Could the difference between us and Baylor and say, UCLA (who also makes a run every year) be our lack of foreign players?

Of course that's a recruiting advantage they have. We have recruiting advantages, too.

And I'm just saying it may mean we need to find a nationally renowned coach willing to take on a new challenge to provide another advantage.

The only thing world-renowned about John Roddick is his brother. He was a fine player and is obviously a good recruiter and coach, and to the casual tennis fan he is more recognizable because of his last name, but for anyone who knows even a little bit about tennis, Denton and even McKinley are much more known and accomplished in the tennis community.

We had a great season and had one bad day on a fluke situation where we had to play on a surface that we're not used (but so did Baylor). The indoor courts would be nice, but the season ends outdoors and typically it is the teams that play indoors a lot that have a huge disadvantage at the NCAAs (name the last NCAA champion from a northern state)...it really is a fluke situation when you have to play indoors in May and either way again, Baylor doesn't have indoor courts so it is really a flimsy excuse. The bottom line is that we had a bad performance and of course that rests on the shoulders of the coaches and players. That said, one bad day (even if it is the biggest day of the year) does not make a bad season. We had a great year and should be proud of it.

Obviously the OU upset of t.u. was even bigger, proving that anyone can have a bad day. Even though our earlier results may have made it look like we should have beaten Baylor and we know we were certainly capable of it, as some have mentioned it is VERY tough to beat a team that you're evenly matched with 3x in one season and I do think that we are only a very slight favorite against Baylor on a neutral court.


The coaching staff has done a great job getting the program back to the level that Cass had it at.
Remember, there are a lot of programs trying hard in men's tennis and like basketball, you don't need a world-beater budget to be successful (i.e. Butler) - all you need is a great coach who can recruit 6 or 7 great players. We may have top-10 facilities...for sure top-20, and we have a good school academically but it isn't "elite". We have a good location, but it isn't California or Florida. We have the best college experience in the country, but it's hard to sell a tennis recruit on that.

I'm not making excuses because Aggieland is certainly a great setup and we should expect great teams - and I think we had one this year and I'm very optimistic about next year. My point is that when ANY of our teams, from football to women's tennis, makes the sweet 16 and/or finishes top-10 it is a STELLAR year and when we finish top-25 it is a good year. We have never made the final 4 and have only once made the elite 8. This season ties for the 3rd best result of all time for the Ags, we were close to making it as far as we ever have, and are only getting better next season!

[This message has been edited by Harry Dunne (edited 5/22/2010 1:54p).]

Nofear, how long do you think a coach should get before they get the boot?

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea that we are almost 100% American. But maybe we need to hit Europe more to get some of the top guys. If you aren't Georgia or Stanford or USC, it can be hard to get the top American players. If you look at the top programs right now, they are mostly half or more foreign players. Just putting it out there...

Foreigners are not an absolute necesity. Look at Virginia. 5 of their top 6 are Americans. Tennessee is mostly american as well. Foreigners are the most needed for small teams unable to grab the top Americans.

and it is getting harder and harder for teams without the facilities to compete in tennis. Only 3 of the top 30 are from non BCS conferences while in 2000, 10 of the top 30 were from small conferences.

bigfoot, my personal opinion is that five years is a fair period to give a coach.

To be honest, if you aren't following a horrible coach and have facilities that put you at a disadvantage, I could argue for less, but I think five years is fair to judge a body of work.

And you?

Well, I do not think that Bob and Steve are doing a horrible job here. They are targeting the top players in the nation year in and year out, and are great at developing players. If we had nabbed Jenkins last year, I think this year would be a different story.

I, personally, think they are doing a fine job right now. Being that they got the job in August of 06, they didnt get to recruit until the 07-08 season, so their guys are about to be Seniors this next year. Not sure who we have coming in next year, but after this year of getting to the sweet 16, I think we are on the right course. Dont get me wrong, I would have loved to have gotten farther this year, but we had a tough draw against a very good team in Baylor. Bob and Steve will continue to develop the younger guys, and I think we will break through to the top 10 and quarters of nationals. I see nothing wrong with where we are, and unless we have a sudden backslide from where we are now (losing in the first or second round of NCAAs), I see no reason to change our staff.

The only recruit I have heard of is some Australian player so for those of you crying over the lack of foreign players get excited

You would know better than I how they're doing at developing talent, I just see what they recruit and what the results are. I hope you're right and we take another step forward next year.

I do have to say, however, I really had no complaints with the draw. Yes, the matches with Baylor were closer than the final tally, but we had proven we could beat them. Who was going to be a getter draw? UCLA? Stanford?

I guess you might argue UF, but they were still damn good, despite the outcome against Georgia. And I could see a lot of people on here pissed if we had ended up with a higher ranked team instead of a Baylor team we had beaten twice.

I know there was not much we could do about it, actually nothing we could do about it, but I thought it sucked overall that there were 6 conference matchups out of the 8 matches total on Friday. It just sucks to make it there, and play a team you have already played twice.

The seeding of us at 10 and Baylor at 7 did suck, though. I didnt understand how we didnt move ahead of them, but the computers are weird like that sometimes.

