Cal Opens With USC At Pac-12 Championship

BERKELEY – The seventh-seeded and 45th-ranked California men’s tennis team starts play in the Pac-12 Championship on Thursday, when the Golden Bears take on second-seeded and 15th-ranked USC at 3 p.m. at Libbey Park in Ojai. The tournament concludes with Saturday’s final, with the champion earning the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA Championship in May.
 
Cal finished the regular season with an 11-9 overall record and a 2-6 Pac-12 mark, while USC was 7-1 in the conference and has an 18-5 record. The Bears battled the Trojans twice during the regular season, dropping hard-fought 4-2 matches (see below).
 
Live scores will be available for every Pac-12 tournament match in Ojai by clicking here, and the Pac-12 Networks will televise the final.
 
Last Time: Cal Ends Regular Season With Big Slam Loss
Last Saturday started off well for No. 45 Cal, with the Golden Bears celebrating Sean Hill before his last regular-season home match and then winning the doubles point against No. 16 Stanford. But the Bears wound up with a 4-1 loss in the Big Slam at the Hellman Tennis Complex.
 
In doubles, Hill – a graduate student who’ll complete a certificate in entrepreneurship this spring – partnered with Lucas Magnaudet to defeat Alexandre Rotsaert and Sangeet Sridhar, 6-3, on court three. The Bears clinched the point when the 42nd-ranked Yuta Kikuchi and Philip Hjorth edged Stanford’s 64th-ranked Axel Geller and Tomas Kopczynski, 7-6(4).
 
Down 1-0, the Cardinal won four times in singles – with Rotsaert beating Carl Emil Overbeck, 6-2, 7-6(5) on court four to wrap up a 4-1 result against the Bears.
 
Poll Position
Cal is ranked 45th in the latest ITA team poll, with new rankings coming out on Wednesday. The Bears have two individual rankings, with Yuta Kikuchi (20-15 record) at No. 66 in singles and the pair of Kikuchi and Carl Emil Overbeck (16-9) at No. 42 in doubles.

Scouting Cal

• Yuta Kikuchi was named the Pac-12 Player of the Week on March 15 after clinching a pair of 5-2 wins over Santa Clara and, in the Bears’ Pac-12 opener, No. 22 Utah
• Kikuchi defeated Arthur Neuhas, 6-4, 6-1, on March 11 to clinch against the Broncos and beat Franco Capalbo, 4-6, 7-5, 6-1, to secure the victory over Utah
• Kikuchi also beat Athell Bennett, 6-4, 6-4, to clinch Cal’s 5-2 win over Purdue on March 16 in Berkeley
• Carl Emil Overbeck – with a 24-11 singles record – leads the Bears with the most singles victories
• Overbeck clinched…