Men's Tennis | 3/29/2016 10:03:00 AM
ABILENE – Abilene Christian men's tennis will play its first matches in over two weeks Thursday when the Wildcats begin a four-match road trip that features half of their Southland Conference competition.
ACU will play its four matches over five days starting with a non-conference dual at UT San Antonio. The Wildcats will remain in the River City into Friday, where they'll meet the ACU women's team for a doubleheader against Incarnate Word.
From there, ACU will drive four hours east to Beaumont for Sunday's noon match at No. 72 Lamar and then backtrack to Corpus Christi for Monday's 2 p.m. contest with the defending eight-time Southland regular-season champions. The Islanders haven't lost a league match since 2012 and claimed the last three tournament titles.
The Wildcats were previously in action on Spring Break, during which they followed a 4-0 loss at Southern Miss with consecutive 6-1 wins over Jackson State and Nicholls. They were to have played at New Orleans while on that trip, but that dual was postponed after heavy rains washed out singles competition. ACU did however win the doubles point and will take a 1-0 lead into that duals' conclusion.
The Wildcats begin this week with a 15-6 record and have just the one conference match under their belts. Lamar and UNO are currently tied with ACU at 1-0, followed by Nicholls at 1-1 and UIW at 0-2. Corpus Christi is the only school without a conference decision.
Over the past two seasons ACU is 0-2 vs. the Islanders, 1-1 vs. Lamar, and 2-0 vs. Incarnate Word, winning both those duals by one point. The Wildcats last played UTSA in 2013 – while still a NCAA DII program – and won that match 4-3 with singles victories from senior
Marco Bensley and former players Hans Hach, Borja Cortés and Nicklas Wingord.
ACU has won five of its last six doubles points in improving to 32-28 (.522) on the spring, while in singles the Wildcats are a combined 78-42 (.650). Freshman
Josh Sheehy continues to lead ACU with 14 wins followed by
Hunter Holman with 13,
Paul Domanski with 11 and
Jason Proctor and
Henry Adams with 10.
Adams currently owns the team's longest winning streak at five matches, while Domanski is 8-2 over his last 10 decisions.
