Aleemay

Meant women wrestling

Of the current NCAA sports, Texas does not have bowling, fencing, field hockey, gymnastics, ice hockey, lacrosse, rifle, skiing, water polo Ice Hockey and Skiing would make no sense for obvious reasons Field hockey, lacrosse, and water polo would be a challenge as there's no nearby schools NCAA fencing is dying Gymnastics would make the most sense with the SEC and the huge talent pool in the state with so many elite gyms. Plus Texas could use Mary Lou Retton for publicity material. Gymnastics only covers 12 scholarship spots. Rifle would be interesting as stated TCU. Bowling is very plausible given that SFA and Sam Houston have well established programs, there's also TX State and Prairie View in the state. There are also sports with emerging designation- triathlon, acrobatics and tumbling, wrestling, rugby, equestrian...

National Champs! The First 8 took it home!

Will be interesting to see the bottom half of the lineup- who'll play 5 and 6? Two of J Braswell, Brown, Harper, Siem. Got to feel like Harper will play but who else? Depending on who it is will also affect whether Harper plays 5 or 6.

AC Butsch was just on the Cracked Racquet Podcast Apparently Texas only had 3 healthy players for the UCLA season opener as Vivian also was vomiting but wanted to play.

She recently just won a 15K pro event in Serbia. Ashton Bowers this week beat Adriana Reami (All American and member of the 2021 NC State national semis team)

Boom- another one

What is interesting about Lulu's transfer is the upcoming Olympics. Erin Routiffe has a top 10 doubles ranking which guarantees her an entry into the Olympics IF there's someone from your some nation in the top 300 in either singles or doubles. This was likely going to be Paige Hourigan (career high 200) but Hourigan took all of 2022 off for injury and is now rebuilding her ranking. Hourigan is close (ranking is now somewhere in the 400s) and if she doesn't make it, Lulu is almost virtually guaranteed to be an Olympian this summer.

Maya just beat Liv Hovde. They're the same high school class and Hovde has always been the number one recruit. Hovde won the 2022 Wimbledon juniors and then turned pro. At this rate with no points to defend, Maya is on the cusp of making qualifying list for Wimbledon and should be on the list once the US Open rolls around. Tennis Australia will also be heavily invested and give her a main draw wildcard in 2025. Can't see Maya doing all four years of college tennis. May pull a Schnaider- attend one semester and then turn pro. She has sounded really excited when talking about enrolling at UT next year.

UCLA just lost to Cal Texas will have to hit the road if they get past the first two rounds

as was previously said, likely it's that they have a weekend series the next few days in San Antonio that makes it worth it

Currently 9th seed. Need UCLA to do well in the Pac12 tournie to jump Georgia. Texas will then be seeded ahead of the Dawgs and would potentially host the super Regionals against Georgia

Texas will likely be the third seed once the bracket comes out. A&M currently seeded 15th- you know how the NCAAs love to tinker with the bracket.......

To answer this question and @BRLA question- Texas with Zeynalova is a dark horse and can contend with every team. Texas has four losses on the year- UCLA, Stanford, Oklahoma State (twice) The loss to UCLA can be overlooked as Texas only had four healthy players. The other losses have all been 4-3. The first loss against OK State, Chavatipon served for the match multiple times. The second loss, Texas was without Zeynalova and the loss came down to a third set. I do have concerns without Zeynalova. Even though Lieberman has performed admirably stepping in (especially in doubles), there's not been any line 6 win that has made me go "Wow, she'll be competitive against a top 10 team." Texas is not the only team without its top player. Defending Champ UNC has gone without its top player Reese Brantmeier since January. Currently Texas should be around a six seed. If the rankings hold, Texas is slated to host one of the California schools (UCLA, Cal, USC) in the super regionals. A huge possibility could be A&M who has somehow found a way to get Carson Branstine back on the roster even though she has played pro tournaments the whole year and 'graduated' last season.

