Sept. 12, 2017
THE FLATS – Highlighted by six events in the fall and 10 spring home matches, Georgia Tech head men’s tennis coach Kenny Thorne announced the full 2017-18 schedule on Tuesday.
“We have a very challenging schedule this year,” Thorne said. “The ACC has been a dominant conference in tennis for many years so every one of those matches are highly competitive. We play a tough SEC schedule as well and added in the University of Texas who is a top-10 team. We go to Oklahoma in the kick off weekend to play Illinois who made Sweet 16 last year.”
Thorne continued, “So we need to get better from last year and build on some of the success we had. I always feel you are getting better or getting worse, you don’t stay the same. With our schedule, we better be getting better. The work is done now during the fall. We either work hard now and reap benefits later or coast and pay the price later. We have less time with our student-athletes this year per NCAA rules so they must take more ownership of their development.”
The Yellow Jackets will kick-start their fall slate when they travel to the Albany College Invitational in New Providence, Bahamas to play against Michigan and Auburn. The team will then travel to the ITA All American Championships in Tulsa, Okla., (Sept. 30-Oct. 9) before hosting the ITA Southeast Regional Championships (Oct.13-17) at Byers Tennis Complex.
Georgia Tech will then participate in the Birmingham Futures (Oct. 28-30) and Oracle ITA National Fall Championships (Nov. 2-5) before hosting the annual Georgia Tech Fall Invitational on Nov. 3-5.
The spring schedule launches with back-to-back home events for the Gold and White. Georgia Tech will face off against The Citadel on Jan. 10 before hosting the MLK Invitational (Jan. 13-15).
The Yellow Jackets will then hit the road for three of their next four matches, playing at Tennessee (Jan. 19), Oklahoma (Jan. 26-28 before the ITA National Indoor Championships in Seattle, Wash.
The ACC schedule consists of home matches against Clemson (Feb. 16), Miami (March 2), Virginia (March 23), Virginia Tech (March 30), Notre Dame (April 20) and Boston College (April 22). The Yellow Jackets will face the conference on the road at Florida State (March 18), Louisville (March 25), NC State (April 6), Wake Forest (April 8), North Carolina (April 13) and Duke (April 15).
Georgia Tech’s final non-conference action will be against South Carolina in Atlanta on Feb. 18 before facing Texas in the Lone Star State on Feb. 25.
Tech returns a host of top performers from last season, including senior Christopher Eubanks, junior Andrew Li, sophomore Carlos Divar and senior Daniel Yun.
Eubanks returns for the spring slate, coming off an ACC Player of the Year campaign, while Li looks to remain strong in singles and doubles play, finishing 17-18 and 17-15, respectively, last season. Divar returns from his impressive freshman year, finishing 14-9 in singles and 13-11 in doubles while Yun enters his final year after performing well in doubles (7-5 overall) in 2016-17.
Joining the returners on the court this year will be Zummy Bauer and Brandon Freestone. Bauer enters collegiate action currently holding three ITF doubles titles with a No. 108 ranking. Freestone arrives as a No. 93 senior who notched wins over two nationally ranked singles opponents in 2017.
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