Virginia Begins ACC Play on Sunday by Hosting Louisville
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – The Virginia men’s tennis team (1-0, 0-0 ACC) will play its first Atlantic Coast Conference match of the 2018-19 season by hosting Louisville (3-0, 0-0 ACC) on Sunday, January 20 at 11 a.m. at the Boar’s Head Sports Club.
Admission is free for all Virginia home tennis matches. Live scoring and streaming video will be available through links on VirginiaSports.com.
The Cavaliers made the biggest jump of any team in the Oracle ITA Collegiate Tennis rankings. Virginia was No. 41 in the Sept. 11 preseason rankings, but catapulted to No. 17 in the January 9 top-25 poll. Louisville is currently unranked.
Virginia opened the dual season on Friday night with a 6-1 victory over William & Mary. The Cavaliers swept all three doubles matches and picked up singles victories on every court except three.
Freshman Ryan Goetz (Greenlawn, N.Y.), who racked up 11 singles victories in the fall and was the runner-up in singles at the ITA Atlantic Regional, started his dual career with a 7-5, 6-2 victory on court six.
Freshman Brandon Nakashima (San Diego, Calif.), who enrolled at UVA in time for the spring semester, began his collegiate career with wins in both doubles and singles. Nakashima partnered with redshirt senior Henrik Wiersholm (Kirkland, Wash.) for a dominant 6-2 victory at No. 3 doubles. Nakashima then went 6-0, 6-3 at No. 2 singles to pick up a win in his debut.
Wiersholm, in his first appearance in a collegiate match since May 23, 2017, the NCAA final against North Carolina, clinched the victory for UVA with a 6-4, 6-1 win on court 4. Wiersholm heads into the Louisville match having won 25-consecutive conference singles matches dating back to his freshman season, posting a career mark of 32-1.
Louisville opened its season last weekend, traveling to Hawai’i to compete in the Hawai’i. The tournament featured two days of singles and doubles competitions as well as a dual against the Rainbow Warriors that the Cardinals won 6-1. Louisville downed Butler and Lipscomb in a doubleheader at home on Friday.
Virginia is 8-1 all-time against Louisville. The Cardinals picked up their first win in the series with a 6-1 victory last season.
Next weekend, Virginia heads to College Station, Texas, to compete in ITA Kickoff Weekend. The Cavaliers will face Cal on Saturday and then either Texas A&M or Western Michigan on Sunday as they vie for one of 16 slots at the ITA National Team Indoor Championships, being held Feb. 15-18 in Chicago, Ill. Virginia’s next home match is a showdown on Friday, Feb. 8 against reigning national champion Wake Forest at 6 p.m. at the Boar’s Head Sports Club.