USC's Sarmiento Has a Big Day; ITA Indoor Day 2 Recap

I wasn't able to follow coverage throughout the day, as I was driving from Baltimore to Cleveland. But I still got periodic updates throughout the day and was very surprised by some of the stuff I saw. The day started with doubles, both main draw and consolation. Florida's Elliot Orkin and Gordon Watson took the 1st round consolation doubles title, beating Texas A&M's Junior Ore and Jackson Withrow 8-7. In the 2nd round consolation doubles bracket, the top seeds UCLA (Giron/McDonald) and Ohio State (Kobelt/Metka) both advanced to the semifinals. In the main draw, Mikelis Libietis and Hunter Reese (Tennessee) kept rolling as the top seeds, winning 8-3 over Liberty's team of Azuero and Thomas. They will play the 4th seeded team from Illinois, Tim Kopinski and Ross Guignon, in Saturday's semifinals. In the other semifinal, the host team (of Columbia) Max Schnur and Ashok Narayana will take on Flordia State's Marco Nunez and Benjamin Lock. Nunez and Lock took down the 2 seeds from Texas (Glasspool/Hess-Olsen) and both of these teams in that semifinal have now won 3 matches in order to get there (neither received a bye).

In the singles, Ray Sarmiento came down from big first set deficits twice (according to my Twitter feed) to make Saturday's semifinals. Sarmiento in the 2nd round knocked off top seeded Libietis, before taking out Vanderbilt's Gonzales Austin, both wins coming in straight sets. Sarmiento has yet to drop a set so far this tournament. Illinois earned another semifinalist after Jared Hiltzik (who will play Sarmiento in the semifinals) breezed past California's Campbell Johnson 6-3, 6-0 and beat the wildcard entrant Andrew Harris of Oklahoma. Oklahoma has three players in Friday's quarterfinals and are showing how much depth they have. However, the only Sooner to advance was Axel Alvarez after he beat both (3 seeded) Julian Lenz of Baylor 6-1, 6-0 and then defeated hometown favorite Winston Lin (7 seeded) of Columbia 6-3, 6-3. Alvarez will take on the 6 seed from UCLA, Clay Thompson, in the semifinals after Thompson beat Alvarez's teammate Guillermo Alcorta in straight sets. I knew Thompson had a solid game, but I am impressed he was able to make a semifinal run (and maybe better) here. In the singles consolation, Patrick Pradella (1 seed) and Dane Webb (imagine that, another Oklahoma player) will play each other in the second round after both advancing on walkovers. 4th seeded Nik Scholtz of Ole Miss moved onto the second round, as did Ohio State's Peter Kobelt and UCLA's Marcos Giron. The seeds on the bottom half of the draw though were not as fortunate, as 2nd seeded Austin Smith of Georgia lost to Baylor's Diego Galeano and the 3 seed George Goldhoff of Texas lost to Tennessee's Hunter Reese.

Well tomorrow should be a good day of semifinals leading into Sunday's finals. Look forward to writing about it!