Lost 4-3 to Rice. The slide continues......

Slide maybe, but Rice is better than you think.

Seems like Connor is struggling a bit.

This season, I'd take that Rice score any day of the week.

Lost, a very wise tennis coach once told me that there is absolutly nothing good that comes out of losing. Your acceptance of a 4-3 loss only illustrates the slippery slope one gets on when you begin to be satisfied with a "Good" loss.

Your team has talent. Expect the best!!!!

winning doesnt matter, until you lose.

rikochet: I 100% agree with you.

But Aggie tennis has fallen from grace, and so have my expectations. For now, I would rather grasp for a 'Good loss' than btch and complain about never winning.

I just hope our tennis program is like everything else in sports: cyclical. Sucks to be on the down slope - but here's to a quick and successful turnaround.

And we actually won the doubles point.

Might be time for AK at No.2 and KK at No.5

austin at 2? yes.
kayvon at 5? no.

The Ags losses this year have been well below the aggie tradition, but they were losing the same matches last year as well. In my opinion the team is not as talented as it was 5 years ago. Pollock is a phenomenal player, but he is more fit to be playing two or three for a top 10 or 5 school. The two freshman are good and will be contributors in the future no doubt. Losing Bain will hurt, but hopefully they can replace him with a new stud that can play at the top of the lineup. A&M is two players away from being a top 10 team. This is what they should be like to compete for nat'l titles. And be comparable to a VA, Texas.

#1 Stud.
#2 Another Stud.
#3 Pollock
#4 Krajicek/Spencer
#5 Spencer/Krajicek
#6 Chirico.


If remember the Aggies of old, when Newport came in he was playing 5. Thats the kind of Team the Aggies need to rebuild again.

if only it were that simple...

Until we start recruiting European professional players like every other top ranked program in the country, A&M will be mediocre at best. It's that simple.

You want A&M to be known as team germany? No Thanks. Dont give american scholarships to foreign players.

top 5 teams in the nation, and their current top 6:
UVA: India, USA, India, USA, USA, Greece
Ohio State: USA, Germany, USA, USA, Japan, Hungary
Georgia: USA, Mexico, USA, USA, Kenya, USA
t.u.: Bulgaria, USA, England, Mexico, Serbia, Mexico
UCLA: Israel, France, USA, Australia, France, USA

Pretty safe to say that the top team teams are primarily foreign. Still dont think you MUST have foreigners to win at the D1 level though, Georgia and Stanford in the past have proved that.

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kayvon at 5? no.

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That's the best shot to get wins at 1,2,3,6

bob and steve don't stack.

To be really honest its going to take a couple of legit foreigners to really push the aggies into that top echelon of teams, if they got another couple of top americans that would be great, but the impact would not seen as quickly as it would with most likely older and more experienced foreigners.

Correct me if I am wrong but wasn't Steve Denton the fourth or fifth choice of Bill Byrne. If I remember correctly, Bill kept getting "not interested" responses from coaches before Steve Denton accepted. Even the coach at Texas Tech turned us down. Why wouldn't a coach want to come to Texas A&M? Are our facilities and finances that much below others that would cause them to not consider us?

Do you think the problem with our team is mostly due to the coach? If so, is it recruiting? I do not follow tennis that closly anymore but I remember a few years ago I use to drive up to CS on weekends to see us play. We had good teams then and it just seems that we have taken a nose dive since our new coach has arrived. I am not trying to flame our team or coaches, I just would like to see us be competitive.

Coach Denton's first two recruits were the 2nd and 3rd recruits in the country. Which ranked A&M 2nd in the nation. That has never been done here in AGGIELAND...where A&M has had that type of recruiting class. It was like A&M football getting the best QB and RB from FL to leave their state and come to aggieland. In two years A&M will be top five every year. Do you think any other coach could of done that???? The answer is no!!! Just thought this forum could use some insight from someone that knows tennis

CollegeStationAgFan- Thank you for your insight. As I stated, I have not been following tennis very closely and just looked at the record. That does give me hope that we are headed in the right direction. I was not trying to flame the players or the coach.