I hate to be the fly in the ointment, but don't we have 2 foreign players already, with a third on the way? Not sure what the situation is with Klegou, but the story I keep hearing from him is that he has the potential to be a top-10 in the nation player.

Gou should be really good, for sure. He has a professional caliber serve, so if he can get the rest of it together, the sky is the limit.

Is the Australian guy a commit or recruit?

Uh, we had 3 foreign guys in the lineup for the majority of the season. We have roughly the same proportion of international guys on our team as USC, UCLA, Tennessee, Duke, Virginia, Texas, etc. The foreign/American issue is becoming more and more moot each year in college tennis. Almost every coach in the country (with a handful of exceptions) recruits the best players in the world, no matter where they're from. We have narrowly missed on guys who have signed with Virginia, Kentucky, Baylor, North Carolina, Georgia, Ole Miss, etc., just like those schools have come just short of signing guys like Krajicek, Spencer, Dadamo, Grigorov, and Klegou. Some kids you get, some you don't, and then you develop whoever you get the best that you can.

Remember, there are only 4.5 scholarships per team in men's D-I tennis (if you're playing by the rules), so no school can take everyone they want, even if the kids are begging to sign with you.

Right, so just like any other sport, you've gotta take the 6 guys who best match up your needs with their needs, and hope they develop.

Harry Dunne, while I agree with you for the most part, I think I might have failed to fully illustrate my point. Indoor courts help any team at any time of the year. While the season does end outdoors, it begins indoors for those who have the facilities to do it. If we had an indoor facility it would definitely serve to improve the team as a whole.

For one thing it gives us the opportunity to practice on real courts in inclimate weather conditions. Right now, the team has to go to Bryan to practice on courts that play faster than anywhere else in the country.

Secondly, It can give the team the chance to practice on courts that are the same conditions as the rest of the country in terms of speed and environment.

Finally, You asked me to name a top men's team from the north that begins every year indoors. Last year, Ohio State lost in the finals to USC. Washington and Notre Dame also have good teams.

Illinois and UVA are good teams as well who play indoors

Why is it so hard to see A&M as a possible Top 5 team next year? We return everyone, including adding another really good prospect, while several teams just above us lose key players next year. Texas was not that much better than us this year and they were #3 all year. Coach Denton said as much in an interview following the loss. This team is going to be very good. We do need to improve indoors, but outside we can play with anyone.

Brokefish, no doubt indoor courts would be nothing but a positive. My main point was that playing indoors isn't a valid excuse for losing to Baylor, who has to drive an hour and a half to the nearest indoor courts to Waco. Actually I have never thought about this but the Bryan courts may be closer to Waco than Ennis!

Teams from the north not being as competitive has more to do with the weather than with playing indoors. When you spend October to March playing on a different surface, in a climate-controlled environment (most importantly with no wind), you're going to suffer intially when you first have to play outside. That's why Ohio State couldn't wait to call the match off in Waco this year and why t.u. women beat a much stronger Northwestern team who was just beginning their outdoor season. Trust me, as a guy that took years to get used to the Texas heat, a beautiful 85 degree C.S. spring day can seem like the Sahara to a team from Illinois or Ohio who hasn't seen sun in months and hasn't seen 90% humidity...ever.

Again, there are a ton of positives from having indoor courts, most of them you mentioned. I just think that we ALREADY have a huge advantage over northern teams (and to be clear, that's basically every team north of the southernmost states, even Oklahoma, etc., and obviously the advantage gets bigger over very northern schools who can't practice outdoors at all until April).

I do feel that we would have just as much of a disadvantage going up north in February and playing them indoors, but I think that it would be only slightly mitigated by having our own indoor courts. Sure, if would make us slightly more accustomed to them and it would definitely help somewhat, but we're still not going to spend the bulk of our time practicing indoors. I mean, if Denton schedules a February match at Ohio State, he would definitely spend a few days practicing indoors regardless of the weather, but then it's right back to the outdoors before the next week's home match with whomever.

The point is, we're still not going to practice indoors EVERY DAY or nearly every day from October to April like Ohio State and Notre Dame do, so they are always going to have an advantage indoors, just like we will always have an advantage outdoors and in the heat...and the season ends (typically) outdoors and in the heat, which is one of the many reasons why there has only been one men's tennis championship team (Illinois 2003) from a school that does not touch the southern border of the US in the last FIFTY years and only three ever!

Yes, if we have money laying around, let's build indoor courts and clay courts and every other possible advantage we can think of...but right now we don't appear to have money laying around and all I'm saying is that these facilities aren't making or breaking us. Don't resurface a few of the rec courts and let them get fast or practice at Bryan more - if they are so fast, then that will help offset the big change when we do have to play indoors, and by the way indoor surfaces vary just as much as outdoors and though they are typically fast, yes, there are schools that resurface often and at high texture and do have "slow" indoor courts.

Summary: Keep recruiting and developing great players but do an even better job at it. That's how we're going to win a national championship. It's a lot cheaper and more realistic to land another Krajicek or Pollock in the next 2 years than it is to think we're going to get a multimillion dollar facility for a non revenue-generating sport in a failing economy. Plus the players actually help us win.

We're RIGHT there on the edge of being great - What if Spencer had stayed and we had landed Jenkins? I think we'd still be playing!