[HT: 25DaW for this much needed good news. Tennis, y'all.]

That's right. In the form of SEC Indoor individual competitions, tennis season has made its long-awaited return for a Rebel fanbase so direly in need of success of any kind. I know the question that most of our fanbase asks about our tennis team is "Just how good are we?" Though I haven't seen us play this year and I generally take the results of preseason indoor competitions with a handful of grains of salt*, I'm happy to say that we should return to our proper place competing for the SEC title after a season plagued by unfortunate circumstances.

The biggest addition to the team is big-serving South African Nik Scholtz, who was on campus last year but wasn't cleared by the NCAA to play. Scholtz's run to the semifinals of the singles competition this weekend included a win over Kentucky's No. 2 player. He looks to leap right to the top of the line-up and play No. 1 singles for us. Therein lies his value: This allows Marcel to play No. 2 and prevents everyone else from having to scoot up a spot after Tucker's graduation. I expect Nik to be a solid No. 1 this year, but the top spot in an SEC schedule is not an easy place to be.

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It's that time of year again.  The weather is dangerously cold in the opinion of most Mississippians, students are soon to be returning to class at our fair university, and--most importantly--tennis season is beginning.  Those of you who don't appreciate the significance of tennis season, the perpetual feeling of disappointment provided by every other Ole Miss sport must be more enjoyable for you than it is for me.  Over the past fifteen years, tennis has been our best opportunity to cheer to a successful team.  Oh, and tennis is awesome, so I'll see what I can do to help prepare you for this year's edition of Ole Miss tennis.

Newcomers: Everyone returns from last year's squad except for Harry Fowler and Jaime Vazquez-Catoria, the latter of whom saw little playing time despite a thin line-up.  So our only real loss was the lone American of the team.  In typical Ole Miss fashion, we brought in another Texan, freshman Alex Durham, to fill the role of token American.  With his short stature and curly head of hair (at least until Spring Break), it could be entirely possible not to notice the absence of Fowler, who transferred to Rice.  In high school, Durham and his doubles partner were runners-up in the state of Texas, which sounds impressive enough.  On an interesting but unrelated note, his twin brother will play linebacker for Ohio State next year.

Filling the other void on the 8-man roster is Swede Johan Backstrom.  Hailing from the hometown of senior Kalle Norberg, Johan will help return some much-needed Swedishness to the team.  Some of you may remember speculation about recruiting a real stud from South Africa, Nicolaas Scholtz.  Unfortunately, he wasn't cleared by the NCAA this season (not sure of the reason), but I believe we can look forward to his playing for us starting next year.

Old guys: A standout in his first three years, Kalle Norberg will be returning from injury to bolster the top half of our line-up.  He will be aided by Marcel Theimann (now ranked 32) and Tucker Vorster (107), who both got an unexpected amount of top-level experience last year.  The only other preseason individual ranking for the Rebels comes form Marcel and his twin Christoph, who are currently ranked second in the nation in doubles.  While such a high ranking is exciting, I usually put about as much faith in tennis preseason rankings as in those of football, that is to say not much. (As evidence, there are seven (7!) Cavaliers of Virginia currently ranked ahead of Tucker.)  Rounding out the line-up are sophomores Adrian Forberg Skogeng and Jonas Lutjen.  With Kalle returning, they will have the luxury of not having to escalate in the line-up with a full year of experience.

Overall, I expect a lot of good things from this team.  Devin Britton will be the first to tell you that they'll outperform their current ranking.  He tweets, "Watch out for the Ole Miss Rebel Black Bear tennis team this year. 18 preseason is an underestimation. Look for them to do big things."  After the SEC Indoor individual tournament this weekend, we should know a bit more about our new guys, but Kalle and the Thiemann twins will not be competing there.  I believe the T-bros are still hanging out in Deutschland, though I'm not sure why the elder Swede is sitting this one out.

For the first time that I can remember, we aren't losing any major contributors--a feat that has surprisingly been accomplished by some of our SEC foes each of the past few years.  Make the jump for a brief look at some of our SEC competition.

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I have a bit of free time, so I'll give a brief recap of the week in men's tennis.  I'll discuss some line-up changes and preview tomorrow's match against the Ohio State University.  First comes a recap of the weekend.

The match against Auburn on Friday saw the brothers Thiemann struggle individually but fortunately with little consequence.  Auburn managed to get two points from us, both against the twins.  Our third German, freshman Jonas Lutjen, completed a third set comeback to give us a more convincing 5-2 win.  Unfortunately, his efforts came after the match had been decided, so he has still not shown he can play consistently under pressure.  Adrian did not play great but still got a convincing win against the consensus award winner for biggest douche-nozzle of the past three years.  Tucker came away looking great on Friday, as did fellow Anglophone Harry Fowler.  Harry absolutely couldn't miss a shot, a stark contrast to his play on Sunday...

Against Alabama, Harry could not hit the court.  Having missed the majority of the match, I am relying on others' accounts, but it seems that Harry continually positioned himself well in points but regularly missed his shots.  We can only hope Dr. Jekyll shows up tomorrow (or perhaps Hyde is a better tennis player).  Adrian did what he should on court 6 against lesser teams and took care of business, while Tucker finished his weekend of steady play.  Marcel had to retire, apparently due to heat exhaustion or something related, which is particularly unfortunate because his opponent has had lingering shoulder issues that likely would have resurfaced had the match continued.  The real story of the match came on Court 3 with a brief cameo from Court 4.  After losing two tiebreakers in a match that had no business even being that close, Jonas chucked his racket and cost Chris a crucial point penalty in the third set.  Fortunately, Christoph pulled it out, and no harm was done.  All I will say regarding this is that Jonas seriously needs to find some sort of consistency and Christoph better get healthy.  More after the jump.

