Cracked Racquets has been hard at work getting you ready for the coming college tennis season via our College Tennis Contenders series. Once a week, we take time to dissect one of the top 10 preseason teams. This week, we take an extensive look at the #6 ranked Trojans.

Cracked fans who read last week’s College Contenders: UCLA will appreciate the significance of the University of Southern California’s #6 ranking, just a digit shy of UCLA’s, whom they split wins with in their four regular season meetings going 2-2. Befitting of their rankings, USC fell in the Round of 16 of the National Championship with UCLA losing the Georgia in the quarters. If the 2018 season plays out in a similar fashion, you can expect intense match play in the PAC-12 with USC out to prove itself king of SoCal tennis.

2016 – 17 STATS

Overall: 27 – 6

Conference: 5 – 2

Home: 16 – 0

Away: 6 – 4

Neutral: 5 – 2

USC’s Squad

Daniel Cukierman FR

Jake DeVine R-So

Thibault Forget Sr

Brandon Holt So

Jack Jaede Jr

Henry Ji Sr

Logan Smith Jr

Riley Smith So

Tanner Smith R-Jr

Mateusz Smolicki So

Jens Sweaney Sr

Laurens Verboven Jr

Outlook

The Trojans bring an exceptional amount of experience and talent to the 2018 season. David Laser, Rob Bellamy, Nick Crystal will be missed, but additions in Daniel Cukierman and Mateusz Smolicki balance out this upperclassman heavy squad. Under the tutelage of Peter Smith, the Trojans have roster depth and leadership for National Championship title contention.

With 5 NCAA Championships under his belt at USC, Coach Smith is more than familiar with the pieces needed to craft a National Championship caliber team. Since the start of his tenure in 2008, Smith’s Trojans have consecutively made the NCAA Tournament 11 times, with five finals, and four quarterfinals appearances. Before Coach Smith’s arrival at USC, the Trojans already had 16 titles to their name and continue to lead the nation in NCAA titles.

In the offseason, Sophomore Brandon Holt competed at the Master’U BNP Paribas International Collegiate Team Competition. There he represented the US with 5 other players, including his doubles partner Martin Redlicki of UCLA who he went 2-1 with. In singles, Holt went 1-1 at the 1 position taking a tiebreak loss in the finals against the UK. Collectively, Holt and team USA bested France, Germany, but fell short of a 7th straight title to Great Britain. This past fall, juniors Tanner Smith and Laurens Verboven captured the Jack Kramer Collegiate championship title in Southern California defeating Stanford in the finals.

Elite talent and experience, coupled with offseason success keep the Trojans at the top of our list for National Championship contenders. USC’s difficult schedule this year will provide plenty of indicators of their ability to make a finals run in May, but many are optimistic of the Trojan’s chances in 2018 and rightfully so.

USC 2018 Schedule

ITA Kickoff in late January gets the USC season rolling with matches in Los Angeles against Indiana, UC Irvine, and San Francisco, and should the Trojans advance they would visit Seattle for the ITA National Team Indoor Championships in mid-February. Tournament level play will provide necessary calibration for the USC squad before their match against UCLA on February 27. Their Tour de West Coast continues into early March with away matches against Washington and Oregon before their toughest stretch of games starting with Ohio State at home on March 13. USC’s away match at Wake Forest, will be the ultimate test and a good indicator of their performance at the National Championship. The Trojans end their season back and forth from LA to Southern Arizona with key matches against UCLA for a second time and one in Tempe against Arizona State.

A downloadable PDF of the USC Mens Tennis 2018 Schedule is available here.

Cracked Predictions

Parker (contributor): USC finished up in the top 10 last year and the majority of their lineup are upperclassmen so they’ll definitely have the experience factor on their side. They also have a lot of height which is something to think about given the importance of the doubles point. I like USC and if they can iron out some things in the bottom of their lineup, they’ll be in the mix for the national championship.

Westhoff (tennis analyst, philanthropist, philosopher): USC will Trojan horse the NCAA tournament, and win the whole thing, ending the Virginia Dynasty. You heard it here first.

Just like last week, we want to hear from you. Leave your USC predictions in the comments below. Correctly predict USC’s outcome at the 2018 NCAA National Championship to win CrackedRacquets gear!