ORLANDO, Fla. – The No. 18 UCF men's tennis team selected to travel to Los Angeles in this year's ITA Kickoff Draft, adding their first two matches to the 2021 dual match schedule. The Knights will face No. 19 UCLA on Saturday, January 23 and face either the weekend's host, No. 1 USC or No. 34 Cal on Sunday, January 24.
If UCF ends up playing No. 1 USC, the Knights will have faced either the reigning national champion or No. 1 team in the nation for four consecutive seasons. The Black and Gold played No. 1 Florida in 2020, nearly upset 2018 defending national champion Wake Forest in 2019 and came just as close to beating Virginia, the 2017 reigning champs, in 2018.
The four teams in the Los Angeles bracket will look to get out to a hot start and punch their ticket to ITA National Indoors after a shortened 2019-20 campaign due to the global pandemic of COVID-19. The team's rankings and seeding for the ITA Kickoff Draft were based off an unreleased run of the ITA team rankings after the season was cut short. UCF was ranked at No. 22 in the final public release of 2020, but that didn't include a pair of solid home victories. The Knights had the eighth pick in the draft and selected to be the two seed at USC.
The 2021 ITA Kickoff Weekend will work a little differently this season. There are only seven host sites compared to the usual 15 of years past. The slash creates a highly competitive tournament of 28 teams to get to ITA National Indoors, which will also see a cut in its field this season.
The Black and Gold will face No. 19 UCLA in their first matchup of ITA Kickoff Weekend. The Knights elected to visit UCLA during last season's ITA Kickoff Weekend and nearly upset the host. UCF started the weekend with a 4-3 win over No. 24 San Diego but fell in a heartbreaker to No. 10 UCLA the next day. The Bruins finished their 2019-20 season with a record of 9-5, including five straight victories. The previous meeting between the Knights and UCLA was the only one in the program's history.
USC finished the shortened seasons at No. 1 in the ITA team rankings and had the No. 1 player in the country at one point. The Trojans found success during last season's ITA Kickoff Weekend, winning the weekend with ease, and advancing to ITA National Indoors, which they wound up winning as well. USC rode that momentum and wrapped up their 2020 dual match season with a record of 13-1. It would be first time the Knights meet the Trojans in program history should they matchup on that Sunday.
The other Sunday option for UCF would be No. 34 Cal, the fourth seed of the bracket. The meeting would be a first between the two programs. The Golden Bears didn't see too many matches before the season met its early end, as they collected a record of 5-3 in the early going. They faced the other two teams in this year's ITA Kickoff Weekend bracket, beating UCLA 4-2 and falling to USC 4-1 on back-to-back days.
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