UCLA
USC (First Round)
No. 7 UCLA to Face No. 9 USC at ITA Indoors
February 15, 2017 | Men's Tennis
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- The No. 7 UCLA men's tennis team will face off with crosstown rival and No. 9 USC Friday at the Boar's Head Sports Club in Charlottesville, Va. The match, scheduled for 3:30 p.m., PT, will mark the final first-round match of the day on Courts 1-6 at the ITA National Team Indoor Championships. Live stats for matches on Courts 1-6 will be available HERE, while Courts 7-12 will be available HERE.
The Bruins are fresh off their indoor debut of the dual-match season, having defeated Tulsa, 7-0, Monday at the Michael D. Case Tennis Center in Tulsa. For the fourth consecutive match, the 16th-ranked team of Martin Redlicki and Evan Zhu clinched the doubles point in a sudden-death situation, 7-6(5) on Court 1. In singles, five Bruins recorded straight-set wins, while No. 19 Gage Brymer won a 13-11 final-set tiebreak to secure the sweep.
In addition to a five-match winning streak with Zhu on the doubles courts, Redlicki has yet to lose a singles match during the early dual-match season (7-0). The previously-unranked junior, who has been crowned Pac-12 Player of the Week twice during the stretch, now sits at No. 73 in the Feb. 8 installment of the ITA/Oracles singles rankings.
A pair of juniors, meanwhile, have also achieved early success on Courts 4, 5 and 6. After each dropped his first singles match during the Pac-12/SEC Showdown in Gainesville, Fla., Logan Staggs and Austin Rapp were each victorious at Tulsa to push their individual records to 5-1. Staggs picked up his second clinching point of 2017 Monday with his 6-3, 6-4 win over the Golden Hurricane's Mitchell Pritchard. Both players were also pivotal to UCLA's qualification for the ITA Indoors, as Staggs clinched the ITA Kick-Off Day 1 win over New Mexico, while Rapp delivered the point versus Lamar that sent the Bruins to Charlottesville.
In the ninth-ranked Trojans, the Bruins will encounter a team that holds an 8-1 record. Like the Bruins, USC's lone loss came at the hands of No. 6 Florida at the Pac-12/SEC Showdown. Each of the crosstown rivals also recorded a victory over then-No. 5 Georgia during the weekend. In order to qualify for the ITA Indoors, the Trojans defeated East Tennessee State and San Diego by a combined 10-1 score at Marks Stadium during the last weekend of January.
USC is led by three ITA/Oracle top-100 singles players in freshman No. 13 Brandon Holt, sophomore No. 37 Logan Smith and senior No. T97 Rob Bellamy. On the doubles courts, USC pairs Holt and Riley Smith (No. 32), Nick Crystal and Laurens Verboven (No. 35) and Logan Smith and Thibault Forget (No. 40) are all ranked in the top 40.
The Bruins hold a 77-47 all-time advantage over the Trojans. Last season, the Bruins swept the home-and-home series, as they recorded a 5-2 win at Los Angeles Tennis Center (Mar. 1) and a 4-2 road victory at Marks Stadium (Apr. 17). The teams most recently squared off in the ITA Indoors in 2014, when USC held off a UCLA rally in the semifinals to secure a 4-3 win.
UCLA, which is seeded eighth in the field, and USC, which is seeded ninth, will compete for a chance to face the winner of top-seeded and host Virginia and 16th-seeded Utah State. That match will take place Friday at 3:30 p.m., PT on Courts 7-12, and the winners will meet in the quarterfinals Saturday. For more information regarding the 2017 ITA Division I National Men's Team Indoor Championship, click HERE.
Players Mentioned
