April 25, 2018
SAN DIEGO – San Diego State men's tennis players Arnaud Restifo (Nice, France), Sander Gjoels-Andersen (Klampenborg, Denmark) and Rafael Gonzalez Almazan (Madrid, Spain) earned all-Mountain West honors on Wednesday evening at the conference's championship banquet held inside the Parma Payne Goodall Alumni Center on the SDSU campus.
Restifo garnered his accolade in singles competition, while Gjoels-Andersen and Gonzalez Almazan received distinction in doubles play during the 2018 campaign. With their honors, the Aztec trio received the first all-conference awards of their respective careers.
Restifo posted three wins against MW opponents this spring in the No. 2 position, including the clinching point in SDSU's come-from-behind 4-3 victory at Nevada on April 13 with a three-set triumph over the Wolf Pack's Kostya Nesterenko, 6-4, 6-7(3), 6-4.
Overall, Restifo is 6-16 in dual matches, but has faced five opponents from teams that finished the regular season among the ITA rankings. Among those encounters, the Nice, France, native scored straight-set victories over Simon Stevens of No. 35 Oregon, 6-4, 6-3 and Patrick Kaukovalta of No. 50 Alabama, 6-4, 6-1.
Meanwhile, Gjoels-Andersen and Gonzalez Almazan combined to form the Aztecs' most successful doubles tandem this spring, logging a 4-2 record overall and a 3-1 ledger in MW matches rotating between the first and third spots in the team's lineup. The SDSU duo set the tone early in the team's 4-0 whitewash of Air Force with a 6-2 conquest of the Falcons' Isaac Perez and Patrick Sklenka on April 8.
Earlier in the season, Gjoels-Andersen also joined forces with Nicholas Mitchell to upset Harvard's then-40th-ranked pairing of Kenny Tao and Logan Weber on March 15.
Competing as the No. 6 seed, San Diego State will battle third-seeded New Mexico on Thursday in the opening round of the MW Championship at Aztec Tennis Center. The SDSU-UNM clash is scheduled to begin no earlier than 6 p.m. PT, with live stats and streaming video available on GoAztecs.com.