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No. 6 Florida Gators (6-0, 0-0 SEC) at No. 1 Virginia Cavaliers (3-0, 0-0 ACC)
Date & Time Saturday, Feb. 11, 2017, 5 p.m.
Location Charlottesville, Va. | Boyd Tinsley Courts, Boar’s Head Sports Club
Coverage Live Scoring And Video
Additional Information Twitter | Coach Boland Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

Feb. 9, 2017 –

CHARLOTTEVILLE, Va. – The top-ranked Virginia men’s tennis team (3-0, 1-0 ACC) plays its first home match of the season, hosting No. 6 Florida (6-0, 0-0 SEC) on Saturday, Feb. 11 at 5 p.m. at the Boyd Tinsley Courts at the Boar’s Head Sports Club.

Live scoring and streaming video will be available through a link on VirginiaSports.com.

The defending national champions opened the season with three road wins, including a pair of 4-3 victories at Vanderbilt and Kentucky. Juniors Alexander Ritschard (Zurich, Switzerland) and Henrik Wiersholm (Kirkland, Wash.) both went 3-0 in singles over the weekend with Ritschard also going 1-0 in doubles. Wiersholm clinched UVA’s victory at Vanderbilt while Ritschard guaranteed the win at both Kentucky and Louisville. Ritschard, who sat out most of the 2016 season recovering from a shoulder injury, was 12-0 last season and has not lost a collegiate singles match since the 2015 NCAA Championship match against Oklahoma.

Freshman Carl Soderlund (Stockholm, Sweden), the top player in this year’s ITA National Freshman/Newcomer rankings, began his collegiate career with three singles victories.

Junior Collin Altamirano (Sacramento, Calif.) and senior Thai-Son Kwiatkowski (Charlotte, N.C.) combined to go 3-0 at No. 1 singles over the weekend. Kwiatkowski downed Kentucky’s Ryotaro Matsumura, who was ranked No. 17, while Altamirano downed No. 97 Daniel Valent of Vanderbilt and Christopher Morin-Kougoucheff of Louisville.

Florida will be the second ranked team that the Cavaliers have faced this season and the third SEC team.

The Gators moved up five places in this week’s Oracle/ITA Collegiate Rankings after picking up wins over then-ranked No. 8 USC and No. 6 UCLA last weekend in Gainesville. Sophomore Alfredo Perez was named the SEC Player of the Week. Perez picked up two singles wins in the No. 1 position over the weekend, improving to a 5-0 dual singles record and a 12-3 overall singles record for the season. Perez defeated USC’s No. 28 Logan Smith 6-1, 6-2 in only 58 minutes, and clinched the UCLA match with a 6-4, 6-3 win over No. 11 Gage Brymer.

In the inaugural USTA College Tennis Top 25 team rankings, Florida tied for the No. 3 position alongside Wake Forest. Virginia is ranked No. 1 in the USTA poll.

Virginia is 5-3 all-time against Florida and has won the last two meetings, including a 4-0 victory in the quarterfinals of the 2016 NCAA Championship. Last year, Kwiatkowski, Ritschard and Wiersholm all picked up singles victories against the Gators’ Elliott Orkin, Chase Perez-Blanco and McClain Kessler.

The Cavaliers will be back in action on Valentine’s Day, hosting No. 17 Illinois (2-2, 0-0 Big Ten) on Tuesday, Feb. 14 at 5 p.m. at the Boyd Tinsley Courts at the Boars Head Sports Center. Admission is free for all Virginia home tennis matches.

For the second-straight year, Virginia will also be hosting the ITA National Team Indoor championship, a tournament UVA has won five of the last nine years, at the Boar’s Head Sports Club from Feb. 17-20. The event features 16 teams: the 15 schools who won both of their matches during the ITA Kick-Off Weekend and the host school. The tournament is held over four days, and begins on Friday with first-round play, followed by quarterfinals on Saturday, semifinals on Sunday and the championship match on Monday.

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