Carl Emil Overbeck (left) and Yuta Kikuchi (right) will compete for the NCAA doubles title in Illinois.
BERKELEY – The California men’s tennis pair of Yuta Kikuchi and Carl Emil Overbeck earned an at-large spot in the NCAA Doubles Championship on Tuesday, when the NCAA announced the 32-team field. The tournament will run from May 23-28 at the Khan Outdoor Tennis Complex at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
This is the first postseason campaign for the Cal duo, as Overbeck is a freshman. Kikuchi, a senior, competed in the 2019 NCAA Doubles Championship as a freshman, partnering with Jacob Brumm to reach the round of 16.
Kikuchi, from Yahaba, Japan, and Overbeck, from Copenhagen, Denmark, have a 16-9 record and are ranked 31st in the most recent ITA doubles poll. Kikuchi is also ranked 86th in singles and was named the Pac-12 Player of the Week in March.
At one point this season, Overbeck and Kikuchi won 12 straight doubles matches. That span included the Battle in the Bay Classic – with the Bears beating USC’s Bradley Frye and Stefan Dostanic, 8-3, in the final in San Francisco – the Hawaii Invitational, and six dual matches. Among those dual matches, the two Bears clinched Cal wins over Saint Mary’s, UNLV and No. 8 USC, with Kikuchi and Overbeck beating the Trojan’s 10th-ranked Frye and Dostanic again, 6-2.
The Cal program has captured nine NCAA doubles titles, with Doug Eisenman and Matt Lucena (in 1990) and Lucena and Bent-Ove Pederson (in 1991) winning the most recent championships.
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