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Men's Tennis Prepares for No. 13 Florida

Jan. 31, 2008

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (www.ucfathletics.com) - On Friday, the UCF men's tennis team heads to Gainesville to face No. 13 Florida. The match will take place at the Ring Tennis Complex at 3 p.m.

UCF opened its season on Saturday against No. 32 Rice. The teams finished the three doubles matches before rain ultimately stopped play.

Senior Nikolas Overkemping (Bonn, Germany) and sophomore Johan Beigart (Vaxjo, Sweden) recorded an 8-5 win at the No. 1 spot against Rice's Ralph Knupfer and Tobias Scheil. Junior Brock Sakey (Gulf Breeze, Fla./Gulf Breeze) and freshman Claudio Romano (Valencia, Venezuela) nearly took a victory at No. 2. After being down 4-1, the duo stormed back, forcing the match into a tiebreaker, but lost, 9-8(5).

The Gators are 1-1 this spring. Florida won its season-opening match against No. 64 Furman, 7-0. On Tuesday, the Gators traveled to No. 36 Miami and lost 4-3. Junior Nestor Briceno was the lone ranked player to earn a win for the Gators in singles.

The Gators have three singles players ranked in the top-75 nationally. Greg Ouellette, ranked eighth, has a record of 3-2 this spring. Freshman Alex Lacroix and Briceno are 57th and 62nd, respectively.

The two teams met last year on Jan. 31 in Gainesville.

In singles, Beigart defeated Billy Mulligan, 4-6, 6-0, 6-0 at No. 4. Norman Alcantara and Sakey won 8-6 at the No. 2 doubles spot against Jordan Dolberg and Mulligan.

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