SAN DIEGO – The San Diego State men's tennis team will add to its freeway mileage on Saturday when it hits the road once again for a non-conference dual match at Loyola Marymount. First serve is set for 2 p.m. PT, and a link to live results will be available on GoAztecs.com.
The Aztecs (2-3) traveled to Orange County last weekend, posting a 5-2 triumph at UC Irvine to snap a two-match losing streak. SDSU won a hotly contested doubles point before capturing the four of six decisions in singles play. Ignacio Martinez, Arnaud Restifo and Fabian Roensdorf led the Aztec cause with victories in both doubles and singles.
Martinez, who teamed with Aaro Pollanen to secure the doubles point after outlasting the Anteaters' Bruce Man-Son-Hing and Mateusz Smolicki, 7-6(3) at the No. 1 position, later ended a six-match losing streak in singles with a 6-4, 6-2 decision over Mike Mkrtchian in the sixth slot.
For his efforts, Martinez was named Mountain West Men's Tennis Player of the Week for the second time in his career and collected SDSU's second conference weekly honor of the season after David Hough received the distinction on Jan. 22.
Hough leads the Aztecs with nine wins so far this year, establishing a career-high for a single season after logging a 6-3, 6-2 decision over UCI's Ali Amiri, which gave the Scarlet and Black the requisite fourth point for the team victory.
Despite the relative proximity to both schools, Saturday's encounter will mark just the second dual match against the Lions and the first at LMU Tennis Center. San Diego State suffered a 5-0 defeat in the first meeting between the two squads in the 2018 season opener at Aztec Tennis Center. Hough, Restifo and Rafael Gonzalez Almazan are the lone holdovers from that match.
However, the two adversaries are regular combatants during the fall tournament schedule, with SDSU maintaining a 6-3 singles record against Lion opponents this year. Pollanen and Roensdorf won two matches against LMU foes last October at the ITA Southwest Regional Championships last October in Malibu, California.
Pollanen defeated the Lions' Ethan Prost in the main draw (6-4, 7-6(4)) before knocking off Lucas Moreno in a consolation match (6-4, 7-5), while Roensdorf rallied for a three-set victory in the opening round over Cartier Juan (4-6, 7-5, 7-5) followed by a super-tiebreaker triumph over Max Kaiser in consolation play (5-7, 6-2, 11-9). In addition, Daniel Traxler was victorious in Malibu over Emin Torlic in consolation action (6-3, 6-3), while Hough pinned a straight-set defeat on Kaiser (6-2, 6-4) in the first round of Flight B at the UCSB Fall Classic.
In doubles competition, SDSU went 1-2 against the Lions last fall, with Martinez and Pollanen combining for an 8-6 victory over Moreno and Prost in the round of 32 at the ITA regionals before falling to Kaiser and Ryan Brown in round of 16 by an 8-3 count. Earlier, Hough and Alex Scemanenco were dropped by Prost and Austin Di Giulio, 6-1, in the Flight A consolation semifinals of the Aztec Fall Invitational.
LMU (2-1), which was picked fifth in the West Coast Conference preseason poll, opened with a pair of league victories over San Francisco (4-3) and Santa Clara (5-2) at home before experiencing a narrow 4-3 setback to another visiting opponent UC Santa Barbara in its last outing on Feb. 1.
Moreno, Di Guilio and Diego Nava share the team lead with two wins each this spring, with Nava and Keenan Mayo splitting time at the top of the Lions' singles ladder. In doubles, Kaiser and Brown are 2-0 at the No. 3 position, while Nava and Thien Nguyen have won two straight at No. 1
In addition to the Aztecs, LMU will face three additional Mountain West opponents this season in UNLV (March 6), Utah State (March 9) and Fresno State (March 13). Entering Saturday's match, San Diego State sports a 68-57 record against current members of the WCC.
Following the Aztecs-Lions clash, SDSU will head north to the Bay Area where it will battle No. 8 Stanford on Friday, Feb. 21, starting at 3 p.m. PT.