(Photo: Patricia Vicente/WCSN)
No. 28 Arizona State is going dancing for the second consecutive season since being reinstated in 2017 — its third trip in a row dating back to 2008, the last year the team was intact prior to being disbanded. The Sun Devils’ NCAA Tournament status was solidified on Monday, as they learned they will face No. 32 Miami (Florida) in the first round in Texas.
After qualifying for the tournament in its inaugural season after being reimplemented as a program last year, ASU (13-13, 4-5 Pac-12) is not quite content with just being included in the 64-team field this time around.
“It’s fun to see the progress and all of the hard work paying off,” ASU coach Matt Hill said. “This is Christmas time for us. This is show time. This is what we do all of that work for. We always say we want to be playing our best tennis in May and here we are.”
The Sun Devils were swept 4-0 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament last season to Baylor — a school with a connection with ASU’s assistant coach Michal Kokta as he played there in college. It was the end of the team’s primary campaign back at ASU and set the foundation and precedent for the floor of Hill’s expectations.
“It’s great to have guys that have been there before,” Hill said. “It’s not new to them, so that’s huge. Last year we were a little bit of deer in the headlights. We didn’t play our best tennis against Baylor and I just think we were happy to be there. This group is happy to be in the tournament, but they want more.”
Making consecutive tournament appearances is no easy feat. Especially for a program that had virtually nothing over a 10-year period. But ASU is not focusing on the history it’s currently making, but rather on leaving the biggest mark it can while the opportunity is around.
“I think last year it didn’t even hit me until the individual tournament,” Hill said, “how big of a deal it was to make it the first year when I looked around at a lot of colleagues I respect that weren’t in the tournament. So to do it again back-to-back, it is something special that I take for granted too often because I have such high goals and expectations for these guys.”
The team only lost two members from last year’s roster: Michaël Geerts to graduation and Pierre Louis-Dodens via a transfer to Clemson. Those losses were offset with the additions of three transfer players in juniors Nathan Ponwith and Dominik Kellovsky and graduate student Justin Roberts. Those three have made up the top three courts in singles and the No. 1 court in doubles. The No. 12 duo of Ponwith and Kellovsky were ranked as high as No. 8 this season, the highest ranked ASU tandem since Brian Gyetko and Dave Lomicky achieved a No. 4 placement in 1991.
After extending to a six match winning streak through mid-April, ASU has since lost three in a row — to No. 8 USC, No. 13 UCLA and No. 33 California — to close the season, but still has maintained a high level of play against elite competition.
“We’ve been really happy with the way the guys are playing overall the past month or so,” Hill said. “We feel like we’ve been moving in a really good direction so we’re excited to keep that going this next weekend.”
As for Miami (17-10, 7-5 ACC), it has fared extremely well on its home court posting an 11-1 record. On the road however, it faltered to a 2-6 mark and was 4-3 at neutral sites. The Hurricanes faced one other Pac-12 opponent this season, falling to Utah 4-2. ASU swept the Utes 4-0 in Tempe.
“We don’t know Miami very well,” Hill said. “We know they’re good. They’re good and young like us, they’re hungry. So that will be a difficult first match … they’re probably a lot like us, good all the way through. They played in a tough conference so they’re well battle-tested.”
Having scheduled an increasingly difficult slate for the entirety of the season, Hill was preparing his squad for the toughest matches with the toughest opponents come tournament time. He thinks those experiences — win or loss in the regular season — pay crucial dividends in the long run of the program.
“I think, personally, as I’m watching the release of the draw and you’re seeing these interviews with the coaches and players and things like this, [our players] not only know those players, they’ve seen those players, they’ve played those players, they’ve played on their home courts,” Hill said. “They’re watching the draw and going, ‘Yeah we’ve played those teams. They’re OK. They’re pretty good.’ It’s not this foreign concept to them on how good these teams are or where they really are and where we’re at.
“We have a really good handle on those teams and they’re sitting there going, ‘OK they’re good, but these are not teams that are unbeatable for us.’ I think that gives them a lot of confidence when they’ve played the [top], they’ve played all of those teams. It won’t be that shell shock. It will be, ‘We’ve seen them before and let’s do our thing.'”
ASU will look to exploit one of its key strengths throughout the seasons and clinch the doubles point in the first round of the tournament. It has succeeded in gaining the 1-0 advantage in 19 matches out of 25 total. Besides the aforementioned ranked tandem, ASU also sends out the No. 77 pairing of Roberts and junior Makey Rakotomalala. Miami has no ranked duos.
The Hurricanes do feature two ranked singles players to combat the Sun Devils’ one. Sophomore Adria Soriano Barrera leads the team at No. 32, while sophomore Bojan Jankulovski ranks at No. 90. Ponwith is No. 74 for ASU.
At the end of the day, the Sun Devils will seek to achieve the goal they set out at the beginning of the season: an Elite 8 run. It will not come easy. If ASU defeats Miami, it will face the winner of Harvard and tenth-seeded and No. 9 TCU.
“We want to be in Orlando,” Hill said. “It’s going to take a huge effort just to get through Miami. There’s three matches before that and there’s going to be some really difficult competition to even attain that. Right now our only focus is on Miami and we’re going to get as prepared as possible and then we’ll move from there.”
