Friday, March 20, 2009

#13 Carnegie Mellon at #21 Washington & Lee Match Preview

1. Nemerov/Raghavan vs. Gaffney/Watson
2. Liu/Spero vs. McCardell/Meyers
3. Mactaggart/Ljuboja vs. Becht/Brooke

1. Alex Nemerov vs. Brent Meyers
2. James Muliawan vs. Jeremy Becht
3. Bobby Mactaggart vs. Jamie McCardell
4. Jon Spero vs. Ben Fass
5. Yiran Liu vs. Jonathan Gaffney
6. Jeremy King vs. Michael Freeman

Washington & Lee is a very deceiving team this year, but I think they need to come up big in doubles if they want to pull this upset. CMU was decent in California during doubles and W&L was terrible against Mary Wash. Given those results, I think I have to give the edge to CMU in doubles. W&L traditionally plays very good dubs, but I think this year could be an exception. I would expect CMU to get at least three singles wins near the top of the lineup to be able to close the match. The bottom should have some very tough contests, and it's very unpredictable what will happen. I have to take CMU with a 5-4 or 6-3 win, but W&L could change the complexion of the match if they jump on top in doubles.