Pepperdine University Athletics

Kazuki Matsuno enters his second season on the Pepperdine men's tennis coaching staff in 2025-26.

In Matsuno's first season at Pepperdine, the Waves went 17-11 and reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament for the fourth time in five years. Despite playing four freshmen in the lineup, the Waves beat two top-10 teams, seven teams that made the NCAA Tournament and five Power-4 teams. Individually, six Waves earned All-West Coast Conference honors, while Edward Winter and Maxi Homberg ended the year in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association singles rankings. 

Matsuno joined the Pepperdine men's tennis team's coaching staff on Dec. 23, 2024 after spending 1.5 seasons coaching at his alma mater, Michigan State.

At Michigan State, Matsuno served as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator from 2023-25 as the Spartans made their meteoric rise among the nation’s best teams. Throughout his coaching tenure, Matsuno was instrumental in helping MSU achieve unprecedented team and individual success on the national level.

In the 2023-24 season, Matsuno helped coach Max Sheldon and Ozan Baris to a 2023 Intercollegiate Tennis Association Fall National Championship doubles title, which was the first national title in MSU men’s tennis history. Then in the spring, Matsuno helped the Spartans get off to a 12-0 start — the program’s best start in 64 years — eventually leading to the team’s all-time best ranking of #15 in the ITA polls. All told, Michigan State won a program-best 23 wins, was ranked in every top-25 ITA poll and saw Ozan Baris make a run to the NCAA singles semifinals in May. 

With Matsuno serving as the Spartans’ recruiting coordinator, the Spartans had back-to-back Big Ten Freshmen of the Year in 2023 and 2024 with Baris and Aristotelis Thanos. This past fall, Baris made history as the first Spartan to play in a NCAA singles final. Currently, four Michigan State singles players and four doubles teams are nationally ranked.

As a player, Matsuno was a four-year letter winner for the Spartans and was a three-time Big Ten All-Academic honoree and a Big Ten Sportsmanship Award winner. He was ranked as high as #37 in the ITA rankings. Matsuno graduated with his bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2023.