The UNM men’s tennis team, which is the defending Mountain West Conference champions, will put its title on the line beginning Friday with the Mountain West Tournament in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The Lobos will enter the tournament as the number two seed and get a first-round bye by virtue of its 4-1 conference record. UNM finished second to San Diego State University, which also dealt UNM its only conference loss, and went 16-5 overall while going undefeated at home.
The Lobos’ first match will be Friday at 9 a.m. against the winner of a first-round match-up between the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and the Air Force Academy. UNM beat both teams in conference play this year, but both were hard-fought wins.
Against UNLV, a 4-2 Lobo victory, the team needed wins at the number three and four positions to secure the victory, because number one singles player Takeshi Itoh and number two player Bart Scott dropped their singles matches.
Itoh and Scott rebounded against Air Force to help the Lobos take a 4-1 victory.
Head coach Alan Dils said he had no preference as to which team the Lobos will face in the second round.
“When we played UNLV, they were injured a bit,” Dils said. “We think they’re going to be healthy, so that will make them tougher. No matter who it is, we’ve got to be the best to win it, so we’re concentrating on ourselves.”
Itoh, however, has never beaten UNLV’s number one player Nenad Zivkovic, and would like another chance at him.
“Either team is going to be tough, so it really doesn’t matter to us,” Itoh said. “Personally, I want to play against UNLV.”
The Lobos will go into the tournament having won seven of its last eight matches dating back to its Feb. 25th loss to Kansas University. Its only loss since then was to the Aztecs in conference play. Dils said the streak would definitely benefit the team because it shouldn’t extra motivation to perform well.
“We definitely set these championships as one of our goals and that usually gets people ready,” Dils said. “We’ve played near our capability in every match this year. Last year, we were up and down and got hot at the end to win the championship.”
Last year’s Lobos were only 10-13 overall, but went into the conference championship as the second seed, which led to their winning the tournament over top seed San Diego State.
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Itoh said the team would not mess with this year’s winning formula in approaching the tournament.
“It’s just a matter of mental preparation,” Itoh said. “We’re not working on anything technique-wise. Everybody’s playing well and we’re looking forward to getting our revenge on SDSU.”
On the other side of the bracket, the University of Utah and Brigham Young University will battle for the right to face number one seed SDSU. The Aztecs were undefeated in conference play this year.
Dils said that a balanced UNM attack the team has used all year will be the key to winning the tournament.
“Our key has been our lower end players,” Dils said. “We knew at the beginning of the year that we would be strong there, but we’ve also been solid everywhere. At BYU we lost the top two and the bottom four won, so we’re definitely counting on them.”
If the Lobos win Friday, they’ll play Saturday at 2 p.m. to decide the tournament champion. The winner advances to the NCAA Regionals May 12-13. Dils said the NCAA might decide to stage a regional round at the Lobo Tennis Club.