With a team that returns its entire starting lineup, Binghamton University’s men’s tennis team seems poised to do big things in 2009-10.
Last year’s team consisted mainly of underclassmen, giving fourth-year coach Adam Cohen an opportunity to make a run late into 2010. Under the tutelage of Cohen, the team has made tremendous strides in each of his three full years with the team. In particular, last year’s group moved up in the regional rankings from 13th to eighth, the highest mark in Binghamton’s eight years playing Division I. Along with climbing the rankings, the team defeated some schools that they had not beaten before in Brown University, Dartmouth College, Princeton University and a nationally-ranked team at the time in Drake University. In addition to a season full of impressive victories, Cohen also boasts two singles players ranked top 20 in the region in junior Sven Vloedgraven (15) and senior Moshe Levy (18), along with the doubles team of Vloedgraven and sophomore Gilbert Wong that ranks 13th in the nation.
But the Bearcats are not satisfied and after their fifth first-round exit in the past seven years from the NCAA tournament; they are looking to return with a new passion and build from their promising year.
“We just want to continue to move up and become one of the top four teams in the region this year,” Cohen said. “We want to make it into the national rankings along with winning the America East and making it into the tournament to represent our conference. For this year, those will be our three on-the-court goals.”
Cohen’s time here has warranted him and the team big expectations, and in order to push the players into working their hardest, he wanted to make sure his guys played the best of the region all season long. When making the schedule, Cohen made sure to match his guys up with the toughest squads he could find.
“This is what you want your guys to be playing against every weekend,” Cohen said. “If you can, you want your guys to be matching up with whomever will be the best competition because if you are playing the best competition, your guys will be battle-tested and understand what it takes to win matches. When you don’t play good teams, you can sometimes get by without playing your best and you may begin to gain a false sense of security that you are playing well, even if you are not.”
Last year’s schedule will go a long way in helping boost the confidence of the Bearcats. The schedule last year was tougher than it had been in years past and should prove to be a good indication that the Bearcats are capable of keeping up with, and even beating, the upper-echelon teams. Cohen expects that last year will go a good ways toward preparing the team for this year and knows the guys will have a feel for what to expect when they take the courts this fall.
“It is always a main goal to put together the best schedule for our guys and to play the best teams,” Cohen said. “This year we added Harvard and Yale, both of whom were nationally ranked last year, and we also added Penn so that we are now playing all eight teams from the Ivy League. We also added a team in Western Michigan, who was a NCAA-qualifying team last season, and we also host Radford, who was top-50 last year. This is what we want every week, the best competition.”
It is rare that such a successful team returns its entire starting roster, but the Bearcats are in the position of being favorites to repeat in the AE and, for the first time in their eight-year history playing Division I, advance beyond the first round of the NCAA tournament.
“It is a whole new year,” Cohen said. “We just want to go out and work harder than everyone else. If we do that every day throughout the fall and into the spring, it will put us in a position to win the conference.”
For the Bearcats, practice began last week and the team will open match play on Friday, Sept. 11, at the Cornell Fall Invitational and the Virginia Invitational.