ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A five match winning streak means very little apparently to the folks seeding the opponents for the Arizona State Invitational. The top three seeds in that tournament are No. 34 Memphis, No. 65 Rice and No. 71 UC Santa Barbara. A random draw among the other five teams (New Mexico, Utah State, South Florida, Cal Poly and host Arizona State) put UNM in front of the top seed, the Memphis Tigers. UNM and Memphis will kick off the three-day tournament on Friday morning at 10 am at the Kiwanis Tennis Center in Tempe.
With a win, UNM would move to the semifinals against either South Florida or the No. 4 seed in Cal Poly, who also play at the same time. The other matchups feature Utah State against No. 3 UC Santa Barbara and No. 2 Rice against Arizona State. Those matches are at 1 p.m. The tournament continues with matches at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday.
The Lobos are certainly riding into the tournament feeling good, having won five straight, and getting some honors along the way. Georgio Samaha has won five straight in singles and is the reigning Mountain West Freshman of the Week, a mantle he took from his teammate Arda Azkara who was both Mountain West Player and Freshman of the Week previously. UNM has been great in doubles, winning the doubles point five times in seven, and in each of the last four matches. What’s made UNM tough though is along with the five-match winning streaks of Azkara and Samaha, Jan Pucalka has won six straight, and UNM has gotten great play from the middle of the lineup, with four players over those three slots. Rafael Abdulsalam has three wins over the winning streak, and Alex Maggs has two and Aram Noroozian jumped into the lineup at No. 3 and picked up a win.
None of that takes into account that Daniil Kakhniuk, while still looking for the elusive first singles win, has steadily improved and was on the verge of a win when UNM clinched against BYU, and Nicolas Prieto winning three of his last four doubles matches. UNM is currently firing, if not on all cylinders, enough to make them one of the hottest teams in the Mountain West, and a tough matchup for anyone, let alone a nationally-ranked squad.
UNM’s five match winning streak has seen wins over Santa Clara (5-2 and a huge turnaround from last year’s 6-1 loss), Grand Canyon (6-1), BYU twice (both 4-0) and Northern Arizona (5-2). UNM’s two losses are completely forgivable, having lost to a Utah team that is currently 13-0, and to Gonzaga, which is 6-1. Gonzaga’s only loss you ask? They lost to Utah. So yeah, UNM has been pretty good.
But, the luck of the draw puts them against a more than prety good Memphis team that is also 5-2. The Tigers have the the 26th-ranked doubles team in DAvid Stevenson and Jeremy Taylor, and they have two losses to ranked teams (4-0 to No. 1 Tennessee and 4-1 to No. 19 Mississippi State) but they have a great 4-3 win over Alabama in Tuscaloosa. They also have 4-2 wins over Western Michigan and Norhtwestern and 7-0 wins over Jackson State and North Alabama.
Waiting in the wings is either 6-1 Cal Poly or 2-4 South Florida.