Throughout the fall and winter, tennis players have reported verbal commitments to us at a steady rate. Our commitment lists have swelled to include almost 600 senior boys and girls - and more arrive each day.
January is usually the first time we take a look at how the various programs stack up against one another on the recruiting trail. Once again, we invited our panel of voters - national tournament directors, members of the media, and other experts - to decide who they think are the top recruiting classes in college tennis.
Today, January 25, 2010, the Tennis Recruiting Network takes a look at the top men's classes. We present the Winter Recruiting Class Rankings for the Class of 2010.
Media Poll
The Tennis Recruiting Network has once again enlisted the aid of junior tennis experts from around the country to vote for the top classes. We list the panelists for this voting period below.
Each of our panelists submitted his/her take on the Top 25 recruiting classes. Schools received 25 points for each first-place vote, 24 points for each second-place vote, on down to 1 point for each 25th-place vote. The panelists did not consider incoming transfer students in their voting - and also did not consider players that started college in January.
Top 25 Men's Recruiting Classes (through January 10)
Here are the Winter Rankings of the top men's college recruiting classes, presented by the Tennis Recruiting Network. Point totals are shown in the right-most column - with the number of first-place votes in parentheses. All commitments reported through January 10, 2010 are included.
Also Receiving Votes
Other men's programs receiving votes are: Dartmouth (41), William & Mary(33), Louisville (32), Middle Tennessee (20), Harvard (19), Amherst (7),Baylor (6), Oregon (5), Cornell (4), Davidson (4), Washington (3), Air Force(2), and Xavier (1).
Devil in the Details
Head Coach Ramsey Smith and his Duke Blue Devils must feel like they are on the cusp of something good. Duke returns five starters from a squad that reached the second round of the 2009 NCAA tournament, finishing the season ranked in the Top 25. This year, they mix in Henrique Cunha, a highly-touted southpaw from Brazil who posted sparkling results this fall - going 14-3 and 17-3 in singles and doubles, respectively, against stiff competition.
The Devils are looking to get back to the final 16 in the team championships for the first time since 2006. The pieces are all in place to take such a trip toAthens this season. It should be fun in Durham watching the Devils move up the ACC standings and national rankings. They check in at #19 in the initial Campbell/ITA Rankings put out by the ITA. And as I said, the future could be even brighter. Around the Top 10 Other teams picking up first-place votes are the UCLA Bruins, checking in at #2, and the ever-present Georgia Bulldogs at #4. The Bruins and Bulldogs both made deep runs in the 2009 tournament, reaching the semifinals and quarterfinals, respectively. A look at the #3 team sees Michigan with its fifth straight Top-25 recruiting class. Four of those five were among the Top 10. Rounding out the Top 10 are Bobby Bayliss' Notre Dame Fighting Irish, at #5, followed by Princeton, Miami, USC, Army, and Vanderbilt. Conference Call The Big 10 Conference leads all others with six schools in the Top 25. Joining the Michigan Wolverines are #11 Ohio State, #21 Northwestern, #23Penn State, #24 Purdue, and #25 Wisconsin. Other conferences with multiple teams in the Top 25 are the ACC (4 teams), Big 12 (3), Ivy League (3), SEC (3), Pac-10 (2), and WCC (2). Other Programs Four programs in our Top 25 come from outside the so-called high major conferences. Leading the way are the Army Black Knights at #9. Coaches Poling and Holm have a class with six recruits rated 3 Stars or better, including 5-Star recruits Asika Isoh and Alex Van Velzer. The West Coast Conference features two teams adjacent to each other in the rankings, #19 San Diego and #20 Santa Clara. Rounding out these teams is the Elon Phoenix who check in at #22. Panelists for January 2010 The panelists for this voting period are shown below alphabetically. Please join us in thanking them for donating their time and talents to this effort. Up Next... Ladies' Day These men's rankings are the first of our Winter Rankings. Next Monday, the Tennis Recruiting Network continues with the Top 25 Women's Recruiting Classes. Don't see your school? These 2010 Winter Rankings are only preliminary. We will update them again in May after the spring signing period begins. During that time, we will also post rankings featuring schools outside the high major conferences.
But the future may be even brighter. At the moment, Coaches Smith and Goffi have secured the nation's best recruiting class for 2010-11. The three-man class features #2 Frederick Saba, #6 Christopher Mengel, and #43Cale Hammond. We carried commitment announcements forSaba and Mengel in our Countdown to Signing Day article series - and Hammond is a real talent that knocked offVirginia freshman Julen Uriguen last fall at the Pan-American.
