SAN ANTONIO – No. 8 Trinity University Men's Tennis will fly out to the campus of No. 6 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Colleges in Claremont, California to take the 13th straight berth into the NCAA III National Championship tournament.
The Tigers (16-6) collected a pair of shutout victories over Austin College and Colorado College to earn their spot in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference Championship match in Georgetown, Texas last weekend. They went on to claim the program's 27th conference title with a 5-2 win over the host and top seed of the tournament, No. 18 Southwestern University, on their home courts. No conference program has won more SCAC titles than Trinity men's tennis, having earned all but four of the 31 finals that they have participated in.
Despite the Pirates jumping out to a strong start, the Tigers fought back to take a lead after doubles play with a score of 2-1. The junior duo of
Rob Chang (Aiea, Hawaii / 'Iolani School) and
Dalton Locke (Humble, Texas / Kingwood) struck first, posting a mark of 8-5 from line three. The line two pairing of senior
Alessio Azzalini (Rome, Italy / Istituto Visconti) and first-year
Rafa Candelas Ruiz (Zacatecas, Mexico / American [ESP]) started out in a deficit, but rallied to notch the second point with their 8-7 (5) victory.
Azzalini and fellow senior
Hao Nguyen (Sugar Land, Texas / Strake Jesuit) quickly dispatched the Pirates' Bernardo Clemente and Steven Tibbetts in lines one and two of singles, with Azzalini taking a 6-1, 6-0 victory and Nguyen following with a 6-1, 6-2 margin. Southwestern added one more win to the match from line three, but just minutes later Chang provided the fifth and clinching point from line six with his 7-5, 6-1 win.
Candelas Ruiz leads Trinity with 13 wins in dual match singles this year, while Nguyen has won eight straight singles contests to improve to 11-2 this season. Nguyen and sophomore
Eric Liao (Taipei, Taiwan / Boca Prep [FL]) have accumulated 13 doubles wins, going 10-3 from line one while Chang and Locke are just one win behind them with a 12-4 doubles record.
ITA Latest Poll: Only New Regional Team Rankings (April 28)
The latest update from the Intercollegiate Tennis Association released new regional rankings where the Tigers maintain their position at No. 2 in the West, just behind this weekend's host team. The next ITA Poll is expected to be released on May 12 to include new team and regional player rankings.
Trinity Men's Tennis: A Plethora of Playoff Appearances
The No. 8 Tigers will be making their 29th trip to the NCAA III Championship Tournament this year, having only missed the margin one time in 2009 since they began competing at the NCAA III level. While Trinity has only won the National Title once, in 2000 under head coach
Butch Newman, they have made two appearances in the semifinals and 15 trips to the quarterfinals, their latest being in 2014 and 2021 respectively.
NCAA III Tournament: Surrounded by Familiar Faces at Regionals
Although they have not met in competition this season, the Tigers will be hosted by a familiar squad when they visit the Golden State as the Stags of CMS have been the site of three of the last five regional competitions. Their first match of the weekend will be against Concordia University (TX) who suffered a 7-2 loss when they visited
Butch Newman Tennis Center in mid-February. Should they advance to the next round of play, Trinity would be slated to play either University of California-Santa Cruz, who they faced earlier this season, or the host team of Claremont-Mudd-Scripps.
On the Tornados: Concordia is currently 17-4 on the season, winning their last four matches and securing their spot as the American Southwest Conference Champions. They claimed their conference title over Hardin-Simmons University in a tight battle that ended up in their favor, 5-4.
The Tigers have bested the Tornados in all six of their matchups since 2016, their most recent being a 7-2 win early this season. Before this season, Trinity faced Concordia in the 2021 Regional Tournament and won with a mark of 5-1. The rest of their victories have come in 9-0 regular season sweeps.
CTX is ranked No. 9 in the region, and they have a lone national ranked player in Joshua Bode, who currently stands at 19
th in the nation and 4
th in the region. Bode is also regionally ranked in doubles with teammate Adrian Munguia, taking the 5
th spot in the West.
On the Stags: Claremont-Mudd-Scripps will host the NCAA III Regionals for the fourth time since 2017, with a record of 19-4 so far this season. The Stags are currently on a 12 game win streak, having won the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Championship in a lopsided win over No. 15 California Institute of Technology.
Trinity has come up short in all of their matches against CMS, their latest occurring in the Stag-Hen Invitational Championship Match in March of 2022. Their last meeting during the postseason was in 2019, when the Stags bested the Tigers on their home court, 5-0.
Claremont-Mudd-Scripps is currently ranked No. 6 in the nation, and No. 1 in the West as per the latest poll from the ITA. They also have a trio of nationally ranked players – Advik Mareedu (1
st), Michael Hao (29
th) and Matthew Robinson (38
th) – along with the doubles team of Robinson and recent Trinity graduate
Christian Settles (2022) who are ranked 6
th in the nation.
On the Banana Slugs: Since their visit to San Antonio on April 15, UC Santa Cruz has accumulated two more wins, but fell to University of Mary Washington in the Coast to Coast Championship match (5-3) to produce an overall record of 6-9.
With the Tigers' victory over the Banana Slugs earlier this season, the two teams have both acquired a split-even record of 3-3 since their meeting in 2011, with Trinity having won the last three matches.
UCSC is ranked at No. 12 in the West and their only ranked members are doubles team Andrew Tjoa and Lucas Chen who sit at 14
th in the region.
Looking Ahead: NCAA III Championships
The winner of this weekend's tournament will advance to the NCAA III National Championship which will be played May 13-16 at the USTA National Campus in Orlando, Florida.
