April 12, 2011
COLLEGE STATION, Texas - The No. 6-ranked Texas A&M men's tennis team will host a tennis twinbill Wednesday (Apr. 13) at the George P. Mitchell Tennis Center on the Texas A&M campus. The UT-Pan American Broncs come to town for a 12 noon match followed by a 6 p.m. tilt against No. 35 Tulsa.
Texas A&M is 21-4 on the year after beating Texas Tech, Nebraska and UT-San Antonio at home this past weekend. The UT-Pan American Broncs are 1-10 and the Tulsa Golden Hurricane is 15-6. Tulsa is on top of the Conference USA standings with a 6-0 mark in league play and lost a narrow 4-3 decision to Stanford out in Palo Alto, California, earlier this spring.
These will be final two non-conference tennis matches as the regular season winds down. After Wednesday's matches, the Aggies will travel to Waco to face the No. 7 Baylor Bears on Wednesday, Apr. 20 and close out the regular season at home on Saturday, Apr. 23 against No. 11 Texas.
"This is our last non-conference matches of the season and our guys have done a great job thus far in staying focused on the matches at hand," Aggie head coach Steve Denton said. "I know that our seniors want to have a good showing as their careers at A&M come to a close. There are not too many more times for people in the community to come to the tennis center and see players such as Austin Krajicek, Jeff Dadamo, Alexey Grigorov and Kayvon Karimi. The 12th Man has done a great job and is so important to our team. The crowd has played a large role in our current 31-match home winning streak and we will need the 12th Man's help Wednesday."
"Tulsa has four singles players ranked and two doubles teams are ranked," Denton explained. "They are a very good team from top to bottom and they seem to be hitting on all cylinders at the moment. We will have to have our "A" game to keep our home winning streak alive."
In the most recent ITA rankings, Aggie senior All-American Austin Krajicek moved to No. 21 in singles while his senior teammate Jeff Dadamo moved to No. 41 in singles. The A&M terrific tandem of Krajicek and Dadamo moved to No. 3 in doubles national rankings. Krajicek has established the Texas A&M record for doubles victories with 100 wins in his A&M career. Junior Alexis Klegou is ranked No. 84 in singles. The No. 2 doubles team of senior Alexey Grigorov and freshman Junior Ore moved to No. 64 in the doubles rankings and the No. 3 doubles tandem of sophomore Alberto Bautista and junior Colin Hoover moved to No. 74.
Tulsa has two doubles teams ranked with Clifford Marsland and Ashley Watling ranked No. 25 and the duo of Marcelo Arevalo and Jaspie De Klerk are ranked No. 55. In singles, Arevalo is ranked No. 28 in the land, De Klerk is ranked No. 62, while Watling is No. 86 and Marsland is No. 118.