As much as it grinds me to make a mistake, or an oversight in this instance, at least this blog offers me a chance to try and make amend for something I missed while putting together my 2011 Boys Tennis Preview.
I take great pride in attempting to rank the best teams and players in the county. I speak to a number of coaches, research previous-year's results and accolades and even try to go out to preseason practices or early-season matches to gauge the talent. As difficult as it is to rank the singles players, trying to configure a Top 5 list of the best doubles teams is equally difficult.
In piecing together my five best teams this season, I left out the pair of Matt Kuntzman and Kento Mizusaki of Troy. The senior duo return after an outstanding 2010 season which saw them put together a 22-9 record and an appearance on the first-team all-state squad. Watch for them to do some big things in the Oakland Activities Association Red division this year and perhaps make a deep run in the Division 1 state tournament.
And for the record, I'm predicting big things for Oakland County teams in 2011. As I stated in my brief appearance talking tennis in the latest MIPrepZone Weekly (allow video to buffer and forward to 5:33 remaining in the show), I think we're going to see Novi Detroit Catholic Central and Birmingham Brother Rice battle it out for a state title in Division 1, and Birmingham Detroit Country Day and Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook Kingswood once again finish 1-2 in Division 3.
Check back here for more tennis talk throughout the season, and if you have a comment about this or any other blog post, please don't hesitate to leave one. You can follow me on Twitter @jasoneschmitt or better yet, @MIPrepZone, where I often post about all of our fall sports.