Recruiting Feature

Top Men’s Classes – 2024 Winter Rankings

by TennisRecruiting.net, 29 January 2024

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As January ends and winter rolls on, the college tennis season is beginning in earnest, with many NCAA D-I programs competing in the ITA Kickoff Weekend the past few days.

We are also in the thick of the recruiting season, with more than 800 committed seniors (boys, girls) either signing NLIs or declaring their verbal commitments for Fall 2024. Today seems like as good a time as any to check how the various schools stack up. Today, TRN and Inspiration Academy present the Top 25 Men’s Recruiting Classes for the Class of 2024.

Media Poll

The Tennis Recruiting Network and Inspiration Academy have again enlisted the aid of junior tennis experts to determine the top classes. Reporters, national and international tournament directors, referees, ranking chairmen, and writers from across the country have donated their time and talents to vote on these top classes. Panelists for this voting period are shown below.

Each of our panelists submitted his/her take on the Top 25 recruiting classes. Schools received 25 points for each first-place vote, 24 points for each second-place vote, on down to 1 point for each 25th-place vote. The panelists were told not to consider incoming transfer students in their voting – and also did not consider incoming freshmen who are competing this spring.

The list below shows the Top 25 recruiting classes – showing the point values for each class along with the number of first-place votes in parentheses.

Notes

The table above lists all recruits as of January 8, 2024. In addition to the Star Rating, we display the highest TRN, UTR, ITF junior, and WTT rankings for each player since August 1, 2023, and for international players we display the TRN ranking they would hold if eligible.

Also Receiving Votes

Other men’s programs receiving votes are:  Texas (52), Boise State (46), USC (42), Air Force (28), Memphis (27), Florida Atlantic (26), Grand Canyon (21), Princeton (18), Lehigh (17), Duke (15), Old Dominion (11), Wisconsin (7), College of Charleston (4), Dartmouth (4), Santa Clara (4), Carnegie Mellon (1)

Wahoowa

Checking out the records over the past decade, the University of Virginia men have been dominant on the NCAA stage. The Cavaliers have won 6 of the past 10 NCAA team championships – including titles in both 2022 and 2023. And there are few signs of a let up in 2024 – the Hoos are ranked in the Top 5 with an early-season road win over #3-ranked Texas.

Top 10 recruit Stiles Brockett is staying in state at Virginia
© ZooTennis.com

The future also looks bright for Virginia – as Head Coach Andres Pedroso and his staff will bring a strong recruiting class to Charlottesville this fall. Top-10 American recruit and JTCC standout Stiles Brockett will be joined by international stars Joao Fonseca (Brazil), Rafael Jodar (Spain) and Keegan Rice (Canada) to form a four-man class that earns the No. 1 nod in our recruiting class rankings. The Cavalier recruiting class earned 18 of 19 first-place votes and 472 of a possible 475 points from our panel to secure the top spot.

Fonseca finished 2023 as the No. 1-ranked boy in the ITF – the first-ever Brazilian player to accomplish that feat. Fonseca reached the quarterfinals or better in all four junior slams – including a title at the US Open Juniors. Jodar has been a monster on the ITF junior circuit as well, winning titles in Germany, Serbia, and Spain over the past few months. Brockett, the top-rated recruit in the state of Virginia who trains at the legendary Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Md., has a pair of USTA gold balls to his name. Rounding out the class, Rice won multiple singles and doubles matches in both the French Open and Wimbledon – and his 2023 highlights include an ITF title in Villach, Austria.

“Our men’s tennis program is both humbled and excited that this class of young men chose the University of Virginia,” said Head Coach Pedroso. “All of them represent what we’d like to believe our standards are in regards to character, passion for the game and an overall commitment to their development as both tennis players and people. It’s going to be a lot of fun coaching and mentoring this class, and they certainly make the impression that the future of Virginia Men’s Tennis looks exceptionally bright.”

Take Five

The UCLA Bruins will head to the Big 10 next season – and they will bring a pair of California recruits that stand as the No. 2 recruiting class in the country. Kaylan Bigun competed in all four junior slams and reached the semifinals of the Orange Bowl in December. Rudy Quan, who won a couple matches in Kalamazoo and reached the semifinals of the 2023 FILA International Junior Championships, has been competing primarily in ITF men’s events. Both recruits have been fixtures in the Top 5 of the Class of 2024 for years, and they earned 420 points and the remaining first-place vote from our panel.

