Boxers Want To Make A Statement At NWC Tennis Tournament
QUICK LINK: NWC Tennis Championships WebsiteFOREST GROVE – Head Coach
Brian Jackson hopes that the successes of the 2014 Pacific men's tennis season have set up a perfect storm.
After a down year in 2013 where the Boxers slid into the No. 4 position in the NWC tournament (despite a seventh place finish in the team standings), Jackson reloaded his men's program with a combination of talented freshmen and transfers. The changes paid off as the Boxers improved from 5-11 overall in 2013 to 12-3 this year.
"We feel really good about our chances, certainly better than we have ever felt before," said Jackson on the eve of the tournament, which begins Friday in Walla Walla, Wash. "We feel like things have been going right for us this year. We have gotten good play when we needed good play. Our players have been stepping up at the right times."
Pacific will open up in the semifinals on Friday against George Fox. Pacific coasted by the Bruins 8-1 in their lone regular season match last week to claim the No. 2 seed. The two teams met in the semifinals two years ago, and it was the No. 3 seeded Bruins upsetting the Boxers to advance to the final.
"For us it will be important that we play our best in our first match and not look ahead," Jackson said. "We have a really tough, scrappy George Fox team to take on first. There is a little bit of unfinished business for us in the first round. We feel really good about our performance against them last week and felt like we came out of it knowing that we have the ability to beat them. They key is that we have to play as good against them as we did here."
Should Pacific won on Friday, the Boxers will be set up to face the conference's perennial power in Whitman. While the Boxers lost their lone regular season match to the Missionaries, 6-3, they have the distinction of having taken more matches off Whitman than any other NWC team. The remaining seven conference squads took a total of two matches combined.
"If we are able to get to the finals, which has certainly been our goal all year, we feel like we are as confident as we can be against a very good Whitman team," Jackson said. "We feel like we're close and some of those matches we lost were tight. We feel like we're better than when we played them last time and we like our chances."
More details on the NWC Tennis Championships, including links to live results and a live video stream, can be found at
http://bit.ly/1iRAB5M.
SCOUTING THE OPPONENTSNO. 1 SEED WHITMANOverall Record: 17-4 NWC Record: 12-0 (1st) National Ranking: 14 West Region Ranking: 4
Perennial conference power, dynasty, powerhouse. Call them what you want, but the Missionaries are once again the team to beat at the NWC Tournament. The Missionaries will be gunning for their seventh consecutive conference title and have not lost to a NWC team since Barack Obama took office. Outside of a season-opening loss to NAIA power Lewis-Clark State, the Missionaries losses have come to a trio of nationally ranked powers: A 5-4 loss to No. 7 Trinity (Texas), a 7-2 defeat to No. 1 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps and a 5-4 defeat to No. 13 Pomona-Pitzer. The Missionaries are led by Andrew LaCava, who enters the tournament with a 7-3 record in singles (6-3 at No. 2) and a 12-3 mark in doubles. He is ranked No. 14 in the west region. Teammate Colton Malesovas is ranked No. 23 in the region and Steven Roston is ranked No. 24. LaCava and Malesovas make up the No. 4 ranked doubles tandem in the region.
Whitman defeated Pacific in their lone regular season match of the season, 6-3, on Mar. 7, but the Boxers were one of only two teams to take a match off of the Missionaries all season. Battaglia and Zuroske managed to beat LaCava and Malesovas in a hard fought No. 1 doubles match while
Josh Bernstein (Fr., Novato, Calif.) and
Clark Wininger (Fr., San Francisco, Calif.) took victories at the bottom of the singles ladder.
NO. 3 SEED GEORGE FOXOverall Record: 11-4 NWC Record: 9-3 (3rd) West Region Ranking: 12
It is no surprise that it was the Boxers and Bruins fought for the No. 2 seed in the NWC Tournament. The continually improving Bruins lost two matches in April (to Whitman and Pacific) and only one in March (at Whitman). Each of George Fox's wins has been dominant. The only exceptions were a 5-4 victory over Caltech on Mar. 8 and a 6-3 defeat of Hardin-Simmons in California on Mar. 11. Nick Grafton is the leading player for the Bruins, entering the week with an 11-2 record in the lower singles flights and a 9-4 mark in doubles. Justin McClain, the Bruins' regular No. 1 player is 7-7 in singles and 10-5 in doubles entering the tournament.
Both Pacific and George Fox are looking forward to a rematch after their lone regular season meeting, last Tuesday in Forest Grove. Outside of Grafton's win at No. 6 singles, it was all Boxers as Zuroske came back from one set down in singles and paired with Battaglia to win a 9-7 No. 1 doubles marathon with McClain and Chris Lilley as the Boxers won 8-1.
NO. 4 LEWIS & CLARKOverall Record: 7-10 NWC Record: 7-5 (tie 4th) West Region Ranking: 17
Lewis & Clark earned the tournament's No. 4 seed thanks in three wins in April that gave the Pioneers critical points in the NWC Tournament point standings. Most critical, however, was a 7-2 over Whitworth on Apr. 4 that provided the Pioneers the tiebreaker. Lewis & Clark has either won big or lost close matches. In matches decided by a 6-3 score or closer, the Pioneers are 0-4. Kevin Ross, the team's regular No. 2 singles player, leads the Pioneers with a 10-6 record and an 8-6 mark at No. 2. Michael Brewer, the regular No. 1 player, stands at 9-5 on the season. Ross is 8-8 in doubles, with a 4-7 mark when paired with Brewer.
In their only meeting with Pacific on the season, Mar. 13 in Portland, the Boxers had to rally for the win despite taking two of the three doubles matches. Wins from the Boxers' No. 3, No. 5 and No. 6 singles players, highlighted by a key three-set win by Wininger over Scott Monismith, allowed Pacific the 5-4 victory.
