NCAA Championships
Super Regionals: What to Know About the Sweet 16
by Rhiannon Potkey and Shannon Wrege, 9 May 2019
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Major upsets were at a minimum through the first two rounds of the NCAA Division I Championships, with the top eight seeds in both the men’s and women’s bracket all advancing.
The result is a power-packed lineup for the Sweet 16 on Friday and Saturday, which marks the introduction of the Super Regional format to Division I college tennis.
Rather than advancing straight to the final site like has been done in the past, teams will be competing on campus sites across the country. The change was made to help generate local support for programs and provide more flexibility for any weather-related delays.
The 32 remaining men’s and women’s teams are playing to earn a spot in the quarterfinals at the USTA National Tennis Center in Orlando, Florida May 16-19.
College tennis fans received some great news on Tuesday, when it was announced that Tennis Channel and the USTA, in conjunction with the NCAA, entered into a three-year partnership to make the network the exclusive television home of the NCAA Division I Championships.
The agreement begins with this year’s events, which includes the team championship matches and the individual championship matches. Tennis Channel will show more than 50 hours of live matches, with live coverage every day of the 10-day competition in Orlando. The network will provide the most hours of coverage in tournament history.
Before network producers can begin studying storylines to use on air, the Sweet 16 remains to be played.
Two unseeded teams advanced in both the men’s and women’s brackets this year (Oklahoma and Cal men, UCF and Texas A&M women). Four schools have both their men’s and women’s programs still remaining, including three in the Pac-12 Conference (UCLA, USC, Stanford and North Carolina)
Here are few other notes and statistics to ponder before the first serve is hit on Friday, with input from our sister site SLAM.Tennis (@slam.tennis), which is the place to be to follow all the action during the NCAA Tournament.