Agape - sure looks to be a flame. You obviously know that this is Denton's 1st year (as evidenced by your recollection of him being the 5th choice). And if you knew that, you should probably know that we were pretty horrible (per our standards) last year.

We were definitely a long way from "taking a nose dive since our new coach arrived"....

EDIT - Camden - yeah switching 5-6 is a huge stack /sarcasm/

[This message has been edited by Cooter00 (edited 4/11/2008 4:59p).]

This is Denton's second year, not his first.

Last year at this time the team was 15-10 and 1-4 in the Big 12 conference.

So they are not exactly in a much different position this year than last even with such hot new recruits this year. They do have the same coach.

They are 11-9 and 1-3 going into the last match.

The will be 1-4 in the Big 12 after playing Texas and 11-10 overall.

They will get a 3 or 4 seed in the big 12 first round and it will not be Nebraska.

Looks like the same story to me, second verse same as the first.

if you think that matt bain and kayvon karimi are interchangeable at this point in their careers, well, there's not a whole lot i can do to help you.

I could see them top 5 in two years, if he continues to recruit like he is, but what those recruiting rankings dont take into consideration are the foreign players. Its so hard to get an honest bearing on how good they are til they get here. Denton needs at least 4 years, probably 5 before anyone can say he hasnt been successful. Cass' last few years of recruiting were not near as strong, ie. cameron fenner, and a few others. Denton's first class is very strong and bodes very well for the future. Last year was in no way a reflection of his coaching, his talent level was not there as it had been in the past. I could go on an on, but he needs at least two more years to get his team in there.

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if you think that matt bain and kayvon karimi are interchangeable at this point in their careers, well, there's not a whole lot i can do to help you.

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No kidding?!? Don't be so dense camden. Again, swapping 5-6 isn't a huge stack.

No one counted on us not having Jerry M this season. Imagine how bad it would be without Spencer and Krajicek. With the young top 3 we have, there is hope.

if you think the big 12 coaches would allow us to play kayvon ahead of bain, given our history of 4-3 matches this year, then it's not really worth my time to keep responding.

collegestationagfan -

you are wrong about tennis not ever having recrtuited like that before... in 98' cass signed the #1 class in the country with two top 5 players in the country both from Florida (Madden/deMesa)...

that was the turning point in building a national powerhouse program over the next 7-8 years.. hopefully Denton's class will turn out to do the same

cory-
how long did DeMesa stay? Any idea what ever happened to him?

De Mesa played on the tour for about 5 years. Top rank was 380. He went back to school at Florida International and now works in Miami as a credit analyst at Banco Santander International. If he'd stayed at A&M the Ags would have made a serious run at the national title. His leaving early really hurt just like Lester Cook's did.

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Lester Cook

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Almost forgot about this guy.

Tres Davis? Former players haven't found too much success on the pro circuit.

its so tough to make the transition on the tour from college... but recently there have been some very good guys make it through college and made it onto the true atp tour (top 100)...

those that have made it that were former college standouts in the last few years would be..

James Blake - obviously the exception
Bryan Brothers - know their niche
Benjamin Becker - had an incredible 6 month stretch and did very well at the majors beating agassi in his final match, but now he is struggling to win matches in the atp events and playing a lot of challengers
John Isner - had an amazing summer and took a set of Federer at US Open
Sam Warburg - starting to crack the top 120 and qualied at Australian
Kevin Anderson - made the finals of Las Vegas ATP tourny and just beat Djokovic in Miami tourny

there are just way too many players worldwide that having success in college does not translate to success in the pros

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Tres Davis

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Good player. Almost forgot about this guy too.

Now his dad... a whole other story for a whole other thread about tennis parents...

Add Todd Martin to the list of college players