Men’s Tennis Set to Face Portland in Opening Round of WCC Tournament

Men's Tennis

Posted: Apr 24, 2018

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Fifth seed Santa Clara men's tennis team will face fourth seed Portland in the opening round of the West Coast Conference Tournament on Thursday in Claremont, California. First serve is at 10 a.m. PT.

"The team really rallied to put themselves in this position. It's an improvement over our finish last year when we scraped into the tournament by the skin of our teeth. But this year, we've sprinted across the finish line of the regular season by beating a couple of teams we hadn't beaten recently," said Broncos head coach Niall Angus.

The Broncos (13-10, 5-4 WCC) finished the regular season winning four of the six conference matches including a pair of 4-3 decisions against BYU and Pepperdine. The win at Pepperdine last Saturday in the regular season finale helped the Broncos clinch the fifth seed in the tournament.

"When we found out the draw for the conference tournament we were excited because the one team that this group of players has not beaten yet out of the nine other conference teams is Portland. So the team is excited and ready to go," said Angus.

Back on March 29, the Broncos lost 4-1 to the Pilots at the indoor courts in Portland winning the doubles point before dropping all the singles points.

The Biszantz Family Tennis Center where the conference tournament will be held is an outdoor facility that the Broncos are more familiar with playing its home matches at the outdoor Degheri Tennis Center.

Santa Clara has played the same doubles lineup throughout the season with the number one pair of Andrew Gu and Robert Seby posting a 12-6 record. The sophomore duo of Vasileios Iliopoulos and Jesus Tapiador Barajas are 11-10 playing at number two. Connor Garnett and Kamran Khan are 9-11 at number three.

In singles, Iliopoulos enters the post-season riding a three-match win streak, the longest on the team. Garnett posts a team best 17-4 record on the year including 8-2 in the last 10 matches.

Portland (11-8, 6-3 WCC) dropped its first two of three conference matches before finishing with five wins in its last six, losing only to No. 49 LMU.

The winner of the Santa Clara and Portland match will advance to the semifinals to play regular season champion San Diego on Friday at 10 a.m. The Toreros were one of the four teams the Broncos beat down the stretch.

The live scoring link can be found on the 2018 WCC tennis championship central.