The #2 seed (Alex Domijan from Virginia) was defeated in the first round by Pepperdine's Sebastian Fanselow and the #1 seed (Steve Johnson of USC) defeated Jeff Dadamo of A&M. SMU's Artem Baradach was also defeated in the first round by USC's Daniel Nguyen.
The highlight of the day came when Tulsa's Marcelo Arevalo was defaulted in his singles match with Virginia's Michael Shabaz. Seems that Arevalo was guilty of three audible obscenities and was rightfully defaulted.
Sounds like they are running a tight ship out there in California...
9 comments:
You might add that the default came during the THIRD game of the match! The Tulsa player must have really been wired for that match.
I guess he was counting on his "Tulsa Home Cooking" but it wasn't there.
Imagine that!! Look what happens when Tulsa ventures outside their home courts and doesn't have their home-cooking Referee around to take care of things.
Marcelo Arevalo actually got defaulted after the second game of the match. Here's the write-up from Zoo Tennis:
Men's No. 3 seed Michael Shabaz of Virginia certainly appreciated having to play only two games against Tulsa's Marcelo Arevalo, who was defaulted for three audible obscenities. In the very first game, Arevalo let loose a loud string of Spanish that contained a couple of common vulgarities, and he was given a point penalty, which gave Shabaz the game. In the next game, several line disputes arose, one of which was an overrule by the chair against Arevalo. During the ensuing argument, Arevalo was given a game penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct, making it 2-0 Shabaz.
Men's tournament referee Jim Russell explained the final penalty, which is loss of the match.
"The third was another audible obscenity and unfortunately Anthony (the chair umpire) speaks fluent Spanish, so I defaulted him. That's the procedure: point, game, default. I hated to do it, but that's what we've got to do."
Russell, who has been the tournament referee at scores of ITA and NCAA tournaments for many years, couldn't recall a similar incident.
I bet Coach Westbrook wasn't even on court yet to coach his player. I can just imagine his look when we walked out and saw his player was already done.
This is exactly why Tulsa needs to hire a competent Referee to work their home matches. A competent Referee would ensure his subordinate chair umpires would be unbiased towards all players. Under the current Referee's direction, he will reiterate "remember who's paying you" when he catches you making a ruling against the home team. It doesn't do them any favors to get away with piss poor behavior issues at home and then have to pay the consequences when they venture out to play at other venues. It serves them right for this to happen.
Interesting about the overrule. I have witnessed numerous incidents where the Tulsa players make bad calls, but we, as chair officials, are under constant pressue to not overrule them. If we do, we won't be asked to work future matches.
Speaking of Tulsa home cookin'. Is there any basis to the rumors that Tulsa failed to get the Regional Host site because of the flury of stories circulating in the ITA world about the bizarre rulings by the Tulsa hand-picked Home Referee? This Referee was rounding up officials before the selection show and saying Tulsa was 90% sure they would be a Host site. Hmmmm!!!
Teams and even officials will have second thoughts before rolling into Tulsa for future matches there. Who wants to get involved in potential sticky situations brought by the referee they use over there.
When are you going to spill the beans about Sara's favorite coach. Does this mean her contract won't be renewed either?
I wonder if coach Westbrook had his tube of Vaseline in his pocket?
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