Men's tennis NCAA tourney outlook: Scouting Columbia and more

Apr 30, 2025, 3:11 PM

So as you should know by now, the Clemson men's tennis team broke the program's 11 year NCAA tourney drought by making the field this year. They were a #2 seed and slotted in New York City at the regional hosted by Columbia. We got Quinnipiac as our 1st round opponent.

https://www.ncaa.com/brackets/tennis-men/d1/2025

Full bracket ^

The ACC got 5 of the top 11 seeds.

Columbia is ranked #8 in the nation and will play Binghampton in round 1 while we play Quinnipiac.

We lucked out with our #3 seed because Quinnipiac is one of the weakest teams in the whole field. Columbia benefits from their location and the NCAA trying to regionalize the first few rounds, even at the expense of fair seeding sometimes. So we did not draw a #3 from the 33-48 ranking range which would have been a challenging match. Instead, we got a match that should serve as a good warmup.

Scouting Columbia:

Columbia spent the whole year in the top 10. They made the Elite Eight last year with almost the same squad. They were also #8 going into last year's tournament and were pushed by Michigan in their own regional round of 32, barely squeaking out a 4-3 win. They followed that up with another 4-3 squeaker at home in the Sweet 16 over #9 Arizona.

This year Columbia is 17-4. Their best wins are over #7 San Diego, #8 NC State (who we lost to at home), #17 Duke and over #21 Harvard. They have 10 wins over top 50 teams.

Their four losses: 5-2 to #1 Wake Forest, 4-1 to #4 Stanford, 4-2 to #5 Ohio State and the lone "bad loss", 4-1 at #25 Pepperdine.

Projected Columbia lineup:

1. #2 Michael Zheng, Jr. Montville, NJ (reigning NCAA singles runner-up)
2. #52 Nicholas Kotzen, Jr. Short Hills, NJ
3. Max Westphal, Sr. Paris France
4. #84 Hugo Hashimoto, Sr. San Jose, CA
5. Sachin Palta, Jr. Forest Hills, NY
6. Thanaphat Boosarawongse, Gr. Bangkok, Thailand

As you can see it's a deeply experienced team, with everyone being at least a junior. Zheng is one of the best two players in the nation.

They play very well on their home courts, which are on the very northern tip of Manhattan and overlook the Bronx skyline to the north. It will be a tall task for us to knock them off.

One reason I can point to why we may have a chance.... while Columbia did play a lot of top teams back in January and February, it has now been over two months since the last time they played a top team. They have been playing Ivy Leaue teams since March. And while that is a solid league, it still lacks the punch of the ACC. Meanwhile we have been playing the likes of Wake, NC State, Duke, FSU etc and are more battle tested recently.

Our first match against Quinnipiac is at 10 am on Friday and the 2nd match is at 1pm on Saturday.

If we were to pull of the upset, we would advance to play the winner of the #9 NC State regional, which includes the Pack and Georgia. So likely to Raleigh but if Georgia pulled off the upset there, then a Clemson vs Georgia sweet 16 matchup would be in the cards. Probably in Athens.

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Re: Men's tennis NCAA tourney outlook: Scouting Columbia and more

I have read some other commentators say that Columbia can be beaten in doubles

Video of the guys checking out New York

Men's tennis NCAA tourney outlook: Scouting Columbia and more

Re: Men's tennis NCAA tourney outlook: Scouting Columbia and more

I have read some other commentators say that Columbia can be beaten in doubles

Video of the guys checking out New York

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