I still hate you Mike Bianco

Saturday's game was a complete tease. The back and forth was almost unbearable. This is how bad it was: I almost though Cody Satterwhite was a good pitcher. Then, the collapse happened. That is the thing about Cody. He looks great for three innings, but then he collapses.

I'll agree with The Ghost of Jay Cutler's assessment. If Bittle's Saturday performance was not enough to prove his worthiness for the Ferris Award, I do not know what is. If I had a vote, The Bittler would get the award hands down.

I'm very proud of Scott. He has fought back after a very tough 2007 campaign. I think he should start our Wednesday game versus Georgia.

Here's the tournament bracket:

Session 1

(2) LSU versus (7) USC at 11:00

(3) Florida versus (6) Vanderbilt at 1:00

Session 2

(1) Georgia versus (8) Ole Miss at 5:00

(4) Kentucky versus (5) Alabama at 8:00

Of course, the losers of session 1 play the next day. The winners of session 1 play the following day. The same is true for the other session as well.

Come on Mike, please do not screw this up.

May Madness

That's right. It's that time of the year again, when all attention turns away from life as we know it and to the biggest, most hyped tournament of the year--the NCAA Tennis Tournament. After the first two rounds, which were held in baseball-style regionals, the remaining teams are ready to head to Tulsa, OK, for the Sweet 16. Yes, that includes Ole Miss (see the updated bracket).

Oxford Regional: I'll begin with a run-down of the Oxford Regional. The Rebs played the Marist Red Foxes in the first round of the tournament. I guess the closest basketball analogy is a 15 vs. 2 opening round game (and not one of those close ones). Demoralized fairly quickly, the Foxes were retired within two hours of play as multiple Rebels dropped only a single game or none at all. Afterwards, Vanderbilt and Indiana fought through a down-to-the-wire, four-hour-long match that finally ended when Vandy's Vijay Paul came back from three match points in the third set tiebreaker to live another day.

But only one more day: The Commodores moved on to face the Rebels, who won their regular season meeting 6-1, on Sunday. In doubles, Erling and Jonas just couldn't find their groove to get a break and dropped 8-6. On Court 2 after coming back from two breaks down, Matthias and Bram lost a tough tiebreaker to give Vandy the lead 1-0. The Rebels returned to the court for singles "with a little revenge" on their minds, according to Jonas Berg. The Rebs swept through the first set on every court and won on the bottom four courts with no visible struggle to advance to the Sweet 16.


What lies ahead: As it stands, the Rebs are set to play on Friday morning against North Carolina, whom we should handle with relative ease, having already taken them down 4-1 early in the season. In their second round match against Duke, UNC won via the doubles point and courts 4, 5, and 6 in singles (i.e. the same way Ole Miss frequently operates). That won't happen with Berg, Norberg, and ten Berge rounding out the bottom half--in any order. That would pit the Rebels against the winner of Georgia and Pepperdine, both renowned tennis programs.

Overall bracket: Claiming the top five seeds were Virginia, Ohio State, UCLA, Georgia, and Ole Miss, respectively. How do I feel about these seedings, specifically that Ole Miss and Georgia have reversed positions from their actual national rankings? Well, I have no problem with the selection committee's (I'm assuming a similar entity exists for tennis.) choice of Georgia over us. They're a pretty stacked team, and we tend to have a tough time against them. In fact, I'd prefer a six or seven seed just to get us to the other side of the bracket so that we could avoid Georgia and Virginia until the finals. Ohio St., UCLA, and USC present no problem in my mind--all year, I've wanted a rematch against Ohio St., and I just generally have no respect for teams in the PAC-10.

So far, my bracket is panning out far better than its March equivalent, as expected. The noticeable absence of upsets makes the task far simpler. In fact, only one host team did not advance to the Sweet 16. Who is it? In the unfortunate twist of the tournament, Tulsa, the team hosting every remaining match, missed out on this incredible opportunity for home-court advantage. Isn't it ironic...don't you think?

