New Orleans - The New Orleans Privateers men's tennis team (4-6, 0-1) will look to defend their home court in a critical conference weekend. The Privateers host the Lamar Cardinals on Friday at 3 p.m. and the Abilene Christian Wildcats on Saturday at 2 p.m. at the University Tennis Center.
The Privateers suffered a rough loss on Wednesday at Nicholls. In the match, New Orleans was ahead 3-2 but the Colonels rallied to take the last two matches and rallied from 4-1 down in the third set of the deciding match at flight four.
"We're starting with a Lamar team that lost their top four players from last year," said Coach
Burzis Kanga. "We need to play smart and execute. We have two great opportunities at home that we need to take advantage of and this is critical for our season."
Alexis Guedy,
Giacomo Adoncecchi, and
Johannes Klein all picked up singles victories on Wednesday. The win for Guedy was his sixth, which leads the team. Klein and Adoncecchi are both at five singles victories for the spring.
New Orleans is still in search of the right combination in doubles. The Privateers collectively have gone 4-14 in doubles matches this season. This season, Coach Kanga has used seven different doubles combinations.
The Privateers lost to both Lamar and Abilene Christian last season. New Orleans is searching for their first win against the Cardinals since New Orleans' first year in the Southland (2014). That season, the Privateers won a 4-3 decision against the Beaumont based squad.
Lamar (3-10, 0-1) is the defending Southland postseason champion from a year ago. The Cardinals were ousted in the NCAA tournament by Baylor after winning the conference title over perennial favorite, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. The Cardinals lost their conference opener 5-2 to Abilene Christian and are looking to snap a three-match losing skid.
Abilene Christian (12-8, 2-0) is on a roll lately with four wins in their last five matches. The Wildcats have defeated Lamar and Nicholls in conference thus far. Jonathan Sheehy has been strong at the top of the Wildcats lineup, sporting a 12-5 record. His brother, Josh Sheehy also has 12 wins on the season.
For full coverage of Privateers tennis, please follow
@PrivateersTN on Twitter and
@UNOPrivateers on Instagram, like
/NewOrleansTennis on Facebook and subscribe to the
/PrivateerAthletics channel on YouTube.
