The men's tennis team will head up to East Lansing, Mich. forthe ITA Regionals this weekend. They will meet 30 teams from aroundthe region, including ITA mainstays Illinois, Ohio State,Minnesota, Indiana, Purdue, Notre Dame, Michigan State,Northwestern, and Michigan.
Six players from Ball State will compete in singles and threeteams will compete in doubles. Four Ball State players will startin the qualifying draw, with two starting the main. Head Coach BillRichards is pleased with the results of the draw.
"I think that's probably what we deserved," he said. "Maybe wecould have got one more in the main draw. But we lost two goodplayers off of last year's team with no one really new on the team.I was a little worried we would only get 5 players in."
Patrick Thompson, Michael Heule, Paul Newman and Klint Knablewill all begin in the Qualifying Singles bracket, and hope toadvance from the field of 64 to the final 8, which would put themin the main draw.
"We want each person to play well and hopefully advance into thedraw," Richard said. "Our goal is to get a couple of players intomain draw."
Thompson will play IUPUI's Luke Recker, Heule will clash withKarol Zaruki of Illinois-Chicago, Newman will take on Louisville'sJakob Gustafsson and Knable will battle Ben Kirksey from OhioState.
In the main draw, Matt Laramore will face Cameron Marshall ofMichigan State, and Matt Baccarani will battle Toledo's Khalid AlNabhani.
The doubles team of Baccarani and Thompson will face MarkKennedy and Jonathan Howard of Louisville, Knable and Newman willclash with DePaul's Mark Henderson and George Wang, and Laramoreand Rhodes will battle Troy Havens and Paul Rose from Purdue.
Richards knows his team has improved over the past month.
"I think the team is better than say, the Ball StateInvitational [performance]," he said. "I think we've made progressand hopefully will be seen. Of course, it's to a degree (the) samewith other teams."
The action begins today, and will continue through Tuesday.
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