Middle States:
Philly and NJ both have very strong teams. If it comes down to these two teams, it's going to be very close. I think NJ has a small edge, if they have their top lineup available. NJ singles are better. Philly has one older guy (the MMA pro) and two HS kids playing singles. I had a guy on my team who was my #1 singles player who also plays for NJ, but is only their 3rd or 4th singles. He lost an 11-9 match tb to the #1 singles guy and beat one of the kids pretty handily, and he's not in the top 2 for NJ. The NJ #1 has played 7 matches across the Eastern NJ regionals and NJD districts and has lost 7 total games in those 7 matches with three double bagels (although in a couple, the other teams clearly stacked away from him and gave away S1...). Their S2 lost a match tb to the nationals remnants team's best player, but only after the first three courts had won and they clinched districts. He was up a set at the time.
Doubles are very evenly matched, but if NJ can sweep the singles courts, they will win at least one doubles. The best overall player on the NJ team typically plays doubles. He's 24-0 (including 6-0 in playoff matches) at 4.0 and 6-4 at 4.5, with one 4.5 loss in doubles where the opposing team used an illegal player (a 5.0-level 3-star recruit who hadn't turned 18 yet) and another in singles against a guy who was 3-1 including two singles wins at 4.5 nationals last year. He is a hammer who will be very tough to beat at 4.0. Unfortunately, his presumptive partner, who was a veteran of the 4.0 nationals team last year, was suspended as part of the 4.5 illegal player operation. If the two of them were still playing together, they would be an automatic doubles point. Regardless, they have the horses to find him another partner (and also compete on the two other courts). My prediction is that NJ will win 3-2 in that match.
Central is a team based out of Lebanon Valley College. They are a younger team, and typically pretty good. They can't be overlooked, but I don't think they quite have the horses to compete with the big boys at full strength. Delaware also looks pretty strong. Their captain is good at adding strong players from the Philly teams as a "second chance", so he'll have 4 guys from the second place districts team to use, but he'll be missing all of the 4 common players from the winner, who are 4 of their top doubles players. If those 4 players would play for DE instead of Philly (which won't happen since it includes the Philly captain, LOL), they would be the top contender to beat NJ, but as it stands, they're probably fighting for third with Central. I don't know much about the Allegheny team, although they typically aren't contenders, but who knows, they could be a surprise. The Eastern PA team is just there for the fun of it. That is a small district, and they have a very competitive league up there, but if they want to compete at sectionals, they would need to forsake the competitive league in favor of a district "superteam" that consolidates the best of the four teams into one, and they seem to prefer to have a competitive league season and treat sectionals as a tennis vacation, which is fine, but they're not going to win.
I'll call it NJ by a hair over Philly, with Allegheny as a potential monkey wrench since I don't know anything about their team.
