No. 10 USC men’s tennis builds upon ‘belief,’ hosts first two NCAA tournament rounds
Josh Goffi remembers seeing an adverse reaction when he told last year’s South Carolina men’s tennis team they had the makeup of a top-10 program.
The energy in the room was off. He could tell his young team felt “weird” about the notion.
But Goffi’s intuition was right. Last season’s Gamecocks pieced together their best season in decades, finishing No. 13 in national Intercollegiate Tennis Association rankings, the program’s best final since 1989, and reaching the NCAA tournament’s Round of 16 for the first time since 2005.
Seeds of belief were planted. This year, they’ve continued to grow.
In his 12th year at South Carolina, Goffi has led the nation’s No. 10 team to an at-large bid in the NCAA tournament, hosting the first two rounds at the Carolina Tennis Center. The Gamecocks (22-6) defeated Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference champion S.C. State 4-0 Friday in the opening round, then faced Pepperdine on Saturday with a spot in the Sweet 16 on the line.
“It’s a parallel journey,” Goffi said. “But it’s now with a belief system that is real.”
Goffi watched a championship mindset build around the Gamecocks after their upset of then-No. 8 Stanford in the first round of the ITA Indoor National Championships in February.
“This team is young, in that new realm of ‘We believe that we can win,’ with everything,” Goffi said. “There are teams that might be better than us on paper, but at the same time, this team is pretty scrappy. They get it done when they need to get it done.”
Goffi’s program at South Carolina has been a steady build, collecting eight NCAA tournament appearances, six finishes within the ITA top 25 (including the last five consecutively) and four All-American honors, including star Daniel Rodrigues.
Rodrigues, a junior from Funchal, Portugal, has earned the ITA’s No. 1 national singles ranking for two years in a row. Though he’s seeded No. 2 overall in the NCAA tournament, Rodrigues took the No. 1 spot in ITA’s most recent ranking ahead of the tournament’s start.
Rodrigues finished last season ranked No. 3, tying for the best final ranking in Gamecocks history, and ended 2021 as the NCAA singles runner-up with 31 wins. He’s gone 24-4 overall this year, including wins over 18 of the 21 ranked opponents he has faced.
To Goffi, the most impressive piece of Rodrigues’ record is how he’s been able to repeat success after a breakout year. But Rodrigues doesn’t try to match prior accomplishments. He works to improve.
“Sometimes, coach is like, ‘You know, it’s gonna be tough to match last year, you barely lost,’ stuff like that,” Rodrigues said. “And I think to myself, the only way to do as well or better is just to think, ‘OK, now the goal is to be better than last year.’ “
Rodrigues has found plenty of success in singles play, but he also plays a part in the Gamecocks’ best doubles pair. The duo of Rodrigues and sophomore Connor Thomson are ranked No. 18 in the country and earned a bid for the doubles championship.
The NCAA men’s tennis tournament started Friday at various host sites, including Columbia, while the singles and doubles championship tournaments are scheduled for May 23-28 in Champaign, Illinois after the team championship concludes.
“We’ve had a really good season so far, and we have a lot of good guys,” Thomson said. “We’re really chasing after putting South Carolina on the map as much as possible.”
This story was originally published May 6, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
