Tulsa Men to Compete at ITA Kickoff Weekend

Saturday, January 27

Fort Worth, Texas

11:00 a.m.

Tulsa

Princeton

Photo by: Bill Powell

Tulsa Men to Compete at ITA Kickoff Weekend

1/26/2024 3:05:00 PM | Men's Tennis

Live Stats

TULSA, Okla. — The Tulsa men's tennis team (2-0) will travel to Fort Worth Texas, to partake in the 16th annual Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Kickoff Weekend. It is the 14th year the Golden Hurricane men have appeared in the tournament.

ITA Kickoff Weekend is the first major event of the spring season and serves as an early-season test for teams who will take on programs they might not typically face. The event features 60 of the best men's teams from across the country competing in 15 different four-team brackets. The hosting schools are all national top-25 programs and the lineup for ITA Kickoff was selected in the summer of 2023. The winners of each pod advance to the ITA DI National Men's Team Indoor Championship, slated for Feb. 16-19, in New York City.

Tulsa will compete in a pod that includes hosting and fifth-ranked TCU (1-0), Princeton (1-2) and Rice (3-0). As the No. 2 seed, TU will play the No. 3-seeded Princeton Tigers at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Jan 27, and will face either Rice or TCU in a championship or consolation dual match on Sunday, Jan. 28.

TU begins the weekend 2-0 following a pair of home wins over Oral Roberts and Illinois State. All players enter with some momentum as nobody has dropped a single set through two matches of play. Freshman Victor Tosetto, who starred at the No. 5 position last week, leads the Hurricane with a 9-4 singles record, while senior Callum Gale and freshman Alex Okonkwo lead the dual-match pairs with a 4-3 mark after winning their matches in the No. 2 slot a week ago. Okonkwo remains Tulsa's lone ranked singles player at No. 74.

Princeton is 1-2 to start the year after sweeping NC Central in their season-opener before suffering a 7-0 loss to No. 8 Duke and a 4-3 heartbreaker to No. 23 NC State. The Tigers' Ellis Short is ranked No. 87 in the latest ITA singles poll while Top Nidunjianzan and Paul Inchauspe headline Princeton's doubles lineup as the nation's 28^th-ranked duo.