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[College Results]

Who's #1? Trinity Favored vs Princeton
By Rob Dinerman staff © 2003 SquashTalk Feb 12, 2003 © 2003
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El Halaby and Samper Will Face off at #1. (photo © 2003 Debra Tessier)

The regular season men's CSA championship will be at stake this Saturday afternoon, when the five-time defending champion Trinity
Bantams, led by head coach Paul Assaiante and 2002 Intercollegiate
Individual
champion Bernardo Samper, take on the Princeton Tigers, who just last week clinched their second consecutive Ivy League championship and third in the past four years with a 7-2 home victory over Harvard.

Princeton coach Bob Callahan's quartet of seniors, deemed by many (including Callahan himself) the best senior class in the school's 72-year squash history, and their freshman sensation Yasser El-Halaby, have a final opportunity to defeat the one nemesis that has always thwarted their CSA championship aspirations, and there are many long-time squash aficionados who fully share Coach Assaiante's assertion that never in the annals of intercollegiate squash competition has the quality of talent in the Nos. 1 through 5 positions on both sides equaled that of this weekend's clash.
At stake in addition to the 2002-2003 CSA title will be the No. 1 seed in the Potter Trophy nine-man postseason tournament, whose past four editions have all gone to Trinity, but which will be played at Princeton's Jadwin Gymnasium the week after this dual meet, i.e. February 21-23.

Seniors Will Evans, David Yik, the 2001 Intercollegiates champion, Danny Rutherford and Eric Pearson, who along with El-Halaby swept the top five positions earlier
this month in Princeton's 5-4 victory over Yale, will have a chance to conclude their sparkling college careers in glorious fashion on their home turf in the Potter next week, but first they have to travel to the George A. Kellner Courts in Hartford, where they fired a significant shot across Trinity's bow early this past December by thoroughly out-playing the Bantams in the final round of the USSRA Five-Man Team championships and decisively terminating Trinity's two-year victory run in that tourney in an impressive 4-1 victory that transformed the entire scenario of the college game.

The revenge factor in the aftermath of that eyebrow-raising upset will no doubt be a major part of the dynamics surrounding Saturday's action, which is scheduled to begin at 2 o'clock when the "evens", Nos 2, 4, 6 and 8, take the court. Trinity played that Five-Man meet without current No. 2 Michael Ferreira, whose presence might have made a difference both in his own match with Evans (who soundly defeated Nickolas Kyme) and by dropping everyone else down a notch in the line-up. Both Nadeem Osman, the South African sophomore, nor British-born Johnny Smith, who presently hold the Nos. 6 and 7 positions respectively, were studying abroad this autumn, as was Ferreira, and the return of this gifted trio so strengthens the Trinity line-up that junior Pat Malloy, the only American in the starting nine, has been pushed down to the
eighth slot after playing at No. 5 in the December defeat, when Trinity's only victory was supplied by sophomore Reggie Schonborn over Rutherford at No. 4.

In addition, the five-man format that prevailed in that event is ideally suited to Princeton, which relies heavily on their top five and is much more vulnerable in the bottom half of their line-up. That being said, there is still no detracting from the accomplishment of Callahan's troops that weekend, which unquestionably infused that entire program with the confidence to sweep to their hard-won Ivy League crown while simultaneously jolting the Bantams from the complacency engendered by their long undefeated skein and making them face up to the very real threat Princeton poses to
their supremacy in intercollegiate sphere.

The Colombian-born Samper, who is his country's national champion, enjoyed an undefeated campaign last year as a freshman, including defeating Evans in the final of the Individuals, but lost twice this fall, first in Richmond in the Price Bullington Invitational to Yale's Julian Illingworth (who went on to defeat Schonborn in the ensuing final) and then by a score of 9-3 7-9 9-3 9-3 to El-Halaby in the Five-Man Teams event. Several weeks ago he avenged the loss to Illingworth by thrashing him 9-1 in the fourth and El-Halaby will no doubt commandeer Samper's undivided attention in this rematch just as Illingworth had in that one.

Whether or not the team outcome has already been decided by the time these titans take the main exhibition court, every elite team takes its cue and confidence level from its top player, and what happens late Saturday afternoon between Samper and El-Halaby figures to infuse the atmosphere next week leading up to the Potter Trophy, in which the winning team this weekend will get to share the same half as the loser of next Wednesday's battle between Harvard and Yale, while the losing team will have to contend with the winner of the Harvard-Yale meet should these top-four seeded teams advance successfully through the quarter-final matches each will have to play against
the Nos. 5-8 squads in the eight-team A draw. Pending a late-week injury or illness, the match-ups will be as follows (Trinity players named first):

(1) Samper vs. El-Halaby ;
(2) Ferreira vs Evans;
(3) Kyme vs Yik;
(4) Yvain Badan vs Rutherford;
(5) Schonborn vs Pearson;
(6) Osman vs Aaron Zimmerman;
(7) Smith vs Dent Wilkins;
(8) Malloy vs Nate Beck;
(9) Carl Baglio vs Rob Siverd.

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