Who will step up for the Tennessee men's tennis team now that the likes of John-Patrick Smith and Rhyne Williams have moved on to the professional ranks?
Will the squad led by head coach Sam Winterbotham now resemble the program he inherited five years ago that suffered a 9-11 season and a national ranking of No. 50?
Those are just some of the questions facing the team entering the 2011-12 season with several big shoes to fill.
Along with Smith, fellow senior leaders from the 2010-11 team — Boris Conkic and Matteo Fago — have also graduated, taking with them 101 team wins during their four years on campus — the most victories during that span in team history.
Without question, the new leader of the Vols will be junior Tennys Sandgren. The 6-foot-2, 183-pound hard-hitter from Gallatin will no longer be in the shadows of the great players he once stood alongside. And if the Vols have anything going for them as they head into a new era, it's having Winterbotham and his associate head coach Chris Woodruff as their leaders on the bench.
Since the pair was hired in 2006, UT has never failed to make the 64-team NCAA Championship field. Over the last five years, 11 different players have been nationally ranked singles, four of whom have been ranked in the top 20. Winterbotham's conference record at Tennessee currently stands at 45-10 and includes a combined mark of 21-1 in SEC play over the last two years alone on the way to consecutive regular-season titles.
Overall, Winterbotham's mark as head coach of the Vols is 118-26 (.819), and whenever the Big Orange is guarding its home court, the team holds a 67-5 record in Knoxville since 2007.
Stats may come and go, while the student-athletes who compile them will follow them as well. But for the Vols, the numbers don't lie under the leadership of Winterbotham and Woodruff.
The big-name players have taken their game to the next level, but the guys left behind will have to make their presence felt in order for the 2011-12 version of the Tennessee men's tennis team to make some noise the way the program has over the last five years.
