ASU Men’s Tennis: Winning, ranked and headed to Alabama

U(Photo: Mason Kern/WCSN)

The Arizona State men’s tennis team is headed to Montgomery, Alabama for the 70th annual Blue Gray National Tennis Classic.

Since starting the season 0-3, the Sun Devils have been undefeated and looked unstoppable since, as they’re currently riding a 5-match winning streak. This streak began on February 9th when the team defeated Loyola Marymount University and earned its first win since being disbanded because of financial limitation in 2008.

The Sun Devils then continued the weekend and defeated Fresno State University and Cal Poly Pomona to earn their first sweep of the season and get back to .500.

Last weekend ASU traveled to Southern California and defeated the University of San Diego and Pepperdine University.

Not only did the team get its first road trip sweep of the season and continue the winning streak, but following the impressive results ASU was ranked. The Oracle/ITA Rankings were released Tuesday morning with ASU coming in at No. 20 in Division-I tennis.

In addition to the notable ranking, ASU also has three players ranked individually. These individuals include freshman Benjamin Hannestad (No. 38), senior Michael Geerts (No. 70)and sophomore Makey Rakotomalala (No. 90).

Hannestad, Geerts, and Rakotomalala are ASU’s top three singles players with single’s records of 12-5, 14-8 and 5-2 respectively.

Now, the Sun Devils head to Montgomery, Alabama where they’ll participate in the Blue Gray National Tennis Classic and face schools such as Alabama, Arizona, Auburn, Boise State, Fresno State, Princeton and Rice.

ASU’s weekend begins early Friday afternoon when the team goes up against the Boise State Broncos.

The Broncos are 1-5 overall so far this season with three losses on the road. Regardless of their record, the pair of freshman Stefan Lalovic and junior Pedro Platzeck has gone a combined 11-6 overall this year in singles play, winning seven of their last ten matches.

Boise State’s Ryland McDermott is another Broncos to watch and has been a fairly inconsistent singles player in 2018 with a record of 7-7. He’s won his last two single’s matches though, against Whitman College and Brigham Young University.

The matches in the Blue Gray Tournament will serve as the Sun Devils’ last non-conference matches before they face No. 2 Stanford on Mar. 8th at the Whiteman Tennis Center. The match against Stanford will be ASU’s first Pac-12 match since 2008.