Tennis Town Showdown
4/6/2009 12:00:00 AM | Women's Tennis
April 6, 2009
Complete Weekly Release in PDF Format 
SPARTANBURG, S.C. - All the chips are on the table. There will be two tennis matches at the USC Upstate Tennis Complex on Tuesday afternoon that will decide Atlantic Sun Conference titles.
Only two things are certain: No. 1: Stetson, at 7-1 in the A-Sun, has earned a share of the women's A-Sun regular season title and will be the No. 1 seed in the tournament. No. 2: Either USC Upstate or ETSU will win the men's title outright and either Upstate or ETSU will share the women's crown with Stetson.
On the men's side, Upstate beat Stetson, 6-1, on Saturday. ETSU beat the Hatters, 5-2, on Thursday. ETSU beat FGCU, 7-0, on Saturday. Upstate beat the Eagles, 5-2, on Friday. Although ETSU has a ranking of 59th, the Spartans were ranked as high as 71st a week ago and didn't drop a match although they fell out of the rankings.
On the women's side, Upstate shut out Lipscomb on March 7, 7-0, while ETSU beat the Lady Bisons, 6-1. However, Upstate beat FGCU, 6-1, while ETSU beat the Eagles, 7-0.
Several other storylines will crop up in the match, including a battle that could ultimately determine the A-Sun's Women's Player of the Year, as senior Anna Novo of Upstate and 123rd-ranked Yevgeniya Stupak of ETSU both have perfect records in A-Sun dual meets at No. 1 singles. The two have split a pair of meetings, with Novo downing Stupak in 2008 during a dual meet and Stupak beating Novo in the fall during the USC Upstate Fall Tournament.
Streaking
The USC Upstate tennis teams are on a pile of impressive streaks, including:
• The men's team has won a school-record 20 straight matches, having not lost since a 5-2 loss to No. 72 Yale on Feb. 27.
• Freshman Ramiro Blanco has won all 22 of his matches since stepping foot on campus and could complete the first perfect season in school history on Tuesday.
• Senior Anna Novo is a perfect 16-0 this season in dual meets and has won 20 straight A-Sun dual meet matches, dating back to her junior year.
• Junior Jack Roux has won 14 singles matches in a row.
• Freshman Edgar Rodriguez has won 20 doubles matches in a row.
• The Upstate women's tennis team has won 29 straight matches at the USC Upstate Tennis Complex, a streak that started at the beginning of 2007.
• Upstate men's tennis team has had nine straight winning seasons and nine straight 10-plus win years.
• Upstate's women's tennis team has had five straight winning seasons.
Rank And File
Although USC Upstate fell out of the latest ITA Division I rankings after spending two weeks in the top 75, reaching No. 71 on March 24, the Spartans still have both a singles player and doubles pair amongst the individual rankings. Freshman Ramiro Blanco, thanks to a 20-match winning streak, moved up four spots in the national rankings to No. 106 and the doubles pair of freshman Edgar Rodriguez and junior Jack Roux moved up three spots to No. 61 thanks to a perfect 11-0 record.
Tori's Tear Through The Record Book
Junior Javier Tori set the program record for career combined wins and tied the mark for career singles wins with wins in singles and doubles play on Friday afternoon at Florida Gulf Coast before setting the singles mark on Saturday at Stetson. With 58 career singles wins, he broke the 12-year old school record by Jorge Ventura from 1994-97. His 122 career combined wins (58 singles wins and 64 doubles wins) passed the two-year-old school record of 119 set by Stefan Dumitrescu (2003-07).
Oh So Awesome
Senior Leandro Osorio wrapped up his reputation as a doubles specialist on Saturday when he won his school-record 72nd doubles match against Stetson. Osorio passed the mark set by his former teammate, Stefean Dumitrescu (2003-07), with his 22nd doubles win of the season, an 8-4 win to clinch the doubles point with junior partner Jack Roux over Levanovich and Filip Kricka at No. 2.
More Number Crunching
• Both juniors Jack Roux and Javier Tori are tied for the school's single-season record of 45 combined wins with Jorge Ventura's mark set in 1996, with Roux posting 24 doubles wins and 21 singles wins and Tori posting 21 doubles wins and 24 singles wins.
• Junior Jack Roux needs a win at No. 2 doubles against ETSU to set the school's single-season record for doubles wins at 25. He is currently tied with three others for first.
• Senior Leandro Osorio and junior Renzo Airaldi are currently tied for seventh in Upstate's single-season record book with 22 doubles wins.
• Senior Anna Novo's 47 combined wins this year is second in school history, while her 26 singles wins is second.
• Freshman Cinthya Lazaro already holds the school's freshman record for singles wins with 20 and is one behind Emilia Milovanovic's school-record of 36 combined wins, set in 2007-08.
End Of The Road
Tuesday's match against ETSU will mark the end of the careers of four Upstate seniors, Leandro Osorio, Daniela Lovera, Vivian Neuenschwander and Anna Novo. Osorio, the lone men's senior, went to two NCAA Division II Tournaments and has helped Upstate to a 74-20 record in his four years in the program. Lovera, Neuenschwander and Novo also helped Upstate to two NCAA Division II Tournaments and won the school's first outright A-Sun Championship in 2008, posting a perfect 11-0 record in league play. The women's team is 64-19 in the last four years.
Upstate is not eligible for postseason play at the NCAA Division I level until 2012 as it is in the third year of the five-year process to move from a provisional member of DI to a full member.
