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The team event of the 2022 NCAA Division I Championships is racing into the Sweet 16. This weekend, the best college players in the nation will compete for a ticket to Champaign, Illinois for the Elite Eight.
All 32 of these teams won two rounds of NCAA action last weekend. This stage of the tournament is called Super Regionals, with teams hosting one match on either Friday or Saturday.
Winners from this weekend will travel to the University of Illinois for the quarterfinals of the tournament onward, running from May 19-22. The NCAA individual singles and doubles tournaments immediately follow from May 23-28.
The Women's Favorites
Pepperdine (22-6) has the highest UTR Power 6 at 65.15 (the UTR Power 6 rating is calculated by adding all of the individual UTR Ratings of the Top 6 players on the team). The Waves are seeded No. 8 and are hosting a No. 9-seeded Miami squad on Saturday.
The top seed is North Carolina (Power 6 Rating 64.55), which breezed through the round of 64 and round of 32 to earn the right to host No. 16 seeded Florida. The Tar Heels (26-2) were undefeated for the majority of the season, losing only to Duke in the final match of the regular season, and to Virginia in the ACC Championships.
Texas (64.74) is the defending champion and in the lower half of the bracket, winning last year’s team title in a dramatic final over Pepperdine. Seeded No. 4 and with a 22-4 record, Texas is led by Universal Tennis Ambassador Peyton Stearns, who is ranked No. 2 in the country. The Longhorns are entering the tournament with a lot of momentum; they dominated at the Big 12 Championships and are riding an eight-match win streak.
Texas hosts Auburn (62.04) in the first match of the day on Friday at 1 p.m. EST in Austin. Auburn (22-5) is the No. 13 seed and the roster also features a Universal Tennis ambassador in Carolyn Ansari, who plays at the No. 3 position. It’s the third time Auburn has reached the Sweet 16 as the team seeks its first-ever Elite 8 appearance. Auburn squeaked by Georgia Tech in the Round of 32, fighting back from a 3-1 deficit to advance in a 4-3 thriller.
All of the teams in the women's Sweet 16 are Top 16 teams except for unseeded Vanderbilt, who knocked out No. 10-seeded Ohio State. Vanderbilt will try to upset No. 6 Texas A&M (63.66), which features newly signed Universal Tennis ambassador Carson Branstine at the No. 1 position.
The Men's Favorites
Three men’s teams notched upsets last weekend with unseeded Stanford taking out No. 14 seed Harvard, Florida State beating No. 11 Georgia, and NC State ending No. 16 Middle Tennesse’s bid.
The top seed is TCU (80.79), which has four ranked singles players and the No. 1-ranked doubles team in the country (Luc Fomba and Jake Fearnley). TCU (25-4) was upset in the Big 12 Championships by Baylor but bounced back to cruise through the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament last weekend. The Horned Frogs host North Carolina State.
Ohio State (26-3), the No. 4 seed at the bottom of the draw, holds the highest Power 6 Rating at 82.40 and will host a No. 13-seeded Southern California. Six Buckeyes are ranked in singles, including No. 9 Cannon Kingsley, No. 13 Matej Vocel, No. 19 JJ Tracy, No. 46 James Trotter, No. 120 Robert Cash, and No. 122 Jake Van Emburgh, and two teams are ranked in doubles including Vocel and Cash at No. 2.
The Florida Gators (82.16) are the defending champions and are seeded No. 2. They take a 25-2 record into their Sweet 16 matchup against No. 15 North Carolina on Friday in Gainesville. The Gators roster is also stacked with the No. 2 college player in the nation Ben Shelton as well as 2021 NCAA individual champion Sam Raffice. They also boast three seeded doubles teams.
All of the matches will be live-streamed on the TennisONE App, which is the official home of the NCAA Championships, from the start of the team event on May 6 through to the end of the individual and doubles tournaments on May 28.
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