No. 25 Ducks to Open SD Invite Against SDSU

Thursday, March 16

San Diego, CA

TBD

University of Oregon

San Diego State

Photo by: Eric Evans/GoDucks.com

03/15/17 | Men's Tennis

MTen Notes - SD Invite Season Stats

OREGON WILL PLAY THREE MATCHES IN THREE DAYS THIS WEEK AT THE SD INVITE, STARTING ON THURSDAY AGAINST HOST SAN DIEGO STATE

By: Nate Krueger

THIS WEEK
The 25th-ranked Ducks will head to San Diego this weekend to compete in the SD Invite from Thursday to Saturday. Oregon will open the tournament against host San Diego State on Thursday at 2 p.m., and will play either Harvard or Iowa on Friday. Saturday's opponent has yet to be determined. Sophomore Thomas Laurent enters the weekend fresh off breaking the UO record in the Ducks' last match with his 16th consecutive singles win, as well as winning the Pac-12 Player of the Week award.

WHAT TO WATCH FOR
Live scoring for each match will be available on the tennis schedule on GoDucks.com. Doubles will be played first, followed shortly by singles play on all six courts. Updates will be provided during matches on Twitter via @OregonMTennis.

DUCKS EDGE UCSB
March 5 - Oregon 4, UCSB 3
Playing outdoors for the first time this spring, the Ducks were forced to climb out of an early hole after dropping the doubles point for the first time in their last 10 matches. In a ranked match-up at No. 1, the Ducks' Jayson Amos and Armando Soemarno suffered a rare loss at the hands of the eighth-ranked UCSB (5-3) duo of Simon Freund and Morgan Mays, 6-1.

Mays gave UCSB a 2-0 lead with a 7-5, 6-1 win over Simon Stevens on No. 2. Laurent, ranked 36th in the nation in singles, got the Ducks on the board with his record-breaking 16th-consecutive win, a 6-1, 6-3 win against Nicolas Moreno de Alboran (UCSB). The Ducks pulled even in the match courtesy of a 6-3, 7-6 win on court three by Akihiro Tanaka over Freund.

A win by Cormac Clissold on No. 5, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4 over the Guacho's Anders Holm, gave Oregon a 3-2 lead before Chase Masciorini (UCSB) pulled the match back to even with a 6-3, 3-6, 6-2 win over the Ducks' Ethan Young-Smith on No. 6.

Tied at 3-3, the match came down to the No. 4 singles spot with the Ducks' lone senior in Amos and UCSB's Rakela. Amos won a tight first set, 7-5, before Rakela came back to take control in the second set with a 6-1 win. With the match on the line, Amos pulled out a 7-5 victory in a battle of a third set to secure the Ducks' third-consecutive win.

LAURENT BREAKS OREGON RECORD
Sophomore Thomas Laurent continued his tremendous start to the spring with his record-breaking performance at UCSB, exceeding the previous top mark of consecutive singles matches won set by Stevens (2015) and Robin Cambier (2012) with his 16th in a row. With the win, Laurent remains undefeated in singles this spring (12-0), playing all his matches at the No. 1 spot, and is now 22-2 overall in 2016-17 to move into a tie for 10th for most singles wins in UO single-season history before the Ducks have even opened conference play. For his career, the Montpellier, France, native is 41-8 in singles and a perfect 16-0 on the top court.

LAURENT NAMED PAC-12 PLAYER OF THE WEEK
After setting the UO record for consecutive singles matches won, Thomas Laurent earned Pac-12 Player of the Week honors for the first time in his career on March 6. Laurent claimed the UO record with a 6-3, 7-6 win over Nicolas Moreno de Alboran of UCSB, and also continued to dominate in doubles with Cormac Clissold with yet another win.

CLISSOLD & LAURENT SHINING IN DOUBLES
Despite dropping a doubles match against Rice at the ITA Kick-Off Weekend, the duo of Thomas Laurent and Cormac Clissold has been as steady as they come since the two teamed up for the first time in 2016. The pair is now 30-3 (.915) all-time together, putting them in a tie for sixth on the Oregon all-time doubles list. The duo is 15-2 together this season and 10-1 in dual matches, and they set the program single-season record last year with 15 consecutive wins. The duo of Jayson Amos and Armando Soemarno is right behind with an all-time record of 25-4 (.862), putting them in a tie for 11th on the UO all-time list.

IN THE RANKINGS
After slotting in at No. 25 in the latest ITA team rankings, the Ducks have now appeared in the top 25 in four consecutive weeks and have reached as high as No. 21. Thomas Laurent currently sits at No. 40 in the singles rankings with his stellar play throughout the season. In doubles, Jayson Amos and Armando Soemarno are currently at No. 42 in the rankings. Amos and Soemaerno were the ninth-ranked doubles pair in the preseason rankings.

AMOS IN FINAL YEAR WITH RECORDS IN SIGHT
In his final season with the Ducks, senior Jayson Amos has enjoyed a rapid rise in the Oregon record book. Amos has moved into second this season on the Oregon all-time list with 87 career singles wins, only three behind former teammate Robin Cambier's school record of 90. Amos is also sixth in UO history on the doubles career wins list with 62. The native of Mission Viejo, Calif., is also one of only two players in UO history to have three straight seasons of at least 22 singles wins, joining Cambier, and fell just one singles win short of the all-time single-season record with a 28-6 mark last year.

SCHYLLANDER EARNS WIN NO. 200
Nils Schyllander reached a significant milestone with a 4-0 win over Fresno State on February 9. The win marked the 200th of Schyllander's career, with all 200 coming at the University of Oregon. Now in his 11th season at the helm of the Oregon men's tennis program, Schyllander has elevated the Ducks to a new level of success and now sits at 206 career wins. Since the Pac-10 became the Pac-12 in 2011, Schyllander's teams have gone 95-45 (.670), and have won at least 15 matches each season since 2012. The Ducks took fifth in the Pac-12 last year for the second straight year, and earned an at-large berth to the NCAA Tournament for the second time in three seasons. Oregon now looks to build on last year's first-ever NCAA Tournament win as it returns six of its seven top contributors from last season's team.