Travis Taylor | Lariat Photographer
Reporter
The No. 15 Baylor men’s tennis team will continue conference play against the No. 12 Oklahoma Sooners at 6 p.m. today at the Hurd Tennis Center. The Bears (15-4) are 1-0 in conference play this season and are coming off of a 6-1 win at Texas Tech last week and a five-match win streak.
“I think it’s guys trying real hard to win tennis matches, which is great,” head coach Matt Knoll said. “Everybody just goes out and fights, and I think they do a great job with their guys. I feel like our guys are going to compete well and I think it’ll be just a great tennis match.”
After tonight’s match, the team will finish its regular season with matches against Oklahoma State, Texas and TCU.
“I think we should focus more on us than on them,” junior Patrick Pradella said. “Because if we do our job, I think we can beat everybody, so we shouldn’t think too much about our opponent. We just focus on our tennis, and we’ll be good.”
Pradella is the team’s top-ranked singles player at No. 29; also ranked are freshman Julian Lenz, sophomore Tony Lupieri and sophomore Mate Zsiga at 55th, 74th and 91st respectively.
“Oklahoma is a really good team,” Lupieri said. “In my opinion they’re a top-10 team in the country, and they have a really good coach also. It’ll be tough. We know it’s going to be tough on Friday. But I think with this team, we’ve shown we can beat top-10 teams.”
Lupieri has won his last seven singles matches.
“I think that we can win the conference, but we need to play good to beat Oklahoma,” he said.
