Tuesday afternoon, the Binghamton University men’s tennis team huddled around the television, anxiously waiting for its name to be called. The players hoped they would draw a warm weather location, and the two most popular destinations seemed to be California and Florida. Well, the Bearcats landed somewhere in between.
The Bearcats are matched up with Big 12 powerhouse Texas A&M, located almost directly in between the two desired destinations.
Binghamton was one of 31 teams to earn its NCAA tournament bid by winning its conference. For the second consecutive year, and fifth in the last seven years, the Bearcats won the America East title. Despite success within the conference, the Bearcats have yet to win a tournament match. This Friday in Texas, the Bearcats will take on the 15th-seeded Aggies in hopes of making history.
“No matter who we played, it was going to be a very good team,” Binghamton head coach Adam Cohen said. “We knew we were going to play a one through 16 team, a very good team, and it would be a tough challenge for our squad.”
“I don’t know anything off the top of my head about A&M,” he continued. “When I was at Minnesota we played those guys a few times, and I will look at their schedule and see who they played and contact the coaches that I know across the country and try and get as much information as we can on these guys.”
When asked about how the seeding had worked out, Cohen later said, “Everyone we were going to face was going to be a top-notch program. Whether its No. 11 or 15, it’s pretty much the same. They have worked hard to get where they are, and no matter who we play, it will be a tough matchup.”
“It doesn’t really matter the location,” said junior Moshe Levy. “An attractive location is great, but it was going to be a good team anyways.”
At 15, the Aggies are the lowest-seeded team the Bearcats will have faced in the tournament in all of their previous years, but that is not a fair indication of a team that went 14-7 with a 5-1 Big 12 record. The Aggies are for real, and after being knocked out by Texas, 4-2, in the Big 12 semifinals, there is no doubt they will be out to prove a point.
The Aggies have established themselves as one of the more dominant home-court teams and had its home match win streak reach six this year. The luck of the draw has the Bearcats heading to Texas on Friday to head to College Station Park and George P. Mitchell Tennis Center, where the Bearcats will be faced with something they have not seen all year.
The Tennis Center is enormous, seating well over 3,000 screaming college tennis fans, and the A&M faithful have been known to show up in bunches. The Aggies have led the nation in crowd attendance for the past decade.
“There are some new guys on the team, and some guys that experienced it last year at Tulsa,” said Cohen. “Even though we have got some young guys, all of our guys are very seasoned. They played a lot at juniors and stuff in different countries and in different environments, so I think our guys will be ready to play.”
The Aggies, like the Bearcats, feature a roster that is filled with underclassmen. A&M is led by senior Conor Pollock, and with only one junior on the squad, the sophomores and freshmen clearly pick up the rest of the slack.
The A&M program has produced 11 pro players and may be close to No. 12 with Pollock. Along with producing pro-level talent, its coaching squad features two ITA Hall of Famers.
For the Aggies, this season marks their 16th consecutive tournament appearance. Last year they advanced to the second round before falling to No. 3 Baylor, 4-2.
Unlike the Bearcats, A&M features almost exclusively home-grown players coming from Texas and Florida. Compared to Binghamton, which has a wide array of players from all across the globe, A&M has just two in Alexey Grigorov and Alexis Klegou.
For the Bearcats, their focus for this upcoming week will rely on their ability to slow down Pollock and sophomore Austin Krajicek, who made an appearance playing in the 2008 U.S. Open.
“We played well last weekend,” said Cohen. “We avenged the loss to Stony Brook and beat them handedly, 4-1. Doubles was a big part of that so we will work hard this week trying to keep that part of our game intact for this week, because going up 1-0 after the doubles portion is a big deal.”
“We are going to practice as usual. We have been practicing hard all season, so nothing really changes,” Levy said. “If we practice hard, and practice at doubles, [then come next Friday] we can go out and give them hell.”
The winner of Friday’s matchup is scheduled to take on the champion of the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi vs. Arizona matchup.