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[EDIT:  Boom!  Front-paged!  - IT]

On Friday, the Rebels faced an extremely experienced Georgia Bulldogs squad, whose seniors have been on a pair of national championship teams.  The difference between this year’s line-up for Georgia essentially consists of having one freshman in the bottom of the line-up with everyone else returning.  While we lost this opening round match, I think Rebel tennis fans should take a lot of positive thoughts away from both that loss and the subsequent victory over SEC West rival Alabama.  (I use the term very loosely, as they or LSU will be the only contenders in the West but would both need an apocalypse to win it.)

Knowing nothing about the team from Louisville whom we faced today and not having stayed to see that match, I will reserve judgment on that contest, though the close win was absolutely thrilling.  Following the jump is an analysis of the first two matches broken down by court.

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Because One Man To Beat is a bum, I challenged FotC 25 Days a Week to submit this week's Rebels in the Pros segment.  He met the challenge, and he met it well.

Welcome to this special FanPost edition of Rebels in the Pros.  This week two former Rebels really shined above the others.  I'll just get right to the stats.

via www.post-gazette.com

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Our star tennis player has had a busy summer after winning the NCAA Championship.  I hope many of you have been following it at least through the releases from olemisssports.com.  He went straight into the French Open Juniors, where tons of factors worked against him (see: fatigue, a terrible draw, and the basic syle of game he plays).  He moved on with absolute domination in a Wimbledon tune-up: He didn't drop a set until the finals and even won the doubles title with partner Jordan Cox, who trained with him at Nick Bollittieri's Academy.

Now he's playing for the first time at the All England Club on a surface built for his game.  He completely dismantled the 7 seed in the first round and didn't seem to be challenged today in the second.  Unfortunately, watching the points tick up on my computer screen is the only basis I have for analyzing this.  He meets a Bralizian tomorrow morning and will likely get the top seed after that if he wins.  He also plays his first doubles match tomorrow against (in a typically unfortunate draw) another American team.

He certainly has the skills to put up a great showing here, but we, as Rebel fans, may suffer a hint of anxiety with our joy upon every victory.  I haven't heard anything to suggest he won't be back next year, but we'd be lucky to have him for a third.  In an ideal situation, we get two more years of both Devin and Jevan.

I feel sure that anyone who reads this is savvy enough to find useful sites for more information, but I'll link you up to some places I've found useful.

Devin's blog at the USTA site.

The draw at Wimbledon.  If you're an early riser (compared to me, at least), I expect he'll be playing around 8am tomorrow morning, and you can follow it with the Live Scores link on the right.

This is just a good article I found about him.

Other than that, they've been following it pretty well on the main Ole Miss Sports site.

Yes, it's true that I have suffered a state of incessant depression since about four o'clock on Sunday afternoon. I wanted to write something, but I honestly couldn't bear to talk about the match, much less put serious thought into it. The tennis team through this season accomplished so much, including getting over the hump to beat Georgia, getting a football university very excited about a minor sport, and giving everyone a lot of hope for the future.

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The Rebel tennis team came up HUGE against a loud home crowd at Texas A&M tonight and showed UCLA what they've got to deal with in a couple of days. I'll direct you to the offical write-up for a general outline of what happened in the match.  What follows after the jump are some of my thoughts on the match and the upcoming round of 8.

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Props go out once more to FotC 25 Days a Week for his tennis fanposts.

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I apologize for not posting sooner about the LSU match, but if you read my predictions, then you got the gist of what happened. Bram wasn't in the line-up since he was still having shoulder issues so that threw a few things off, but our wins came where I expected. If Jonas had stolen that second set tiebreaker, then I would have been right on for every court (aside from Court 4 where Bram's absence notably changed things).

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Thanks are in order to FotC 25 Days a Week who, along with being the Cup's mathematics consultant, will be our Rebel postseason tennis correspondent.  His fanposts during this period will be promoted to the front page so y'all won't have to fish them out of the right hand menu.  25 Days, take it away.

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The Rebels expectedly took down the Braves of Alcorn State today in the horrible area of Louisiana known as Red Stick.  In the words of Bram ten Berge, the match was "so boring."  The Dutch senior even briefly contemplated going to watch some TV on their high class bus while the rest of the team took care of singles.  No, he didn't play; a nagging shoulder injury resurfaced in the last game of his doubles match and humorously caused him to double fault twice and allow the Anglophones on Court 2 to clinch the point for the Rebs.

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EDIT: A good Friend of the Cup decided to spend his weekend away from Rebel Baseball, Double Decker, and debauchery in favor of attending the SEC Tennis Championship Tournament down on the plains of Alabama.  Check it out.

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The Rebs took down the Gators for the third time this season in dominating fashion (4-0) to advance to the finals of the SEC Championship.  After a relatively tight match against the Bayou Bengals yesterday, the netters came out firing and took the doubles point with no trouble at all.  The highlight of the doubles matches had to be the way in which our #3 team blew through Florida's top two players (Cueto and LaCroix).  Seriously, if you're gonna stoop to putting your best players on court 3, at least win that match.

The #1 team in the nation of Berg and ten Berge really showed the crowd why they deserve that ranking today.  They were hitting unbelievable shots on every point.  Bram wasn't missing any volleys, and Jonas absolutely ripped the cover off the ball every time he hit it (unless he was hitting a lob for a winner).

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