New Orleans, La. – Louisiana’s Javier Pulgar-Garcia has been awarded Sun Belt Player of the Week for men’s tennis. Pulgar-Garcia a freshman from Madrid, Spain is a combined 4-0 on the season in both doubles and singles matches. He helped the Cajuns to a 6-1 win over #75 New Orleans last week.

Pulgar-Garcia, who is regionally ranked in the top 25, had his hand in two points for Louisiana this past weekend, helping the Cajuns upset #75 New Orleans. Pulgar-Garcia, along with teammate Arlen Domoney defeated UNO's Ben Smith and Jose Gaspar 8-6, before the Spanish import followed with a straight-set (6-1, 6-1) singles victory over the Privateers’ Guilherme Rebolo on the number-two court.

This is the first time this year that UL has picked up player of the week honors for tennis.

Senior Mallory Voelker the women's SBC tennis player of the week led Denver (5-3) to a pair of impressive 5-2 road wins at No. 34 VCU and Penn State last weekend. Voelker was 2-0 in singles competition to remain perfect (8-0) at the Pioneers number-one spot, while posting a 2-0 record to better her doubles mark to 6-1 this season. The Wisconsin native defeated VCU’s Ana Bara in three hard-fought sets (3-6, 6-0, 6-0), before knocking off Penn State’ Monika Mical in straight sets (7-6, 6-0). Along with partner Julia Bauregger, Voekler defeated VCU’s top tandem, 8-6, and Penn State’s number-one doubles team, 8-7.

The Men’s team is set for three matches in the next four days. On Thursday the team travels to take on Nicholls State at 1:30 p.m. Following the Thursday match the Cajuns will be in Florida over the Mardi Gras weekend. Louisiana will face Central Florida on Saturday at 11 p.m. On Sunday, the Cajuns will take on Florida Atlantic at 12 p.m.

Nicholls State is currently 2-2 on the season with wins over Xavier (La.) and Alabama State.

The Cajuns will look to pick up two wins in Florida against two strong programs.

Central Florida is 4-4 on season. They have faced many strong opponents such as Florida, Auburn, Tulsa and Clemson. They lost a 4-3 battle with #29 Auburn in their last match.

Florida Atlantic is 5-3 on the season and is on a three match win streak. The Owls three losses are all to top-25 teams.

Florida Atlantic beat the Cajuns last year and Coach Mark Jeffrey stated, “The match up with Florida Atlantic is meaningful to us, they beat us last season, the match will give us a good indication of where we are in the conference, however we cannot over look Nicholls State and Central Florida who have good programs as well.”


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