Tag: tim sweeney

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Intercollegiates Wrap-Up

Scott denies Munoz a 4th straight title.

Here’s a wrap-up of this past weekend’s USA Racquetball Intercollegiate championships, held at Arizona State University in Tempe.

R2sports link: https://www.r2sports.com/tourney/home.asp?TID=30466

A reminder: we don’t load this data into the database at current, but we do keep track of past champions for informational purposes. At the bottom i’ve got some school-based factoids including the 2019 champs.

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On the Men’s Singles #1 side, a couple of upsets in the 16s but the top 6 seeds all advanced. In the quarters, only one upset with #5 Jacob Matthews of ECU taking out 4th seeded Nick Buring of Oregon State.

In the semis…both top seeds advanced with ease, with #1 Erik Garcia of CSU-Pueblo topping #5 Matthews 3,7 and #2 Alejandro Almada from Texas topping #3 seed Jeremy Dixon from Baldwin-Wallace 2,5 to setup the anticipated final.

In the final, #1 Garcia downed #2 Almada in a tiebreaker to win the title. Garcia repeats as champion, becoming just the 10th male to hold more than one intercollegiate title.

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On the Women’s side, the top 8 seeds all advanced to the quarters. There, similarly to the Men’s side just one upset in the #5/#4 match with Costa Rican international Melania Mela Sauma Masis (playing at her home courts at ASU) topping 4th seeded Lexi York from Oregon State in a tiebreaker.

In the semis, #1 seed Carla Muñoz Montesinos of CSU-Pueblo knocked out Sauma in two games, while #3 seeded Hollie Scott (playing out U of Washington), continued her solid form lately and topped 2nd seeded (and my pre-tourney pick) Erika Manilla from N. Arizona in dominant fashion 9,4.

In the final…Scott dominated Munoz for the win 2,8 to deny Munoz a chance at 4 straight intercollegiate titles.

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On the doubles side:
– Mens doubles went to Garcia/Le from CSU-Pueblo, who downed the Texas pair of Almada and his partner Jerry Yang.

– Women’s doubles went to the CSU-Pueblo team of Riveros/Laime, who downed OSU’s York & Natalie Lorati in the final.

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Some quick facts coming out of this event:
– Garcia’s Men’s #1 win represents the 8th Men’s #1 title for players from CSU-Pueblo (formerly known as the University of Southern Colorado). They still trail University of Memphis (formerly Memphis State University) which had 12 Men’s #1 winners in their history.

– Half of the now 47 Men’s #1 intercollegiate title winners have come from just three schools: Memphis, CSU-Pueblo and Southwest Missouri state.

– Tim Sweeney remains the sole player in history to win four consecutive intercollegiate titles, a feat Munoz was attempting to match.

– Scott’s victory for University of Washington represents the 25th distinct college to provide a #1 women’s winner. Memphis remains the #1 school for Women as well, providing 7 titlists.

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Team winners:

Overall: 1. CSU-Pueblo 2. Oregon State. 3. BYU
Mens: 1. Oregon State. 2. BYU. 3. CSU-Pueblo.
Womens: 1. CSU-Pueblo. 2. Oregon State 3. BYU

CSU-Pueblo wins its 2nd ever overall title. Oregon State has been the dominant overall team leader here, having won 11 of the 16 overall team titles awarded since 2004.

Oregon State wins its 3rd ever Men’s Title. They have a long way to go to catch CSU-Pueblo & Memphis here, as those two schools combined have won 31 of the 47 ever Men’s team awards given out.

CSU-Pueblo wins its 1st ever Women’s title. Memphis, BYU and Oregon State have dominated here historically, winning 31 of the 45 ever women’s team titles given out.

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A side note: I know this tourney runs similarly to a tennis tournament, where schools provide teams seeded 1-6 … but the state of collegiate racquetball right now is such that the top rball colleges (specifically, CSU-Pueblo) are contributing such more dominant talent than other schools that I wonder if there wouldn’t be value in changing the format so that more players from the top schools could compete in the #1 division.

To wit, the #2 female player from CSU-Pueblo was current LPRT #10 ranked player Adriana Riveros and their #3 female player was Brenda Laime Jalil, currently ranked 16th on tour. Both obliterated their respective draws, barely being scored upon (Riveros won the #2 draw giving up a total of 9 points in four matches, and Laime won the #3 final 0,0). It was the same to a lesser extent on the Men’s side, with Lukas Le representing CSU-Pueblo in the Men’s #2 and likely being the 2nd or 3rd best men’s player in Tempe. Perhaps he was the sole example of a player who may very well have made the semis or higher in the Men’s #1, but my point remains. International competitions feature two players from each country; maybe intercollegiates should as well.

