Louisiana Men's Tennis Advances To SBC Championship Match

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NEW ORLEANS – The 64th-ranked Ragin' Cajuns men's tennis team defeated fourth-seeded UT Arlington 4-1 on Saturday at the City Park Tennis Center to advance to the 2014 Sun Belt Men's Tennis Championship match.

Top-seeded Louisiana (19-4) will face second-seeded South Alabama tomorrow at 2 p.m. at City Park Tennis Center. Live scoring and audio are available for the match on SunBeltSports.org.

The Cajuns jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the semifinal match after winning the doubles point with victories on courts one and three. Jake Wynan and Rick de Groot knocked off the 60th-ranked doubles team of Carlos Arbiza and Javier Perez at the No. 1 position, 8-3. The duo is now 11-3 on the year.

Hunter Johnson and Carl Alberton (UL) clinched the doubles point recording an 8-4 victory against the team of Daniel Armengol and Mario Muniesa on court three.

In singles, Louisiana increased its advantage to 2-0 as Edgar Lopez won in straight sets against Marek Pesicka on line one, 6-1, 6-4.

The Mavericks (8-13) pulled within a point after picking up a win on court six, but that didn't last long as Damian Farinola defeated Sebastian Erimicioiu at the No. 4 position, 6-3, 6-4.

Johnson clinched the match for the Ragin' Cajuns winning his 15th straight match this spring with a 6-3, 6-2 victory over Muniesa on court five.

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UL-SI

[RaginDave]

One to go baby. Beat usa today

[GeauxCajuns]

How does the scoring work on the doubles courts? Singles court scores look traditional, but doubles look like 8-4 or 8-3. Thanks for the info

[DieHard1280]

No wonder the men's team has been so successful this year. To their opponents it must seem like the racket is swinging itself. That's got to throw off one's game.

[RaginDave]

dms, the doubles court counts as 1 point. So if you win 2 of 3, you get one point. They play an 8 game pro set in doubles, meaning first to 8, if the score is 7-7, they will play a tiebreaker to decide the winner.

[GeauxCajuns]

thats a quick match then, huh? do they guys that line up on the singles court also play doubles, like you see at the majors. a doubles match isnt very taxing on your body, especially if its just one time to 8.

[RaginDave]

Yes it is a quick match. Usually most of the players play singles and doubles, but there are guys who only do one or the other. For instance:

Our #2 (Rik De Groot) and #3 (Jake Wynan) Singles guys are our #1 Doubles Team
Our #1 (Edgar Lopez) and #4 (Damien Farinola) Singles guys are our #2 Doubles Team and
Our #5 Singles guy (Hunter Johnson) played with a guys who only played doubles, (Carl Alberton), but Carl played Singles in the Semifinals.

It is all about matchups in College tennis, for instance Rik DeGroot played #1 singles for us most of the season, but played #2 in the conference tournament. The Cajuns are deep in tennis, they played 9 guys regularly this season, remember you can play as few as 6 in the same match if all of your singles guys play doubles as well. We have 11 players on the roster and all of them saw playing time, but the Top 9 are interchangeable based on matchups.

[jllanclos]

Yes it is a quick match. Usually most of the players play singles and doubles, but there are guys who only do one or the other. For instance:

Our #2 (Rik De Groot) and #3 (Jake Wynan) Singles guys are our #1 Doubles Team
Our #1 (Edgar Lopez) and #4 (Damien Farinola) Singles guys are our #2 Doubles Team and
Our #5 Singles guy (Hunter Johnson) played with a guys who only played doubles, (Carl Alberton), but Carl played Singles in the Semifinals.

It is all about matchups in College tennis, for instance Rik DeGroot played #1 singles for us most of the season, but played #2 in the conference tournament. The Cajuns are deep in tennis, they played 9 guys regularly this season, remember you can play as few as 6 in the same match if all of your singles guys play doubles as well. We have 11 players on the roster and all of them saw playing time, but the Top 9 are interchangeable based on matchups.

Awesome insight, Dave. We don't pay you enough.

[RaginDave]

Thank you very much,

Being an avid player makes it easy to be a fan of College Tennis. I personally wish I could get down to Lafayette to see some matches. When I was in College back in the late 80's and early 90's the Cajuns were a very formidable team in College Tennis, and I saw plenty of dual matches, it is always fun and this is a very good team. Coach Jeffrey is getting the Cajuns back to that area. We are not as good as the TOP 25 in Tennis, but we are comparable to the Top 50 right now.

There is a very good chance we could end up as the only Louisiana team to make the NCAA's this year. LSU is in the Top 60, but they lost in there conference tournament and are a bubble team at best. Tulane is also nationally ranked in the Top 75, but they lost to Tulsa in the CUSA finals. Both Tulane and LSU are bubble teams as they performed well but lost in there conference tournaments.

The Cajuns meanwhile are in the NCAA tournament and will probably be a #3 seed, the NCAA's in tennis are set up similar to baseball and softball, except it is single elimination, there will be 16 regionals around the country and we will probably face a team ranked anywhere from 20-40 range. If we get a good regional we have a chance to knock off the #2 seed. I would assume we will be heading to Texas (could be UT, Texas A&M or Baylor), we lost to both A&M and Baylor earlier in the year.

The good news is the new rankings come out today and based on our performance we should move up, I would not think that much, but we did have a win vs. a Top 75 Team in South Alabama, which will help. I would think we could creep into the top 60, around 58 or 59, which would be our highest ranking in quite some time, currently we are ranked #64.

[GeauxCajuns]

dave how old are you. may know you IRL. i play alot of tennis down here through leagues and tournaments.

[RaginDave]

44.

[RaginDave]

Well the new rankings came out and we did not move up as high as I expected, we did move from 64 to 62 in the rankings.

LSU is 46 up 9 spots from 55 and Tulane is up to 63 from 67. LSU could possibly slip into the NCAA tournament, Tulane looks to be out at 63. That is the importance of winning our conference tournament. The two losses we had to GWU 3-4 and USA 2-4 and having to cancel the Tulane match, probably cost us a Top 50 ranking. All of these teams were ranked when we played them and would have gotten our ranking up much higher, but probably would not have changed where we go and what seed we would have. Now we just need to go win.

Regional announcements will be made on 4/29/14 at 5PM EST on the D1 Selection show on NCAA.com