Lobos Take on Texas Tech in Lubbock, host Denver Sunday

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The Lobo men’s tennis team sits at 7-3, dropping from the rankings after a 4-3 loss to No. 54 Santa Clara.  UNM now starts a stint of five matches in nine days with plenty of opportunities to face good opponents and make a climb back into the rankings.  That starts this week when UNM travels to Texas Tech of the Big XII before hosting the No. 38 Denver Pioneers on Sunday at 2 p.m.

Both matches will have live scoring and live video.

New Mexico is coming off a 4-3 loss to Santa Clara, a match in which UNM lost three singles matches on the court and then one when the Lobos had a player defaulted in the first set.  All three of UNM’s losses this year are by identical 4-3 scores.

What did happen on the court was Arda Azkara defeated No. 54 Christian Lerby, winning 7-5, 6-4.  That moved Azkara back into the national rankings at No. 93, and it moved Azkara to 8-0 in the spring, and 3-0 against nationally-ranked opponents.  Azkara was the Mountain West Player of the Week for the second time this season, and it marked the fourth time that the last five weeks a Lobo won the honor.  The only week UNM didn’t get the award was the week UNM didn’t play.

Texas Tech is 6-6 on the season and 5-1 at home.  It also had a 4-1 win over UTSA, a common opponent for UNM.  As for the Pioneers, well they are potentially the hottest team in the nation.  Denver, ranked No. 38, is 12-0 on the season, and it has road wins at Utah State (4-3), Purdue (4-3) and Wisconsin (6-1).