurate.

4) He/she/they write: "After giving up the first point in the fifth game of the set, Markesini rattled off four straight points for the victory."
Uh....didn't Markesini lose, as per the headline?

Come on, Mike. Your people can do better - or you should do it for them. Don't have people who don't know a whit about tennis writing about it! PLEASE!!
All that said, congrats to Ioanna on a very good season. And she has another year left.
[Still would like an explanation of why Speaks wasn't included.]

Our singles participant (male persuasion):

Biosca wins in 3

Here we go again, and I'll be more succinct in the litany:

1) Altamirano WON the second set 6-3. They play best 2-ouf-of-3. One would never know it from reading that first sentence from the ETSU site.

2) "David played unbelievable and stayed composted throughout the match." Hey, I believe in composting, too, but not on a nice tennis court, please. And certainly not one of our finest athletes!


Notes and background:
Remember, last year, David *almost* beat Ohio St.'s #1-ranked Mikael Torpergaard in the first round of singles, before teaming with Rogerio on their epic doubles journey.

Also last year, in a very-early-season match vs. Wake, David beat Petros Chrysochos (who was playing #1 for Wake), while his next opponent (today), Skander Mansouri, was whupping up on Diego Nunez at #2. Mansouri was ranked #26 at the time. This year, he's been ranked at least as high as #8, and right now is 13th, I believe. Chrysochos is also in the draw this year, and is currently ranked #5. I know he was highly ranked last year, too, but don't know what he was when Biosca beat him.

*This year*, back in January.....Wake beat us 6-1 in Winston-Salem, and Chrysochos, ranked #1 at the time, took down Biosca 4 and 4, while Mansouri was again dismantling Nunez 2 and 2. (Herrera, playing 3rd, gave us our lone W on that day by winning a LONG struggle over #21(at the time) Christian Seraphim.)

Point being...............these guys are not strangers to each other and could be a good match.

Quick update:

Mansouri is currently up, winning the first 6-4, but Biosca has broken to lead 3-0 in the second.

Further update:

Dang. Just lost his serve with poor serving after struggling to get it back to deuce. Now 3-2.

Further update: Mansouri just blew David away in his service game with two bombs for aces.

Further update: Mansouri just broke David again on a deuce game, after David was up. He's not able to close out when he has to. I fear the writing is on the wall......

Probably final update before the result: Mansouri serving for the match at 5-4.

Hello! Mansouri rushed in that service game, trying to finish him off too rashly, and Biosca broke him back, and then held on in his next service game. Now Mansouri serving at 5-6.

WOWSER. David digs in again and again, and pulls out the tiebreaker 8-6, to win the second 7-6. What a contrast of styles....

Mansouri up 3-0 in the third and appears to be rolling....

Update:

.....but......Biosca holds and then breaks at deuce in what *could* prove to be a pivotal point. He's now serving at 2-3.

Further update: Yeow. David had a moderately easy shot to break, but blew it, on Mansouri's serve. Now serving at 3-4. BIG opportunity squandered. BIG opportunity. Wake's coach was pacing the sideline very worried.

Further update: 6-6 in the third.

AND.....the ETSU tennis season is over. And the storied collegiate career of David Biosca is over.

Mansouri sort of wiped him out in the tiebreaker, 6-1. So ultimate final score was 6-4, 6-7, 7-6. Warm embrace afterwards. Wake's coach warm as well.

Mansouri is 6'3", just exceedingly athletic, exceedingly aggressive, and has a flat-out howitzer for a serve. One of the better college tennis serves I've seen since Roscoe Tanner - although clearly there's many I've missed, of course. He plays a high-risk, high-reward game. Charges and attacks *all* second serves (and the occasional first). Kept David on the defensive the whole match. Mansouri was usually playing around, or just behind, the baseline, while Biosca was more often 10 ft. or more behind it. Oh, by the way, Mansouri is on the Tunisia Davis Cup team. He's a great talent, but won't succeed in the long run unless he hones his game to remove some of the error-prone aspects. His athletic ability reminds one of an NBA player or an elite decathlete.

So David did well to hang in there with him, and there were points where one wondered if he just might be able to pull it out. But extreme talent prevailed in the end.

THANK YOU David Biosca for representing ETSU so well in your career here!!!!!

According to WJHL he took ETSU for over 100k...
http://wjhl.com/2017/06/09/etsu-tennis-a...c-release/

I'm sure he learned from the best...

New coach named. I don't know him; SEC guy.

new ETSU tennis coach - Stiegwardt

It's out of the box, and it's outstanding. Bring in fresh blood, and someone who's a good coach. Hopefully he can keep the international connections up and continue to grow the program.
The best part is knowing how much Dave Mullins hated the power 5 programs and everything they stand for, and damn if the tennis coach didn't come from one.

I don't really think it's out of the box at all. And I don't know whether Sander knew him from earlier or not, but he was at VCU:

Stiegwardt hired at VCU (2011)

Sander 'retired' in 2006, but surely he knew *of* him and I suspect a call to VCU was one of the first ones he made. NOT TO MENTION - although this likely wasn't much of a factor, it's just circumstantial - Sander hired Sonny Smith. Who went to Auburn, as we all know - where Stiegwardt was an assistant (much later, of course).
Further still......he replaced a guy at LSU who went to become the head coach at Steve Forbes's previous place of business: Wichita St. Need a diagram for all that....

Here's what they said about him in Baton Rouge:

Stiegwardt's LSU hiring news release

Note "....he is one of the best recruiters in the business....". Kinda like the sound of that.

Stiegwardt, being from Quito, should be able to keep the S.A. pipeline humming. Also, interesting that he played more than half of his college career at Ga. St. - which attentive readers of this thread will remember being a *very* contentious match here this past season.

He and Ricky (Rojas) have known each other a while, and I had heard they were using Ricky 'help' them decide who to pick. Interesting that the ETSU press release now calls Rojas the "women's coach" - which he was beforehand. But curious in that the job description for the men's head coach had qualifications listed that weren't required for the women's coach. Not necessarily wrong - just mildly curious.

On paper.....it does seem like a quality hire. NOT TO MENTION, I think we all trust Sander pretty highly. No, he's not flawless, but he's likely as close as ETSU will ever get in an AD. (Other than dave mullins, of course. LOL.)