Jan. 22, 2016 
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WACO, Texas -- The fourth-ranked Baylor men's tennis team will open its 2016 dual-match season as host of the 2016 ITA Kick-Off Weekend Saturday and Sunday at the Hurd Tennis Center.
The No. 1 seeded Bears will face No. 70 UC Irvine (1-1) Saturday at noon. BU will play the fourth-seeded Anteaters for the first time in program history. Following the match, No. 49 Oregon (3-0) and No. 56 Old Dominion meet at 3 p.m.
The winners of Saturday's matches will play on Sunday for a ticket to the ITA National Team Indoor Championship on Feb. 12-15 in Charlottesville, Va.
Baylor and Old Dominion have only met once in program history, with the Monarchs taking the win in 1996. The Bears and Oregon have yet to face each other in men's tennis.
The tournament's No. 2 seed, Oregon, enters the weekend with a 3-0 record, recording back-to-back wins over Seattle University and downing No. 54 UC Santa Barbara last weekend.
Old Dominion, the No. 3 seed, will play its first match of the 2016 dual-match season in Waco. UC Irvine, the tournament's No. 4 seed, dropped its season opener at San Diego but turned around and defeated UC San Diego 5-2 on Sunday.
Baylor has competed in and hosted the ITA Kick-Off Weekend in five of the seven years of its existence, winning all 10 matches and advancing to the national event each year. The Bears are one of 15 hosts for the four-team tournament.
The Bears open the season at No. 4 in the Oracle ITA rankings after an NCAA semifinal appearance last season. The team returns All-American Julian Lenz, who recently won five straight matches to win the Sherwood Collegiate Cup singles title on Monday and was named Big 12 Player of the Week Thursday.
Baylor also features returners No. 59 Max Tchoutakian, Felipe Rios and Vince Schneider from last year's Big 12 championship team. Newcomers include redshirt freshman Will Little and true freshmen Jimmy Bendeck and Tommy Podvinski.
For the latest news on the Baylor men's tennis team follow its official Twitter account: @BaylorMTennis.
By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Foundation
Hamstrung while waiting for clearances on a couple players, Matt Knoll said he will still have "enough guys to play" when the fourth-ranked Baylor men's tennis team opens dual-match play Saturday as one of 15 host sites for the ITA Kick-Off Weekend.
The Bears will meet 70th-ranked UC Irvine for the first time in program history at noon Saturday at the Hurd Tennis Center, with the winner playing either No. 49 Oregon (3-0) or 56th-ranked Old Dominion on Sunday for a spot in the ITA National Team Indoor Championship next month in Charlottesville, Va.
"They're dying for it. I've never seen a team more ready than these guys," Knoll said. "They're going to play like their hair is on fire and they're going to be excited to play. Will we play great tennis? That's unlikely. But I think we'll play with a lot of passion and we'll be a lot of fun."
Returning from last year's Big 12 championship team are senior All-American Julian Lenz, 59th-ranked junior Max Tchoutakian and senior Felipe Rios. But the only other scholarship players eligible to play this weekend are redshirt freshman Will Little and true freshmen Jimmy Bendeck and Tommy Podvinski.
Lenz was named the Big 12 Player of the Week after sweeping all five matches in winning the Sherwood Collegiate Cup singles title last weekend in California.
"It's like going into a bar with a 300-pound Marine. You feel a little tougher," Knoll said of Lenz. "I think if he can continue to pick up pieces of his game that he really wants to focus on, the sky's the limit for him with his tennis."
After coming in last January, Tchoutakian posted an 18-12 singles record and earned Big 12 Newcomer of the Year honors while helping the Bears advance to the NCAA semifinals. At the Sherwood Cup, he was 3-1, capped off by a 7-6(3), 6-3 win over Stanford's Sameer Kumar.
"Max is stubborn, and he's been a little slow to add and adapt some things to his game that will help him," Knoll said. "But the last couple weeks, I've started to see him embracing that. My feeling is that in the next weeks and months we're going to see his game really take off as he embraces some of the stuff we're trying to get across to him."
Playing predominantly at the No. 6 singles position, Rios was 30-8 overall and 21-4 in dual-match play last year. But he will have to play much higher in the lineup this season.
"That's what is great about being in a great program is that you come in and early in your career you don't necessarily have to be up there," Knoll said. "But guys evolve and get better and you play your role."
The doubles team of Bendeck and Little were "rock stars" at last week's Sherwood Cup, winning three straight before falling to UCLA's Joseph Di Guilio and Karue Sell, 6-3, in the final.
"(Their enthusiasm)sends an incredible message to their teammates, it motivates the coaches, motivates the crowd and I think it's sort of chilling to the opposition," Knoll said. "People don't want to deal with that. They're going to be a blast to have out on the court."
Podvinski, who sat out the fall with an elbow injury, dropped his first three matches before ending the weekend with a 6-3, 7-5 win over USC's Tanner Smith.
"His skill set is exactly what we thought it was going to be when we recruited him," Knoll said. "He's a big guy with a really big serve and a really big forehand and he's a super mover, a great athlete. He's got every opportunity to be an All-American type player at Baylor. But he's a boy. He's going to have to grow up a little bit and he's going to have to get some matches."
Oregon faces Old Dominion in the other first-round match at 3 p.m. Saturday, with Sunday's matches also scheduled for noon and 3 p.m.
