Aleemay

Good to see Labrana continuing her fine form, also nice to see Tijana get her first dual match doubles win in a tight situation Now on to the indoor portion of the season, just a reminder of last year: Outdoors: 19-0 Indoors: 5-5

4-0 win over MTSU. Fernanda looked really good- much more confident and fluid forehand compared to last year Also it looks like Poluta did not make herself available for Fed Cup this year. South Africa named its team and I'm confident to say she is at a higher level than two of the five members on the team. Makes sense as this year Fed Cup dates are during indoor nationals (compared to last year where Texas was playing bottom of the league opponents) and Texas is a bit short handed with the roster.

As I suspected, no Marta for the year https://texassports.com/news/2019/1/25/no-6-womens-tennis-preview-ita-kick-off-weekend.aspx Hope the rest of the team stays healthy!

Lineup is out. B. Turati, A. Turati, Granic, Markovic, Labrana, Spasojevic, Poluta Doubles is Granic/Spasojevic, Labrana/Markovic, Turati/Turati No Marta listed for the weekend

Ouch...now an eighth player is transferring out of Oregon. Any scholarship money for her!? https://www.ducksports.com/sports/20190123/oregon-ducks-senior-outfielder-alexis-mack-is-eighth-player-to-leave-program

Looks like he isn't playing good enough to crack the lineup. Here's the lineup submitted for this weekend: 1. Christian Sigsgaard 2. Yuya Ito 3. Leonardo Telles 4. Harrison Scott 5. Colin Markes 6. Chih Chi Huang 7. Rodrigo Banzer 8. Johnny Goodwin 9. Nevin Arimilli

what a choke

https://texassports.com/news/2019/1/22/granic-earns-big-12-womens-tennis-player-of-the-week-honors.aspx Congrats to Petra for winning Player of the Week! To give context how big the Freeman Memorial tournament is, here are some winners in the past ten years: 2016 Hayley Carter North Carolina (seven time All American) 2015 Jennifer Brady UCLA (currently top 100) 2013 Sabrina Santamaria USC (currently ranked in top 100 in doubles) 2011 Maria Sanchez USC (former top 100 player in doubles) 2009 Irini Falconi Georgia Tech (former top 100 player) On most teams, Petra would be playing line 1. Her game is big (both groundstrokes and serve)

UT played Ole Miss at the Miami Invitational just three days ago and won 6 of the 7 matches. So expectations are that they should win. Of note, Cleeve Harper is listed on the roster but on his Instagram he has it as Class of '23. Might be taking a redshirt year but who knows

First weekend of play today. Might have to revise my assessment on Baylor, couldn't get any of their three freshmen to be eligible for the season meaning they'll have to play with a walk-on. Just lost to Hawaii today (last year UH was ranked in the 60s). Texas ranked number 6 in the preseason polls. This one was conducted by coaches, not the computers.

I think she has some stepchildren if that counts

A lot of top players (especially the men) are able to play the college season while also playing a few lower level pro tournaments as an amateur. Bianca is signed up to play a 25K in Florida in a couple weeks. The seating had to be replaced because it was almost impossible to watch the near court player during the matches. The view was being blocked by the walls and most people had to stand in order to watch both players.

Woops haha my mistake. In my original version, I had the bottom teams being OK State, Iowa State, and WVU. Then this last month OK State signed Tamara Arnold (top JUCO player) and Bunyawi Thamchaiwat (Eye popping WTA ranking in the 400s) for the spring. This now gives them a full roster of scholarship players. Somehow I accidentally deleted WVU instead of OK State (which is why I have OK State in the next line where I predicted they'll easily qualify for NCAAs). lol

New year so let's start a new topic! Texas is returning the bulk of its Big 12 Championship team, only losing Wagland but replaces her with Tijana Spasojevic. Fernanda Labrana also looks to be improved after a not so hot first semester. Looking at the schedule, there's no where really to hide except against MTSU on opening day and conference cellar dwellers Iowa State and Oklahoma State. Teams that will challenge for the crown and easily qualify for the NCAAs: Oklahoma State, Kansas, Tech Teams that can upset Texas on a very good day and should get an NCAA berth: Baylor Question mark teams: Oklahoma (Coach's first full recruiting class), TCU (depth issues), Kansas State (Can the assistant coach replicate last year's success as the new HC?) Other things that need to be considered: -With the new implementation of the transition tour, Bianca Turati can now easily get into $25,000 tournaments main draw. How many will she enter during the season and will her results push her to turn pro by the end of the year? -The Fed Cup dates for Group II Europe/Africa has yet to be announced. If they're in April like last year, will Katie Poluta be nominated to represent South Africa again during the middle of the season? -Marta Perez-Mur has been in a boot for at least a month after her last fall tournament. How bad is her injury and has she recovered?

In the videos I've watched, she is receiving serve as the Mexicans tend to hide their right side meaning both OH's have to receive. Perfect pass at 3:23

New recruit. Exciting to see how she'll develop. A little bit on the small side- listed 5'9'' and the weight room will also do wonders for her too.

Pretty sure. She doesn't show up on tennisrecruiting due to not playing junior tournaments in the last year. But when she was still playing under 18s, she was rated in the top 10 for the past 4 years. Her UTR rating is above 11.5. There are probably at most 7 Americans with a higher UTR than hers.

https://www.instagram.com/lexiryngler/ Joffe just got his first Blue Chip American to UT---Alexa Ryngler! Significant victories include Andie Daniell (current number one at Alabama), Maria Smith (Cal player who beat Bojana last year), Emiliana Arrango (former junior top 10), Dominique Schaeffer (former junior top 30), and Gail Broadsky (currently ranked WTA top 300).

Texas pod isn't really a cupcake draw either. Rice and Texas State were considered to have safe at large bids if they lost their conference tourney. SFA would have also been on the bubble too.

Went back to Europe. Trip was pre planned and I believe the staff had approved it

With BYU losing last night, UT still in the hunt for a top 4 seed. Got to take care of business though.

Yep it was the Galleria where Rice always plays their indoor matches. While there are some props for this tournament (admission free, Leander Paes and James Blake were also there giving autographs), there were some massive head scratchers: -Tournament being announced in August. I've almost never have seen a tournament added with such a short turnaround. -Rice (though the facility is new) was not the first choice. Heard another tennis club declined to host. -Had a Friday night block 'party' if you could call it that. Just two food trucks and a DJ. -Oracle is sponsoring a lot of tournaments (NCAA to these pro level ones) to grow American tennis. But they did a pretty poor job promoting it to the public. For the Peng vs. Pegula match, I estimate about 80% of the crowd was Asian with a lot being Rice international graduate students. Peng had huge crowd support. -To attract more of a crowd, they ran couple UTR double tournaments for the public. I think the Rice varsity players were forced to participate in it. It is not fun watching reluctant NCAA athletes beating up on kids 5-6 years younger than them. Many of the kids weren't even bad, a lot of them had the Super Champ rating. -The rush to play both finals that Sunday. It's not like Peng, Davis, Kahn, and Smith (still a Baylor athlete, dangerous one to look out this spring) had another tournament to go to in the middle of November.

Shame on the organizers. Purposely closed the indoor courts for no spectators to watch the Houston final. Even kicked out members of the tennis club. Also tried to keep the indoor location a secret but anyone who knows the Houston tennis area scene would have known where the final was being played

Based off of Instagram, it looks like Bianca is in Houston and received a wildcard to the main draw.

I was actually there today watching qualifying. Pretty neat stuff they have there including a historical stand with the different racquets through the decades. Only thing is it was darn freezing! Saw several top 100 players and former UT players Camillone and Glasspool there.