SEC coach of the Year Bryan Shelton counsels junior Sam Riffice during a match earlier this season en route to the Gators winning the 2021 regular-season league title and earning the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.
'You can't be scared to make changes ... even now"
Thursday, May 6, 2021 | Men's Tennis
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By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Nearly two weeks have passed since the Florida men's tennis team, ranked No. 1 and seeded No. 1 in the Southeastern Conference Tournament, fell 4-3 to rival Tennessee in an emotionally charged final round of the league tournament at Fayetteville, Ark. The Volunteers jumped to a 3-0 lead, then withstood a furious Gators comeback and, when it was over, celebrated like they'd won a national title. Good for them. They took down the nation's top-ranked team.
In the days that followed, UF coach Bryan Shelton and his troops didn't waste a lot of time wallowing in disappointment. They took measure of what went wrong — not just against UT, but during all three days of the tournament — and went back to work.
"Any time you lose, you have to reflect and ask yourself the questions," Shelton said. " 'What do we have to do better? What do we have to do different?' "
On Saturday, the Gators (20-2) will take their home court at the Alfred Ring Tennis Complex to face South Alabama (12-7) in opening-round play of the NCAA Championships. Despite the tough loss last time out, UF received the No. 1 overall seed in the 64-team tournament field by virtue of its regular-season SEC title and a schedule that featured 15 teams in the NCAA bracket, including six matches against four of the top eight seeds.
As for the answers to Shelton's questions, well, those will be evident from the first serve against the Jaguars.
In each of their three SEC Tournament matches, the Gators found themselves in a 1-0 hole after losing the doubles point. The doubles winner takes significant momentum into the six singles matches. And when dealing with the likes of 17th-ranked Mississippi State (UF came back to win 4-2), eighth-ranked Texas A&M (UF won 4-3) and No. 5 Tennessee (the 4-3) loss, dropping the doubles point means playing with fire.
So Shelton and his staff shook up his doubles teams. He left the alone the No. 3 duo of junior Sam Riffice and freshman Ben Shelton, winners of five straight, and moved them to No. 2. He split up the No. 1 unit of fifth-year senior Johannes Ingildsen and sophomore Will Grant, and shuffled the No. 2 duo of senior team captain Duarte Vale and senior Josh Goodger after both teams dropped consecutive matches. When the Gators take the court against the Jaguars, Duarte and Ingildsen will be on Court 1, pairing two veterans with All-America credentials. On Court 3, Grant will play alongside Brian Berdusco, a seldom-seen senior who despite playing just five doubles matches (and only seven singles) this season has shown a consummate work ethic — "The beautiful thing about it is that he's ready because of how he's prepared," Shelton said — and will now be rewarded with an opportunity on the big NCAA stage. Think Kyle Trask with a racket.
All told, half of UF's doubles teams will be made up of players not competing in singles. That's highly unusual and speaks to the team's depth, but also to the coach's confidence and willingness to shake things up.
How will it pan out? We'll know soon enough, but if the Gators find themselves in Orlando for next week's NCAA Super Regional round — UF must defeat USA, then either Duke or South Florida in Sunday's second-round action at Linder Stadium — they will have accomplished this weekend's objective, and done so by getting out of their comfort zone.
"You can't be scared to make changes … even now. Especially now [at this point in the season]," said Shelton, the 2021 SEC Coach of the Year after going unbeaten in conference play to claim the regular-season title. "We weren't trending in the right direction with a couple of these [doubles] teams. We have plenty of experience, enough skill, but we needed to mix up the chemistry and see what could be done over a couple weeks to put us in a better position to win that [doubles] point throughout the tournament. Well, we did that and now we feel really good about it."
Florida didn't like what happened against Tennessee back on April 23, but the Gators believe they've done something about it. In addition to the doubles shake-up, challenges have been issued to the members of the singles lineup. More consistency is needed from Andrade. Fewer unforced errors and better decisions from Ben Shelton. And while Josh Goodger and Blaise Bicknell posted unbeaten singles records this season both can hone their focus during matches.
They'll need to if the goal of the first national championship in program history is to be realized.
"The Tennessee match was definitely disappointing, and maybe more so for me because I didn't play my best match that day," said Riffice, whose 6-4, 6-4 loss to Johannus Monday dropped the Gators into that 3-0 hole. "But it gave us a lot of ammunition and we were right back at it [at practice] that Monday. The way we responded, it reminded me of when we lost to Texas at the beginning of the year."
UF was ranked ninth when it fell 4-3 on the road against No. 6 Longhorns on Jan. 23. All the Gators did after that was go on a roll of 17 straight match victories, with 13 of them coming against ranked opponents. The first 11 were basically routs. Then came a 4-3 wake-up call win over SEC bottom-feeding Vanderbil that awakened the team in time for a five-match run against ranked foes that got the Gators to their current place.
FreshmanBen Shelton a singles record of 24-5 while playing mostly at No. 5, plus has teammed with junior Sam Riffice to go 6-1 in doubles, including five straight wins.
The take-away from the Tennessee match was a mixed bag. While the Gators showed their mettle by fighting back and putting themselves in position to win — Andrade lost the decisive third set 7-5 — falling behind 3-0 against one of the best teams in the country was hardly optimal.
In NCAA play, it could be fatal.
Plus, there's that No. 1-seed bulls-eye on the Gators' collective backs.
"I think just being the Florida Gators, we always have that target on our back," Riffice said. "Doesn't matter if we're No. 1 seed or the first match of the season. Everybody wants to beat us. But we love being the No. 1 seed. It's a great honor for our program, but it's not going to affect how we look at the tournament or even the next match."
Florida was awarded the field's No. 1 seed for a reason. The Gators' overall body of work has been outstanding, for the most part, and of the nine players Shelton will put on the court Saturday, five will be seniors and a sixth a junior. They know the Shelton culture and accept the accompanying (high) expectations.
Even the team's lone freshman is a total buy-in. Then again, of course he is. Ben Shelton, after all, is Bryan Shelton's son.
"I think if we go out there and compete at a very high level every time, and we have the right attitude, and we're working well together, we can live with whatever the outcome is," Ben Shelton said. "If that happens to be us winning — and I think if we compete at our highest level and we're working together and have the highest energy, we definitely can keeping winning — that would be great, of course. If we do happen to fall short, but still do all those things right while playing with good character and doing what is preached to us every day about what kind of people we want to be and not just tennis players, I think we'll be in a pretty good place."