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Fun Facts and more Analysis of Moscoso’s big win

Moscoso the big winner this past weekend.

Now that we’re all recovered from the weekend, lets take a quick look at Luis Conrrado Moscoso Serrudo‘s big win at the Open Bolivia American Irisgrand slam event.

Match Report for the tourney: http://rball.pro/273997

– In the final, he topped Rocky Carson (6),14,2. But the evolution of that final score was pretty fascinating to watch:
o Moscoso got out to a 6-0 lead.
o Carson scored 15 unanswered to win 15-6 in game 1.
o Carson got out to a 10-3 lead in game 2, at which point it looks like Carson is going to cruise to an easy 2-game win.
o Moscoso came all the way back, saving a couple of match points
o then Moscoso cruised to the 11-2 tiebreaker win.

So basically the final was a series of three huge streaks:
o Moscoso was 6-0 in points to start the game, then Rocky took a TO.
o Carson then went 25-3 in points
o Moscoso then went 23-6 to finish the match

I found this to be a pretty amazing set of streaks. As an outside observer, I thought Rocky tired in the tie-breaker while Moscoso got energized. There were several balls left up that I just don’t think he had the energy to get to and he didn’t adjust to the lob-Z that Moscoso settled on to run off point after point. Age, altitude, and court time (it was Rocky’s 8th match on the weekend) all perhaps contributing factors … as well as the letdown of Rocky being in complete control of the match and letting Moscoso take Game 2. But hand it to Conrrado, who found another gear, just as he did in the 11-0 tiebreaker win over Landa in the quarters.

– Moscoso becomes the 40th ever IRT pro tournament champ. He joins Charlie Pratt, Alex Landa , Sebastian Franco, and Andree Parrilla as first time IRT tour winners in the last two seasons. He also joins an interesting group of one-tournament winners in the IRT’s history, which includes Ben Croft, Rich Wagner , Mike Guidry, Tim Sweeney, and outdoor legend Brian Hawkes.

Here’s a full list of all the winners on tour: http://rball.pro/CD8F49

– He becomes the first Bolivian to make a final, let alone win a tournament. He’s the second South American to win a tournament (Sebastian Franco was the first), and just the third South American to make a final ( Mario Mercado and Franco being the first two). Its only the fourth time in IRT history that a Bolivian has even made the quarters; The first ever was MoMo Zelada making the Quarters of the Nov 2015 Atlanta, then Zelada made another quarter a few months later, and Moscoso of course made the 2017 quarters where he lost to Kane.

See this link for quarters/semis/finalists just by country: http://rball.pro/F834D0

– Moscoso represents just the 5th ever country to have won an IRT event: USA, Canada, Mexico, Colombia and now Bolivia.

– Moscoso beat the #1, #2 and #3 seeds en route to winning the event. That’s kind of hard to do. The only real way to do this is to enter a tournament as a specific seed that feeds into either the #2 or #3 seed early and then beat the #1 seed in the final. Moscoso entered as #23, which played into the #10, #7, #2 seed quarter. Jack Huczek also accomplished this when he won his first event as the #10 seed in Jan 2002 in Boston. And Kane Waselenchuk , when he won as the #39 seed, also ended up taking the same seed “line” as Conrrado did, beating #26, #23 and #10 to qualify, then #7, #2, #3, and #1 to take the title.

– Moscoso, as the #23 seed, becomes the 2nd highest seed on record to win an event. He trails Kane Waselenchuk , who won his first tournament back after his 2-year hiatus in Sept 2008 as the #39 seed. These two are also the two highest seeds to even make a final, and #23 is the 3rd highest ever known seed to make a semi (Rodrigo Montoya made a semi as a #29 seed in one of his first ever pro evets).

Highest Seeds Report throughout all of history: http://rball.pro/EBD417

– Conrrado wins a pro event in just his 3rd ever pro tour appearance, which is by far and away the fewest appearances prior to winning that has ever been seen. I’m not sure we’ll ever see this again, unless there’s some international phenom who basically wins the first ever pro event he plays. Here’s some of the other fastest known runs to a first title:
o Kane, Cliff Swain and Sudsy Monchik all won their 7th ever pro appearance.
o Marty Hogan won his 8th appearance.
o Jack won his 13th ever appearance.

You can run this analysis by selecting any player then running the “Player Firsts..” report. It will give their tour debut, first win and the number of tournaments inbetween (along with ages at each event).

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Anyway, hope you enjoyed some stat-based facts about Moscoso’s big win! Hope to see him more on tour in the future.

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International Racquetball Tour Federación Boliviana De Raquetbol – Febora