NORFOLK — The Old Dominion men’s tennis team heading to this year’s NCAA Tournament is far different than the one whose season ended with a first-round loss to Utah, though both squads earned their berths with Sun Belt Tournament championships.
“Last year, we had five seniors on the team. Their big goal was to win the conference,” ODU coach Dominik Mueller said. “This team is hungry. We’re happy, but the whole year we talked about winning a round in the NCAA Tournament.”
The Monarchs will have that chance when they face 15th-ranked South Carolina at 1 p.m. Friday on North Carolina State’s courts in Raleigh. The victor will advance to Saturday’s 5 p.m. match against Friday’s winner between the 15th-seeded Wolfpack and Coastal Athletic Association champion UNC Wilmington, in which N.C. State will be a solid favorite.
Mueller, a Germany native, said the players on this team have “young, fun energy” and compared them to “a bunch of puppy dogs. Sometimes they don’t know what they don’t know. They’re just fun to be around, always smiling.”
One of those young guys is Connor van Schalkwyk, who joined his older brother, Codie, near the top of the lineup and became the Sun Belt Freshman of the Year by posting a 19-4 spring record. They play in the lower levels of Davis Cup for the African nation of Namibia, and they compared competing for the Monarchs to their international experience.
“Because we’ve never hosted Davis Cup, we never had so many people come to our matches, but it’s really special, quite similar,” said Connor, who will join Codie in the 32-team NCAA doubles championship tournament in Stillwater, Oklahoma, after team play concludes.
French sophomore Cosme Rolland de Ravel, one of the few holdovers from last year’s team, said, “Our goal for sure is to win the first round and then hopefully get to the Sweet 16. I know we have the team to do it.” He’s 15-6 this spring and made the all-conference first team in singles and in doubles with Jakob Cadonau.
WE’RE IN! 🎾@ODUWomensTennis and @ODUMensTennis head to Raleigh to take on the Gamecocks of South Carolina in the first round of the NCAA Tennis Tournament at N.C. State. #ODUSports | #ReignOn | #Monarchs pic.twitter.com/pSXE8YamIV
— ODU Athletics (@ODUSports) April 30, 2024
ODU (20-7), ranked 51st by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association, wasn’t too far away from posting a far better record. The Monarchs’ defeats to Penn, Rice, Charlotte and UNC Wilmington were all by 4-3 scores as was their only Sun Belt loss — March 24 to 63rd-ranked Georgia Southern in Statesboro.
“We had some of these tough losses and we needed to learn from them,” Mueller said. “It’s almost like a life lesson: You have to learn from adversity.”
Sure enough, when ODU defeated Georgia Southern 4-1 in the tournament final at Rome Tennis Center in Georgia, “it all came together. All those 4-3 losses helped us,” Mueller said.
Freshman Aryan Saleh’s 6-2, 2-6, 6-3 victory at No. 6 preceded Connor van Schalkwyk’s clinching 4-6, 6-3, 7-5 triumph against Georgia Southern.
“To put the third and fourth point on the board, that’s unbelievable,” Mueller said of those two newcomers.
They’ll try to take the next step against a 17-14 Gamecocks team that zapped then-No. 1 Virginia in Charlottesville, went just 4-8 in the regular season in the powerful Southeastern Conference, then made a surprising run to the SEC Tournament final as the No. 11 seed.
En route to the final, the Gamecocks upset then-No. 19 Alabama, then-No. 15 Mississippi State and then-No. 6 Tennessee before falling to No. 4 Kentucky 4-2. They are led by Toby Samuel, the nation’s eighth-ranked singles player.
ODU women await rematch vs. South Carolina
At 11 a.m. Saturday, on those same courts in Raleigh, the ODU women (17-5) will try to follow their fourth consecutive conference tournament championship with their second consecutive first-round triumph against South Carolina (17-7).
Unlike last year, when ODU beat them 4-2, former William & Mary coach Kevin Epley’s Gamecocks have a considerably higher ITA ranking: 19th to ODU’s 66th. That match’s victor will play Sunday in the round of 32 against 14th-seeded N.C. State, unless MEAC champion South Carolina State pulls what would be the greatest upset in tournament history.
ODU’s Sofia Johnson, the Sun Belt Player of the Year, holds a 12-4 spring singles record and earned one of the 64 NCAA singles tournament berths in Stillwater. First, she and the Monarchs will try to reach the second round for the third year in a row.
Lidiia Rasskouskaia has a team-best 19-1 record this spring and has won her past 12 matches.
William & Mary women to duel Wisconsin
William & Mary (18-5) bounced back after a rough start to earn its usual place in the field as the Coastal Athletic Association champion. The Tribe will go to Chapel Hill to face 33rd-ranked Wisconsin (18-6), a Big Ten Tournament semifinalist as the No. 4 seed, at 3 p.m. Friday.
That match’s winner will play Saturday against No. 4 North Carolina unless Navy pulls an all-time shocker at 6 p.m. Friday.
Officially, the Tribe has won 14 consecutive matches. W&M’s only “defeat” since the streak began was a 4-3 decision April 7 at Delaware, which an Intercollegiate Tennis Association committee altered to “no contest” after ruling that the Blue Hens didn’t have some of their players in the proper lineup position, based on ability.
In that regular-season match in Newark, one spot that wasn’t disputed was No. 1 singles, where the Blue Hens’ Slade Coetzee routed the Tribe’s Hedda Gurholt 6-1, 6-0. In their rematch during Sunday’s tournament final on Elon’s courts, Gurholt won 6-2, 6-2, sparking a top-three sweep that also included wins by Yu Chen and Mila Mejic.
For the Tribe to have a realistic chance against Wisconsin, W&M also will need strong efforts from the bottom half of Alessandra Anghel, Ine Stange and Francesca Davis.
