Taking Stock: How Arizona men’s tennis is looking under coach Clancy Shields

The offseason is here, with all of Arizona’s sports done for 2023-24 season and the 2024-25 campaigns still a little ways away.

Which makes this a great time to step back and see how all of the Wildcats’ programs are doing, especially with the impending move to the Big 12 Conference.

Over the next few weeks we’ll take a look at each of the UA’s men’s and women’s athletic programs to see what shape they’re in and what prospects they have for the near future. We’ll break down each team and evaluate how it is performing under its current coaching staff, looking at the state of the program before he/she arrived and comparing it to now while also looking at the upcoming debut in the Big 12 and beyond.

Next up: Clancy Shields’ men’s tennis team

How it looked before

For the longest time, men’s tennis had been one of those sports that Arizona participated in but never really competed in. From 2011-16 the Wildcats didn’t have a winning record, going winless in Pac-10/12 play all but once during that stretch.

But when it came time to make a coaching change, athletic director Greg Byrne made one of the most underrated hires of his tenure in Clancy Shields. A young, up-and-coming coach from Utah State who was Mountain West Coach of the Year in 2016, Shields came to Tucson with a vision to turn Arizona into one of the top programs in the country.

It took a few years, with the UA going winless in Pac-12 play his first two seasons, but in 2019 it broke through with an NCAA Tournament appearance and it’s been nothing but up since.

Where things stand now

Arizona has reached the Sweet 16 in three of the last four seasons, hosting the first weekend the last two years. The Wildcats lost 4-3 at Columbia in mid-May to close out a 29-4 campaign that included winning the final Pac-12 regular-season title and becoming the first non-California team to claim the conference tournament championship.

The UA also won a pair of matches at the ITA National Indoor Championship, knocking off a pair of ranked programs en route to having the highest ITA ranking (No. 5) in school history.

And on the individual front, junior Colton Smith reached the Division I semifinals, became the school’s first All-American since 2006 and qualified for the ATP Next Gen Accelerator program which will give him access to professional tournaments.

Smith is one of three returners from the singles rotation, along with Casper Christensen and Jay Friend. And the Wildcats are bringing in the No. 5 recruiting class in the country, per tennisrecruiting.net, highlighted by 5-star prospect Santiago Padilla Cote and Serbian Zoran Ludoski.

Clancy has had his contract extended multiple times, currently through 2028, but probably needs another raise to ensure he’s not poached.

What life in the Big 12 should look like

Fresh of conquering the Pac-12 in its final year of competition, Arizona now heads to a Big 12 Conference that features the reigning national champion. TCU beat soon-to-be-former Big 12 foe Texas in the NCAA Division I finals.

Baylor, Oklahoma State and UCF also made the NCAA Tournament this past season out of the Big 12, which will feature nine schools in 2025 with the addition of Arizona, ASU and Utah. BYU and Texas Tech are the other men’s tennis participants.

One big question

Is the Sweet 16 the ceiling? Arizona had never gotten out of the opening weekend of the NCAA tourney until 2021, but it’s now done that three times in four years. But each trip to the Sweet 16 has ended in defeat, and half of the 2024 team has graduated.

Getting to host the third round would be the next step in getting over that hump. All three of Arizona’s Sweet 16 appearances have been on the road, with this past season as the No. 9 seed.