The tech womens coach is basically Kleinecke jr...was a high school coach that lucked into the job, does a pretty good job of recruiting above average American girls but doesn't do much with them.
I agree that OU and OK St. and Nebraska are getting a lot better. I think we are still a better team than those three but that will not last long and I would not be surprised to lose to one or two of them this year. Missouri will be terrible again. Not sure how they got into this conversation.
Luckily for us (and for Kleinecke), the rest of the conference is pretty awful. We will finish 5th just by showing up. If we finish worse than 3rd, it will be because NU, OU and OSU are much improved and not because we are bad. Like I said before, we should be improved with the Potgieter upgrade and hopefully getting Janelle back. The problem, as usual, will be our soft spots at the bottom of the lineup. If we had a decent 5 & 6 we would be a top-25 and maybe a sweet 16 team. As it stands, the best we can hope for is a finish around 25. Hard to do better than that when you have incredible pressure to win at 1-3 and not much help down low, especially against teams like t.u., Baylor, and SMU who are as good or better up top and crush us down low.
I think Kleinecke's window of opportunity to do something special has passed. Going fast are the days when we could recruit t.u.'s scraps and finish 3rd just because there weren't 4 good teams in conference. OU and OSU are pulling even and about to pass us with the young go-getters they have hired. In state and out of conference SMU and TCU are now stronger programs and Rice pulling even. I'll be curious to see how many rabbits Kleinecke can keep pulling out of his hat.
I love college tennis and will continue to support both teams as much as I can, but I am much more interested in the men this year, and I think they have a shot to make some noise.
[This message has been edited by Harry Dunne (edited 12/29/2010 6:31p).]