MT: Ragin’ Cajuns Open Fall Season at Sugar Cane Invitational

[NewsCopy]

LOUISIANA - The Louisiana men's tennis team is back in action this weekend at the Youngsville Sports Complex for the Sugar Cane Invitational.

The Cajuns host Lamar, Nicholls, and Tyler Junior College beginning Friday, September 15.

Luc Godin enters his third season as head coach of the Cajuns after winning 29 matches and back-to-back postseason rankings. Last year the Cajuns finished third in the highly competitive Sun Belt Conference and knocked off South Alabama for the first time since 2015.

The Cajuns return the majority of their roster from last season. Alejo Ferrer Chueca, William Ribero, and Calin Postea are all back after winning eight singles matches a year ago. Vasil Dimitrov also returns after being named to the All-SBC Second Team for doubles. Oriol Fillat Gimenez and Alejandro Sanchez Gonzalez are both back after missing time due to injury in 2023.

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[ColoradoCajun]

RaginDave, do you still follow the MT team pretty closely? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the roster/schedule and whatnot. Also is this a new invitational? I don't recall us ever playing in Youngsville before.

[RaginDave]

RaginDave, do you still follow the MT team pretty closely? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the roster/schedule and whatnot. Also is this a new invitational? I don't recall us ever playing in Youngsville before.

I do, the spring schedule has not come out yet. The Fall schedule is usually tune-ups for the spring. This is a new Fall tournament, and we should do well in it considering the level of competition. Lamar, Nicholls and Tyler are not the strongest of competition, but it should give us a good idea of where our players stand. We have a nice mix of veteran guys, mixed with a ton of youngsters. We lose two very good veteran players from last years team, Karlo Kajin, who has been with the Cajuns for a while graduated and Kacper Dworak also graduated, but is in graduate school and is staying on as a volunteer coach. He should help in that capacity. I suggest if you have not listened to the podcast with Jay you do so, it is fantastic, Kacper is a great young man and will do great things.

As far as next year, I am excited to see what we can do. We get Oriol Fillat Giminez back, he missed all of last year with injury and he is a really good player. As a Sophomore he led the team with 16 singles wins and 10 doubles wins, mostly playing the #3 and 4 positions in singles. Having him back is huge, to be honest I think with him last year the Cajuns would have been a NCAA tournament team, without him they struggled at the end of the season, mostly because we lost Alejandro Sanchez Gonzales about mid season. He should be back as well. Gonzales was playing the #1 and #2 positions until his injury. Getting both of these guys back is huge to the season. I am looking for big things from Giminez and Gonzales. The other two that are probably locks to be playing on the starting 6 are Juniors Colin Postea and Vasil Dimitrov, both have been playing since they were freshman and both have had very good success at the bottom of the lineup, near the #5 and 6 positions. I think these 4 guys are going to be the catalyst of the team, but we have some other really good players. Two years in a row Alejo Ferrer Chueca has been forced into action and played extremely well, he will be back and should take one of the regular positions, his experience has helped a great deal. The final roster spot for the top 6 will be interesting. I think William Ribero who played a decent amount last year will be the expected final guy, but he will be challenged by a number of newcomers/younger guys. Keep an eye out for local player Mason Landreth, his older brother is on the team as well, but long term, I think Mason has a huge upside. The other guy I am really excited to see is Freshman Samuel Kyjaci, from Slovakia. Samuel comes in with allot of upside and a fairly highly recruited young man.

My thoughts on this year's team, is while they may be missing two very good players from last year, the team is much deeper than in previous years, in fact we have 12 players on the roster, that is probably the most we have had in one season in a long time, and I think 8 or so of these guys are capable of being in the top 6. We will miss the leadership of Dworak and Kajin, but we will be okay with the return of Gonzo and Gimenez.

The doubles matchups will be the most important thing for Coach Godin to figure out, with so many young players and returning from injury guys, having good doubles teams is a huge bonus. It might take him this Fall campaign to figure who works best with who, but I trust Coach Godin a ton to get this figured out by the beginning of the Spring season.

Good Luck to the team and thanks for asking.