Men's Tennis Travels to Central Region Championships
STILLWATER, Okla. — No, the New Mexico men’s tennis team didn’t pull a Bugs Bunny, who famously quipped that he should have taken a left turn at Albuquerque. The men’s tennis team most definitely turned right … right into Stillwater, Oklahoma for the ITA Central Regional championships. Of course, UNM is normally in the Mountain Region, but due to a previous tournament and the Mountain Region Championships being held on a different date than normal, well, here are the Lobos.
What the Central Region will pose is a whole new set of problems and issues, as UNM will not face its usual Mountain West foes, with a sprinkling of the Big Sky, Pac-12 and Big XII, but instead UNM will battle with th Big XII and SEC. Teams from Arkansas, Nebraska Omaha, Oklahoma State, WIchita State, Tulsa, Drake, Creighton, Nebraska, Saint Louis, Oklahoma, Oral Roberts, North Dakota and Lindenwood.
The championships, which stretch from Wednesday to Sunday, open with a 64-team bracket in doubles (with 45 entries) and a 128-person bracket in singles (with 98 competitors).
In doubles, three Lobo pairings have advanced inthe round of 32 via byes. Aram Noroozian and Rafael Abdulsalam will face No. 1 seed Matija Matic and Oliver Johansson of Drake. Georgio Samaha and Nicolas Recoura also are through to the round of 32, and they will play the winner of Nebrask-Omaha (Christian Trevey/Gabe Whitson) or Oklahoma State (Alessio Basile/Erik Schiessl). UNM’s other pairing that is through is Alex Maggs and Arda Azkara, who will face the No. 8 seed in Tulsa’s Timothy Carsson Seger and Pierce Rollins. Rollins is ranked No. 39 in the ITA preseason doubles rankings, although that is with Thiago Pernas.
Daniil Kakhniuk and Arthur Bellegy will face off with Oral Roberts’ tandem of Elijah Brewer and Ryan Holloway at 5 pm Mountain Time on Wednesday for a shot at Nebraska’s No. 7 seeded pair of Nic Wiedenhorn and Anton Shepp. Ryoma Matsushita and Avery Tallakson will go against Sansh Kumar and Luca Lo Nardo of Saint Louis at the same time, hoping to advance to face No. 5 seed Kristof Minarik and Alejandro Jacome of Wichita State.
In singles, UNM earned three seeded players with Arda Azkara the No. 5 seed, and Rafael Abdulsalam and Georgio Samaha earning one of the 17-32 seeds (they are all seeded 17 and randomly placed in the bracket).
Azkara will face the winner of Callum Gale of Tulsa and Shin Inoue of Creighton on Wednesday at 2 pm MT. Abdulsalam will play the winner of ALejandro Gandini (Creighton) and Gustavo Pinho (Oral Roberts) at 2 pm MT and Samaha gets either Ryan Holloway (ORU) or Ryoma Mishiro (UNO) at 1:30 MT. All of those matches are round of 64 matches.
In the round of 128, Alex Maggs faces Matthew Lanahan of Creighton at 8 am with Lars Johann of Nebraska (a 17-seed) waiting in the wings. Arthur Bellegy faces Victor Tosetto (Tulsa) at 8 am with (17) Shunya Maruyama waiting at 12:30 pm. In a pure luck of the draw match, Avery Tallakson faces Nikolay Sysoev of Nebraska at 9 am. Sysoev transferred out after playing for the Lobos his freshman year in 2022-23. The winner gets No. 8 Nathan Han of Oklahoma at 1 pm.
Noroozian faces Saint Louis’ Luca Lo Nardo at 11 am with a date with Oklahoma’s Baptiste Anselmo the prize at 3 pm. Recoura drew Drake’s Will Ecklund at 11 am with the winner facing Volodymyr Zakharov of Tulsa at 3 pm. Kakhniuk will go against Kirtan Patel of Creighton at 11:30 am in order to get to Nebraska’s Nic Wiedenhorn, and Matsushita faces Oral Roberts’ Ricardo Fiho, hoping to get a shot at No. 2 seed Isaac Becroft of Oklahoma State.
Fans can keep up with the tournament on UNM’s social channels of Twitter and Instagram.