No. 16 Tennis Faces Blue-Gray Test

Just as winter begins to let up on Cambridge and the rest of the Northeast, the Harvard men's tennis team has headed south to the Blue-Gray Classic in Montgomery, Alabama.

The Crimson (8-2) will carry its No. 16 national ranking into a tournament which features six other schools ranked in the Top 30 among the sixteen-team field.

The team will luckily avoid these tougher sides in the first round when it faces No. 55 Boise State (3-7) today.

The Crimson has won its last three matches, and before its losses to No. 4 Mississippi and No. 12 Tennessee in the middle of February it had gone undefeated in match play in its first six meetings.

Last weekend at Old Dominion the Crimson won a hard-fought 5-2 victory. In a highly uncharacteristic fashion, the Crimson dropped the doubles point to start off the match.

Harvard's No. 1 doubles team of sophomore James Blake and co-captain Kunj Majmudar, currently ranked No. 2 in the nation, dropped a close match to ODU's No. 1 team, 9-8 (7-5).

The Crimson's No. 2 team of co-captain Mike Passarella and sophomore Scott Clark also lost, 8-3.

The sole doubles win came from the No. 3 duo of junior John Doran and freshman Cillie Stewart, who beat the previously undefeated team of Johan Barras and Ollie Lundberg by a convincing 8-3 score.

The team then carried on as it has all year, picking up five of the six singles matches for its eighth win of the season.

With his nearly automatic 6-2, 6-3 win over ODU's No. 1 Daniel Anderssen, sophomore phenom Blake capped off another fine week in his collegiate career.

In its March 9 Intercollegiate Tennis Association rankings, Blake maintained the No. 1 singles position and was also named the ITA National Player of the Month for February.

Blake received the honor in October of last year.

Boise State is also entering the tournament on its own winning spurt.

In the finals of its own AirTouch Cellular Classic in Boise last weekend, the Broncos upset No. 49 Virginia Tech 4-3. The Broncos will have to bring this same sort of intensity if they have any chance of upsetting the higher-ranked Crimson.

The Blue-Gray Classic is recognized as one of them more competitive tournaments outside the various Nationals during the year. The Classic began in 1949 when a native Montgomerian invited top collegiate singles players and doubles teams to compete in a weekend tournament.

The tournament continued showcasing the top individual talent in the country until 1983, when several NCAA coaches voted to change the format to team play. The Blue-Gray has continued to be one of the top team tournaments in the nation since that time.

The Crimson's biggest challenges could come from the nation's No. 2 team Illinois, No. 10 Wake Forest or No. 18 Texas A&M. Of the three powerhouses, only Wake Forest is in the Crimson's half of the draw.

Despite the change to the team format the tournament has not lost its ability to attract the nations' top individual players.

Five of the nation's Top 10 singles players will be in attendance.

In addition to No. 1 Blake, No. 2 Ryan Sachire of Notre Dame, No. 4 Oliver Freelove of Illinois, No. 6 Francisco Rodriguez of Alabama and No. 10 Ignacio Hirigoyen of Southern Methodist University are vying for the prestigious singles title.

The doubles field is no less competitive, and Blake and Majmudar will have a hard time in the first singles position.

That draw will showcase the No. 1 team in the nation, Dumitru Caradima and Shuon Madden of Texas A&M; the No. 3 team, Gavin Sontag and Jeff Laski of Illinois; and the No. 5 team, Dustin Mauck and Keith Pollack of SMU.

The Classic runs until Sunday at the Lagoon Park Tennis Center in downtown Montgomery.