Kaylan Bigun, No. 2 recruit nationally, is heading to UCLA
© ZooTennis.com

Arizona State is next at No. 3 in our poll with a four-man class consisting of Slovenian Bor Artnak as well as 5-Star standouts Mikel Anderson (Hillsboro Beach, Fla.), Tanner Povey (Belleair Bluffs, Fla.) and Jimin Jung (Cary, N.C.). Artnak has since reclassified and is competing for the Sun Devils this spring, so he will be removed from their recruiting class when we revise these rankings in May.

Rounding out our Top 5 are the Harvard Crimson and North Carolina Tar Heels at No. 4 and 5 in our rankings, respectively.

Conference Call

Of the 25 programs on our list, three conferences stand out. The Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten Conference, and Southeastern Conference each have five ranked recruiting classes – more than any other conference.

In addition to the top-ranked Cavaliers and No. 5 Tar Heels, the ACC is represented by the Stanford Cardinal (No. 11) – a newcomer in 2024-25 – as well as the Wake Forest Demon Deacons (13), and N.C. State Wolfpack (15).

For the Big Ten, No. 2 UCLA is joined in the rankings by the Illinois Fighting Illini (20), Northwestern Wildcats (21), Indiana Hoosiers (24), and Ohio State Buckeyes (25).

The SEC has two programs in the Top 10 – the Auburn Tigers (7) and South Carolina Gamecocks (9). Other SEC programs in the rankings are the Vanderbilt Commodores (14), Kentucky Wildcats (17), and Texas A&M Aggies (19).

Powering Up

With the breakup of the Pac-12, only five so-called “power conferences” remain in college tennis – the ACC, Big 10, Big 12, SEC, and Ivy League. Three teams from outside of these conferences show up in our recruiting class rankings: the San Diego Torreros (No. 12), UC Santa Barbara Gauchos (16), and South Florida Bulls (23), representing the West Coast Conference, Big West Conference, and American Athletic Conference, respectively. All three of these programs are strong – with recent conference championships and NCAA Tournament appearances.

Drop Shots

Scattershooting through the rankings …

• State by State: The programs in our rankings hail from 17 different states, and California leads the way with four ranked classes. UCLA, (No. 2), Stanford (11), San Diego (12), and UCSB (16) all represent the Golden State in our rankings.
• Welcome Back: The Vanderbilt Commodores are back in the rankings for the first time since 2016. Head Coach Scott Brown’s recruiting class checks in at No. 16.
• Best Ever: Two programs have the highest-ranked classes in their school histories in 2023. Auburn (7) and Penn (10) both posted historic classes this spring.
• Wait – I Know You: Stanford (11) has a ranked class for the 16th time in the history of our poll – more than any other program in our rankings. Virginia and Harvard are next in line with 15 apiece.

Panelists for 2024

The 19 panelists for this voting period are shown below alphabetically. Please join us in thanking them for donating their time and talents to this effort.

• Joseph Braden – Director of Tennis at Schwartz Tennis Center, USTA/Midwest Tournament Director.
• Casey Chapin – National Tournament Director, Director, Hudlow Tennis Center
• Brian Cory – Director of Tennis at Carmel Valley Athletic Club, National Tournament Director
• Sonny Dearth – Virginia Media, Daily Press newspaper and dailypress.com Web site in Newport News, Va.
• David Donn – Donovan Tennis Strategies
• Tim Donovan – Donovan Tennis Strategies, DTS College Prospects Showcases
• Larry Haugness – USTA/Missouri Valley Executive Committee, Former ITF and USTA National Tournament Director, PTR National Tester, USPTA, Junior Davis Cup Coach
• Ernie Katko – Junior Development Coach in Chicago, USTA High Performance Coach
• Matt Knoll – American College Placement, Former Head Coach at Baylor University.
• Dave “The Koz” Kozlowski – Inside Tennis With The Koz, The Tennis Channel
• Patty Lambropoulos – Junior Tennis Coordinator, College Park Athletic Club, National/Sectional/Local Tournament Director, Chicago District Board of Director, USTA National Jr Competition Committee, Midwest Junior Competition Committee
• Rick Limpert – TRN contributor, freelance writer
• Colette Lewis – ZooTennis.com
• Parsa Nemati – Junior and college tennis insider, Parsa Bombs
• Phil Parrish – Tennis Director, The Longfellow Club, National Tournament Director, Former College Coach
• Robert Sasseville – National Tournament Director, USTA Junior Competition Committee Member, USTA National Referee
• Peri Sheinin – Host of On the Rise podcast, Sports Anchor and News Reporter at WHSV in Harrisonburg, Va.
• Lisa Stone – Parenting Aces
• Julie Wrege – TRN principal, TennisInformation.com principal, former National Tournament Director, former USTA junior ranking chair and USTA Tennis Rules Committee member

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