Kikuchi, Overbeck Start NCAA Doubles Tuesday

Yuta Kikuchi (left) and Carl Emil Overbeck (right)

MTEN5/23/2022 12:47 PM | By: Cal Athletics

BERKELEY – The California men’s tennis pair of Yuta Kikuchi and Carl Emil Overbeck – ranked 28th in the latest ITA poll – opens the NCAA Doubles Championship on Tuesday vs. Middle Tennessee State’s 70th-ranked Francisco Rocha and Oskar Brostrom Poulsen. The round of 32 match is slated to start at a time TBA at the Khan Outdoor Tennis Complex at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The final will take place on May 28.
 
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. 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 championship 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.

 

Additionally, Kikuchi, who is ranked 99th in singles with a 20-16 record, was named to the All-Pac-12 second team in early May. He 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. He clinched four matches overall for the Bears this spring. In the fall, Kikuchi reached the singles semifinals of the ITA Northwest Regional Championships in Seattle.

 

Overbeck was also strong in singles, posting a 24-11 record to lead the Bears in wins and clinch two Cal victories in his…