HATTIESBURG, Miss. - The University of New Orleans men's tennis team will close their 2011 schedule with four matches over three days beginning with William Carey at 2 p.m. on Friday.
UNO (8-2) will continue their stretch of matches with a 10 a.m. dual at Spring Hill in Mobile, Ala. on Saturday morning before moving over to Pensacola, Fla. to face Lambuth at 4 p.m. The last match will take place on Sunday at 12 p.m. against West Florida.
The Privateers already hold wins against WCU (8-8) and SHC (3-10), defeating the schools 4-3 and 4-0, respectively.
UNO has won five straight contests since falling to Division I foe Radford, besting four NAIA schools along with Division I Alcorn State. Hossam Meligy and Abdelrahman Zaki have been a key part of the team's success as of late, posting five straight wins. Meligy is 8-2 in dual play with Zaki posting a 7-2 mark.
The Privateers will need to get results in the bottom portion of the lineup as they are 15-15 combined at the lower three spots. Meligy is 4-2 when playing in the bottom three spots to lead a UNO team that typically plays some combination of Rohit Chivukula, Oliver Grimbly, Joshua Marx and Meligy in the spots.
Depth could factor in particularly when the Privateers challenge WCU for the second time this year.
UNO needed a third set tiebreaker win by Vinay Kamineni at the No. 2 position over Toni Gauta to break a 3-3 tie in the Privateers' previous encounter against the Crusaders. WCU enters the weekend having claimed their last two duals without yielding a single match.
The second foe of the weekend, SHC dropped to 0-6 after falling to UNO in their last meeting. Since then, the Badgers have picked up a win over Loyola-New Orleans and a pair over Tougaloo.
Lambuth (4-8) will face UNO for the first time in school history. The school, which is attempting to make the move from the NAIA ranks to Division II, fell to Rhodes and Alabama-Huntsville by matching 9-0 results in their last two matches heading into Wednesday dual at Rust College.
Perennial Gulf South Conference favorite UWF (16-8) rounds out the weekend. Ranked No. 5 in Division II, the Argos have 13 wins against nationally ranked foes and are led by No. 20 Andrey Pozhidaev, who has won four in a row at No. 1.
These four matches represent the last for a UNO team at the Division I level, as the team anticipates participating at the Division II level in 2011-12.
