TUCSON, Ariz. — Looking for its fourth-straight year with an NCAA Tournament win, the #39 Pepperdine men's tennis team takes on the #24 Auburn Tigers in Tucson, Ariz. on Friday at 10 a.m. PT.
Admission to LaNelle Robson Tennis Center is $5 at the gate; no advance sales will take place. All matches will be live-streamed; pertinent live stat and live stream links can be found on the men's tennis team's schedule page at pepperdinewaves.com.
Should the Waves win their first-round match, they will play against the winner between 9-seed Arizona and #57 Boise State, the Mountain West Champion, who play Friday at 1 p.m. The final match of the Tucson Regional is scheduled for Saturday, May 4 at 1 p.m.
SCOUTING THE WAVES
All season long, Pepperdine put in the work — whether it was taking on a gauntlet of a non-conference schedule, making cross-country trips to face eventual NCAA Tournament teams in Vanderbilt and Texas A&M, or taking care of business in conference with a co-regular-season West Coast Conference title.
Now the goal is simple: Make the Super Regionals for the first time under head coach Adam Schaechterle, who has led the Waves to second-round appearances in three consecutive years.
Winners of eight of their last 10 matches, the Waves are effectively the 3-seed in the Tucson Regional based on how the four teams fall in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association team rankings. Aside from two losses to #18 San Diego, who will be playing in College Station, Texas this weekend, Pepperdine has taken care of business against lesser teams and will hope that all the work in its grueling non-conference schedule pays off against a top-25 team.
Led by a pair of ranked singles players in WCC Freshman of the Year and NCAA Singles Championship selection #48 Edward Winter and #122 Pietro Fellin, Pepperdine has the top-end talent to hang with Power-5 teams and depth further in the lineup to win matches. The back half of Pepperdine's lineup has been reliable, as upperclassmen George Davis and Robert Shelton give the Waves experience at the fifth and sixth positions, while freshman Zach Stephens has clinched more matches than anyone on Pepperdine's roster at the fourth position.
The postseason is nothing new for Fellin, Linus Carlsson Halldin and Maxi Homberg, who are Pepperdine's three players with NCAA Tournament experience from last season. While Carlsson Halldin is expected to play at the third position for Pepperdine, Homberg has been most effective as Chris Papa's doubles partner. Homberg and Papa made their long-awaited returns in the WCC Tournament last week and did not disappoint by clinching both doubles points in thrilling fashion.
As for the other doubles teams, the Waves have a legitimate shot at clinching the doubles point thanks to its pairs of Carlsson Halldin and Davis at the first position, plus Winter and Fellin at the third position. The former have occupied the top doubles spot lately and have an ITA Fall National Championship bid under their belts, while Fellin and Winter are on a team-best seven-match win streak. The Waves won the doubles point in their last seven matches that the doubles competition took place.
Historically, Pepperdine boasts a 2-0 advantage over Auburn in the all-time series — both of which have been at neutral sites. In the last three NCAA Tournament appearances under Schaechterle, the Waves have surrendered just two singles matches.
SCOUTING THE TIGERS
Making their 23rd NCAA Tournament appearance, the #24 Auburn Tigers are looking to stay in the postseason longer than they did last year, when they dipped out of the first round with a 4-3 loss to Cornell. With a 17-11 record and a 9-8 record against NCAA Tournament teams, the Tigers have shown they can beat anybody, but they can also lose to anybody. In the regular season, they went 4-6 against ranked opponents and enter the postseason after going 3-3 in their last six matches — all have been against ranked teams. But such is life in the SEC, which has a whopping 12 teams in the NCAA Tournament.
Auburn's last two matches against #34 LSU provide a fairly close assessment of what this week's match against the #39 Waves could look like. Although Auburn beat LSU handily on Senior Day, the purple and gold Tigers turned things around in the opening round of the SEC Tournament by beating the orange and navy Tigers 4-3.
At the top of Auburn's singles lineup, Tyler Stice leads the team at No. 35 in the ITA singles ranking, while No. 61 Finn Murgett rounds out the Tigers' nationally-ranked players. Stice, an Atlanta native, earned an at-large bid to the NCAA Singles Championship yet has a 13-9 dual-match record. Four of his wins are against ranked opponents. Murgett moved his way up to the second position after going 6-0 at the third position to start the season; the senior has three ranked wins under his belt and is an alternate for the NCAA Singles Championship. But of all the Tigers, Englishman Billy Blaydes leads the team with a five-match win streak heading into Friday. He plays everywhere from the second through sixth positions, but has recently played at the third position.
Doubles play has been a toss-up for the Tigers, who have won the doubles point in 14 of their 28 matches. As a team, Auburn has gone .500 at the first and second positions and has a .600 win percentage at the third doubles position. Head coach Bobby Reynolds did very little tinkering with the doubles pairs during the season: Auburn has a highly ranked doubles team with #20 Raul Dobai at the top spot, Will Nolan and Tyler Stice have moved up to the second position and the relatively new team of Nicholas Heng and Billy Blaydes have a 2-1 record at the third position.
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