Still hopeful that Zeynalova can play postseason There's video of her doing cardio on the Instagram page and she's been in the prelim singles lineup for the latest matches only to get switched out after the doubles point (which Texas wins most of the time)

https://auburntigers.com/news/2023/11/9/womens-tennis-womens-tennis-signs-ashton-bowers.aspx That was fast...barely over three months. But then again Auburn just fired their head coach two weeks ago. Really concerned now that Maya Joint may go pro and skip college. Her WTA rise has been pretty meteoric. Was a really good junior but nothing too flashy in terms of results compared to other Americans who recently skipped college (talking about the likes of Ashlyn Kreuger, Alycia Parks, Robin Montgomerry, etc.). Ranked 1377 last fall. Then switched nationalities to Australia, moved to Australia for 5 months to train at one of their national centers, got a ton of wildcards, and now has shot up to 336. That's a 1000 ranking jump in just 5 months! Now she's back in the States and has another WC to qualifying draw of the Austin Opne.

https://tennisrecruiting.net/article.asp?id=11538 Voted #1 Recruiting. What I find interesting is this quote from Joffe...'In Maya Joint, Arianna Pursoo and the two other players we intend to sign, I am optimistic about the future of Texas Women’s Tennis...' Sounds like Joffe has two verbals that have yet to be announced.

Australian Open Qualies going on right now: Signed UT recruit Maya Joint last summer changed to representing Australia. Got a wildcard and beat top 200 Natalija Stevanovic today. Here is a link to the match. Hopefully she still comes to Texas and does not skip college. https://ausopen.com/video-player#!?videoId=6344582515112 Lulu Sun plays later. Lulu reached the main draw last week in New Zealand and is now back to her career high ranking (189). Miguel Angel Reyes Varela (class of '09) was recently elected to the player's council. Lloyd Glasspool won at ATP doubles title in Brisbane last week.

FYI, this commitment has been known for a while (See post #42 in this thread); so not really a recent development Texas looking like the conference favorite again. OU is probably the biggest challenger before it's off to the SEC.

She and other recruit Maya Joint have played doubles together on the ITF circuit. Also noticed that Joint has recently switched to representing Australia.

Micah Braswell's brother is in the portal 👀

The Baltics go 1-2-3 in the Heptathlon (Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia)

Lots of news the past two weeks: Unfortunately word is that Khirin is in the transfer portal. While it's not definite (TTU's number one men's player entered and withdrew from the portal), it would make sense scholarship number wise if Sasnouskaya were to transfer in. ISU's coach has been hired at Clemson. Expect quite a few attrition in that roster. Both Carmen Corley and Layne Sleeth at OU have opted not to take the extra COVID year. Baylor is losing its number one player Alina Shcherbinina to OU. OSU is gaining Anastasiya Komar (top 10 ranking last season) from LSU.

Personally I find the CrackedRackets coverage earnest but ear screeching. I know the commentator Alex is doing his best but it disrupts the broadcast so much every thirty seconds he's barking at some guy off screen to switch cameras. "Let's go to court 2...no don't put it on the side, I want it on the big screen....wait don't cut out court 5, they're playing a deciding point....." I remember back in 2008 ESPN was broadcasting the men's final (Georgia vs. Texas). Then in the early 2010s there was a huge push to make NCAA tennis more appealing on TV (cutting doubles to a 6 game set, no warm up for singles, making third sets supertiebreakers if the match has been decided, etc.). Well that hasn't worked, tennis is not more televised. NCAA should be ashamed with how they dealt with tennis coverage.

Aggies will be good next year but this year their fans really billed as 'their year' with a stud USC transfer, Carson Branstine (two time junior grand slam doubles champion) finally having a complete college season after having to sit out two years, an instate girl coming back for a super senior year...only to have Branstine having a season ending injury in the middle of conference. Will be a big 'What if?' for the Ags.