Georgia Gwinnett College picked up a 5-2 season-opening win at Lander University in a match of ranked men's tennis teams Sunday afternoon in Greenwood, South Carolina.
The Grizzlies are the top-ranked team in the NAIA while Lander stood No. 13 in the NCAA Division II preseason poll.
The visitors won the doubles point behind the strong play from senior
Aleksa Ciric and sophomore
Luis Francisco Sampedro, winning in a hard-fought tiebreaker on the No. 3 court. That came after the teams split matches on the No. 1 and No. 2 doubles courts.
Senior
Alex Gurmendi and sophomore
Santiago Villarruel earned a 6-2 victory at the top of the doubles lineup. This marked the NAIA's No. 1 doubles team's first match since capturing the NAIA doubles national championship last fall.
In singles, Ciric, the NAIA's No. 2-ranked singles player, was victorious by 6-3, 7-5 scores on the No. 3 court.
Other victories came from Francisco Sampedro, by 6-1, 6-3 scores on the No. 4 court in his GGC debut; Villarruel, who collected a 6-1, 6-3 victory at No. 5 singles; and senior
Mihailo Radosavljevic, with a 10-2 victory in a deciding third-set tiebreaker on the No. 6 court. He forced the third set with a 6-1 victory in the second set.
The Grizzlies have won 18 consecutive dual matches.
Georgia Gwinnett College is scheduled to face No. 8 seed College of Coastal Georgia in the quarterfinal round of the 2024 Intercollegiate Tennis Association NAIA Indoor National Championship on Friday, February 2, at Overland Park, Kansas.
