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Marquette Wire

The student news site of Marquette University

Marquette Wire

The student news site of Marquette University

Marquette Wire

Tennis teams travel to Big East championships

Photo courtesy of Marquette Athletics
Photo courtesy of Marquette Athletics

The Marquette tennis teams left Milwaukee Wednesday to travel to their respective Big East Championships. The women’s team headed to Tampa, Fla., to host school South Florida, while the men’s went to South Bend, Ind., to host school Notre Dame.

The men’s team finished the season just above .500 with a 13-11 record. The Golden Eagles ended the season with a four-match winning streak and won five of their last six. Because of the strong finish, Marquette finished as a No. 4 seed for the tournament, facing Georgetown in the No. 5 spot.

“Georgetown is a very balanced team from top to bottom and has played good doubles this year,” coach Steve Rodecap said. “Coach Ernst’s teams are very well coached, and he always has guys who compete extremely hard. It will be a tough test for us on Friday.”

Georgetown comes into the tournament riding the strong doubles play of Daniel Khanin and Reese Milner. Khanin and Milner are 11-3 in doubles play and are 8-2 in their last 10 matches. Milner and Khanin play in the No. 3 spot and would most likely face Gleb Skylr and James Stark, who have a 4-4 record together.

Marquette will put its strongest doubles team of Dan Mamalat and Vukasin Teofanovic in the No. 1 spot. The pairing is 15-10 overall and 12-8 in the No. 1 spot. Mamalat and Teofanovic are only 6-4 in their last 10 matches but are riding a three-game winning streak coming into the tournament.

For singles, Georgetown’s strongest spots are in the No. 5 and No. 6 spots, which is where Marquette struggles the most. The Golden Eagles’ best matchup is Mamalat in the No. 1 spot, which is one of the weakest spots for Georgetown.

On the women’s side, an 11-11 finish earned the Golden Eagles the No. 8 seed. Marquette has not finished strong down the stretch of the season, losing eight of its last 10 matches. However, the Golden Eagles defeated Cincinnati 4-3 in the season finale, and the two teams will face off again in the Big East Tournament.

The young Marquette team will face a more experienced Cincinnati team. The Bearcats boast decent doubles play, with a 29-28 overall doubles record over the course of the season. Their strongest team, Sierra Sullivan and Ashleigh Witte, finished with an 11-7 doubles record, the majority coming in the No. 2 spot.

And on the singles front, the Bearcats are extremely strong in the No. 3 spot, as the team is 16-4 in that spot thanks to a 12-4 record by Witte. The Bearcats are also 12-8 in the No. 4 spot because of Kelly Poggensee-Wei and her 10-5 record.

The Golden Eagles will need strong play from Erin Gebes and Ana Pimienta in the No. 2 spot and will also need Aina Hernandez Soler and Rocio Diaz to win in the No. 3 and No. 4 spots in the singles matches. Mix in strong performances form the rest of the team, and the Golden Eagles could come away with the win.

If both teams advance, the men’s team will then face the winner of Notre Dame and the winner of the St. John’s-Connecticut play-in game, while the women’s team will face Notre Dame. The men play Friday at 11 a.m.; the women play Thursday at 8 a.m.

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