Men's Tennis Opens C-USA Tournament with Memphis
Apr 21, 2010 | Men's Tennis
April 21, 2010
HOUSTON - The Tulane men's tennis, the No. 9 seed in the Conference USA Tournament, will open the tournament against No. 8 seed Memphis at 2 p.m. CDT on Thursday at the Jake Hess Tennis Center on the campus of Rice University.
"This is what we have been building for all year," Tulane head coach Mark Booras said. "I told our guys regardless if we are 3-16 or 16-3 this is our culmination of our year right here. We've got to come out and believe we can get things done."
The Green Wave (3-16) enters the post season having not won a match since March 9 when they defeated Lamar, 5-2, at the Goldring Tennis Center.
Tulane has not played a match since falling to UL-Lafayette and Marquette at home on April 10 and 11th.
Memphis (10-11) comes into the tournament have won three of the last five matches, but fell to North Florida, 4-3, to close out the regular season on April 11.
"We've got a great matchup with Memphis in the first round and we are obviously going to take one match at a time," Booras added. "We've got to focus on the simple tasks at hand. We need to come out with the right attitude, come out with the right belief and get a good start in doubles and let that set the tone for the match. Then singles carries on from there. I really think we have some good matchups the way our guys finished the season. We've played a lot of really tough matches that gave us a lot of experience coming into this tournament."
Rodrigo Rappaccioli leads Tulane into the tournament. The freshman owns a 10-8 dual mark in singles play, including an 8-4 record on court four. Rappaccioli also pairs with Adam Bernstein in doubles and the duo have posted a 10-7 dual match record and are 9-4 on court two.
The winner of the match will advance to face No. 1 seed Tulsa on Friday at 8 a.m. at Rice's Jake Hess Tennis Center.
Players Mentioned
