Oklahoma Men, North Carolina Women Top This Week's Rankings; Hauger Lone American Left at Grade 1 Asuncion Bowl; Eubanks, Amritraj Interviews; BNP Paribas Challenge

The Oklahoma Sooners are back at No. 1

The new team rankings were released today by the ITA, with the Oklahoma men returning to the top spot and the North Carolina women retaining their No. 1 ranking.

Oklahoma benefited from previous No. 1 Southern Cal's Saturday loss to Tulsa, returning to the No. 1 ranking they relinquished with their own surprising loss to Texas A&M on February 20th. The Sooners have another big non-conference road match on Friday against No. 8 Ohio State. Should Oklahoma win that match, it will snap the Buckeyes' NCAA record (for all sports) 200-match home winning streak.

The men's Top 10 this week:
1. Oklahoma
2. Duke
3. Illinois
4. Georgia
5. Baylor
6. Southern Cal
7. Texas
8. Ohio State
9. Mississippi
10. Texas A&M

If you would like more detail on how the men's rankings work on a week to week basis, see this post from the College Tennis Today blog.

Like Oklahoma, North Carolina took over the top spot after winning the Team Indoor, but the Tar Heels have kept their No. 1 ranking, going 4-0 since then.  Georgia dropped from No. 2 to 6 despite going 3-0 since the Team Indoor finals loss to North Carolina, but they have a chance to pick up a big road win this Friday at No. 9 Alabama. Oklahoma State vaulted into No. 8, the program's highest ranking ever.

The women's Top 10 this week:
1. North Carolina
2. Florida
3. Southern Cal
4. Baylor
5. Virginia
6. Georgia
7. Cal
8. Oklahoma State
9. Alabama
10. Stanford

There were no individual rankings released this week. For the complete team rankings, see the ITA website.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, 19 American juniors were in the draws of the ITF Grade 1 Asuncion Bowl in Paraguay, but after two rounds of singles, just one, No. 10 seed Olivia Hauger, remains.  Last week's Grade 2 champion Nathan Ponwith, seeded 15th this week, lost to Maxime Mora of France, with No. 8 seed Sameer Kumar and No. 5 seed Emil Reinberg also unable to win a match, having had byes in the first round.  Two girls seeds--No. 16 Ndindi Mwaruka and No. 11 Gabby Pollner also went out in their opening matches.

The news is better in the doubles draw, where three boys teams have reached the quarterfinals, including Sam Riffice and Vasil Kirkov, who beat No. 2 seeds Bogdan Bobrov of Russia and Felipe Cunha Silva of Portugal in the second round.

The ITF Junior website is not being updated, but results can be found at the COSAT website, with links to pdf draws at the bottom of this page.

Two interviews of interest were posted today.  Jonathan Kelley of the On the Rise blog met USTA National Collegiate Coach Stephen Amritraj last month in Chicago at the Team Indoor, with Amritraj agreeing to an email interview, which can be found here.

Lisa Stone of the Parenting Aces blog spoke to five-star recruit Christopher Eubanks, a freshman who plays No. 2 at Georgia Tech, about adjusting to college tennis in this interview for the Tennis Recruiting Network.

The BNP Paribas Challenge at Indian Wells, which earns the winner a qualifying wild card, began yesterday, with Chase Buchanan, the top seed in the men's draw, winning two matches Monday without dropping a game. Melanie Oudin, the top seed in the women's draw, gave a walkover to her opponent as did Ellie Halbauer(12), Jacqueline Cako(13), Alexa Glatch(11), Laura Gulbe(16) and Jessica Failla(19). The tournament has always been plagued by no shows and walkovers, which I guess is always going to happen when there are no points and no money to be gained be competing in it, unless of course, you win it.

The draws, which haven't been updated with Tuesday's results yet, are available here.