More specifically, Scandanavia

As promised by Ivory Tower, I bring more discussion of the Ole Miss SEC Champion tennis team. The Rebs got sweet revenge on Sunday afternoon after a series of unfortunate events led to a loss at home to the Gators in the regular season. The semifinal against the Volunteers of Tennessee deserves little note, as the match went basically as expected (and because it is almost completely overshadowed by the final). The most important point of that match had to be on Court 1 in doubles, where our sixth-ranked duo finally showed up after a streak of less-than-stellar matches with an 8-1 thrashing. This sign of resurgence in the team brought a sense of hope for going all the way.

In the final round, the Rebs expectedly snagged the doubles point, but Florida's absurdly strong singles play provided little comfort (see: wins over Ole Miss earlier in the season and Georgia the day before). At this point, you start counting matches and guessing the optimal/most likely way of winning. Yes, Jonas Berg will smoke his opponent on Court 4 (more on this Swede-nom (that's Swede-phenom) to come). Kalle Norberg can almost certainly be counted on for the third point. Where's that last one we need? Jakob could certainly do it, as could Erling or Robbye (if he's having a good day).

Well, that was about right. Jonas once again finished his match expediently, while Matthias fell on Court 2. Kalle had to fight for our third point but came through as expected. With Robbye in a third set, the final point was likely going to come from Court 1 or 6. Jakob took the second set to a tiebreaker but was beaten out by a matter of minutes by fellow senior Tveit, who clinched the match with a win over the second-ranked, cheating (see third paragraph) Greg Ouellette.

That one match is huge for the Rebels going into Regionals--too often were we winning via the doubles point and courts 4-6 in singles. While a win may in fact be a win, RSC endorses the opinion that greater margins of victory yield much "better" wins. Strong play in the top half of the line-up will make the Rebels an extremely potent force to deal with in contention for a national championship.


The events of Saturday (i.e. the Gators' win over Georgia) posit the question of whether the Rebel squad could have overcome the deep, experienced Bulldog team. Let's check this out analytically, court-for-court, based primarily on Georgia's performance on Saturday. I will apply a loose form of the transitive property in this reasoning, so bear with me.
In singles, Erling still clearly wins on Court 1--based on how well he played and on Ouellette's win the day before. The Rebels likely drop Courts 2 and 3 to the Dogs, but of course take 4. That puts us at 2-2 for those of you keeping score at home. I believe that we would be able to take the last two singles matches for the win, but for the sake of argument, say we split those two. In doubles, Erling and Jonas would have laid the smack down on anyone had they played as they did; and based on a very explicit use of the aforementioned transitive relation, Tucker and Jakob would have taken Court 3 easily to seal the deal. Summary: On Sunday, Ole Miss played well enough to beat just about anyone the NCAA could throw in their way.

Now, the Rebs have a couple of weeks to recuperate before Regionals (which will certainly be hosted in Oxford) and barring an apocalypse, will head to Tulsa for the Finals. [Clarification for baseball fans: In tennis, the Super-Regional stage is skipped in favor of a large equivalent of the College World Series.]

The Key to Ole Miss Athletic Success: Western Europe

I assume that 25 Days A Week will have something more substantive for you in the near future, but until he does it falls on me to note that Ole Miss won an SEC Championship in ... something.

Yes! Tennis! I knew it!

Using a roster composed, primarily, of guys he picked up in a techno club Amsterdam, Billy Chadwick has won himself another SEC Title (Men's Tennis won the SEC Tournament in 1997, as well). In a fitting end to the tournament, the Rebs' top-ranked singles player, Erling Tveit (whose name is spelled, honestly, about as phonetically as possible), won his match against some unknown Floridian to suspend play and take the tournament.

So, warm congratulations to the Men's Tennis Team (and also the Women's Team! You did your best! Go Title IX!). Palmer-Salloum (yep, that's the Tennis Complex you've never heard of) will likely play host to regional and super-regional play in the NCAA Tournament. Regionals will be held the weekend of Commencement, which works out well for Erling's parents (two flights from Oslo costs a pretty krone - Norwegian currency, which, according to Google will fetch you about $0.20).