with 4-3 win over UCLA today.

Good for Vandy. We thought we had a shot at them, but they must be playing very well.

With Vandy in the finals and Georgia reaching the finals last year, that means A&M fell to an eventual finalist in the tournament the last two years.

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I dont think ATM had a shot against vandy, its almost impossible to beat a good team, when you only two good dbls teams and only your top 4 players are reliable. In those big matches you need six players to have a chance to win. What these guys have done finishing in the top 10 was a miracle. The top four guys especially newp, deserve a lot of credit.

The whole men's team deserves credit for their accomplishment. This has been the most cohesive team in several years. They trained, played and socialized together. They all had key wins and disappointing losses, you can't point to just line 5 and 6 as being unreliable. They had key victories and bad losses just like line 1-4.

Vandy has achieved success because the whole team is peaking at the same time and they also had about 400 rabid fans there. When lines 1 and 3 lost against Vandy, the whole Commodore crowd descended on the two courts where line 5 and 6 were playing and overcame our small crowd of ags with noise. Their 12th man was a big factor in the Baylor win also.

It seems to me that this years Aggie mens tennis team exceeded my expectations. We were experienced at 1-4, very inexperienced at 5-6, and only had Cameron for depth, and basically he had to play at 5 or 6. We lost a couple of matches (OSU, Miami, and Texas being the most notable examples) when we were less than full strength. We lost those matches and thats fine, but hopefully next year we will have much better depth. For this group to have as many quality wins as it did, and to end up a 10 seed, was truly remarkable in my opinion. I believe we will be better next year, but as all of us know, there are many things that can happen between now and then. Until we crank it up again, congratulations to Coaches Cass and Madden, the entire mens team, and a big thank you to our lone senior, Ryan Newport, who played this year the way you would want a senior to play.

[This message has been edited by Raven (edited 5/20/2003 7:29p).]

Just got back from Athens and as usual the tennis was great. Texas loss to Florida 4-3 was the match of the tournament untill the Illinois win today vs Vandy. Texas wins dbls point and gators win all 6 first sets in singles. Texas wins all 6 second sets never seen that before. then it came down to 2 singles and gator hits shot that hits tape and bounces over Zahri's racket for winner to go to match point.


Saw ags play as well and they fought hard but vandy was a force. bobby reynolds is just great. And all the rest arnt bad. It was a fine match.

Oh well...it was fun...

Thanks for the update Rocket. How were the Baylor Bears. I heard Vandy was chanting USA, USA, which did not sit very well with Coach Knoll and the Bear faithful. I really don't think the chant is appropriate, but I find it ironic that the final two teams standing are primarily American. It should be an interesting off season.

Raven...the bears were playing from behind from the start vs vandy...vandy wins dbls point at 2-3...then papp was a shell of former self with bad wrist...used him to keep lineup in tact....knoll looked like a spent man. He never got out of his chair more than twice and never spoke to anyone other than a few players. Obviously the strain of recent event took a toll. And yes the vandy fans did chant usa as did many of the fans watching. Present poster excluded...