Lehigh University Athletics
Lehigh ready for NCAA showdown at No. 6 Mississippi
5/9/2013 2:01:00 PM | Men's Tennis
BETHLEHEM, Pa. – The Lehigh men's tennis team will play its first ever NCAA Tournament match Friday when the Mountain Hawks meet No. 6 Mississippi at the Palmer/Salloum Tennis Center in Oxford, Miss. The time of the match has been moved to 3 p.m. (CT), a change from when the pairings were announced on April 30.
Friday's first match features BYU and Memphis and will begin at noon (CT). The winners of Friday's matches will meet in the Round of 32 Saturday at 2 p.m. (CT) for a berth in the Sweet Sixteen in Urbana, Ill.
The Mountain Hawks finished up final exams on Wednesday and will make the trek down to Oxford on Thursday to prepare for Friday's match against the seventh-ranked and No. 6 national seed Rebels.
"We prepare the same for every match," said Hendrix, the 2013 Patriot League men's tennis Coach of the Year. "We go through our routines and we feel comfortable and good about ourselves going into this. It's going to be a tall order against a really tough team and it should be a great learning experience for our student-athletes."
Lehigh defeated Navy 4-0 on April 21 to capture its first Patriot League Championship. The Mountain Hawks enter the NCAA Tournament at 18-5 overall having won six of their last seven matches.
The balanced Mountain Hawk lineup features five players who received Patriot League honors recently. Sophomore Ben Gilman was recently named to the All-Patriot League first team and was honored as the league's Player of the Month for April. Gilman is 15-7 in singles play and will compete at No. 2 singles on Friday. Junior Mark Goldberg and sophomore Mitchell Petersen were named to the All-League second team. Goldberg will man the top singles position, while Petersen plays at No. 3 and is tied for the top singles record on the team at 17-4.
At No. 4 singles, Lehigh will lean on senior co-captain Matt Savran, who matched Petersen with a 17-4 mark that included a 6-0 regular season record against Patriot League opponents. Savran was named Most Valuable Player of the Patriot League Tournament.
Lehigh's other co-captain, senior Andrew Krentz, will man No. 5 singles. Krentz is 14-7 this season and on Wednesday was named Patriot League Scholar-Athlete of the Year for the second straight year.
Junior Timur Chernykh rounds out Lehigh's singles lineup at No. 6. He has posted a 15-5 record this season and was 5-1 against league opponents.
The Mountain Hawks' doubles teams have been consistent throughout the season. Goldberg and Petersen will play at the top flight, where they are 12-8 as a team. Savran will team with freshman Jeremy Kochman at No. 2 doubles. That duo is 13-9 on the season. Lehigh's most successful doubles team has been its No. 3 pairing of Gilman and Krentz that is 16-6 on the season.
"Our strength is in the fact that we can win at every position," Hendrix said. "We play for seven points so four guys have to step up. We're so deep and talented one through eight that anyone can step up on any given day. That makes us tough to beat."
Ole Miss earned an at-large berth with a 15-8 overall record. The Rebels won their tenth SEC Western division championship and hosted the SEC tournament, but were upset in their first tournament match, falling 4-3 to No. 12 seed Alabama.
The Rebels are making their 20th consecutive NCAA Championship appearance. Ole Miss has made four final fours in men's tennis and reached the NCAA finals in 1995. Last year the Rebels won two home matches to reach the sweet sixteen before bowing out against UCLA.
Individually, Ole Miss features three All-SEC performers in Nik Scholtz, Jonas Lutjen and William Kallberg. All three are ranked in the top 125 nationally by the ITA with Scholtz coming in at No. 16, Lutjen ranked No. 20 and Kallberg at 110. Scholtz and Lutjen are the nation's fourth ranked doubles team, while Johan Backstrom and Stefan Lindmark are ranked 57th. Scholtz and Lutjen have also qualified for the NCAA Individual Championships in both singles and doubles.
"Once you get to this level, the serves get bigger," Hendrix said. "The players become more consistent. The players themselves are a little bigger and stronger, but we're not intimidated by anyone.
"Our goal is to play through the initial jitters of being on the big stage and just play consistent tennis," Hendrix continued. "Playing our own game in our own style and playing within ourselves doing what we can control. If we do that we'll give ourselves a shot to win."
Friday's match will begin at 3 p.m. CT from the Palmer/Salloum Tennis Center. Live scoring and a live blog of all the action will be available through the Ole Miss web site.
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