April 21, 2005

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Los Angeles, Calif. - Loyola Marymount men's tennis will hold the seventh seed heading into the weekend's West Coast Conference Championships, hosted by top-seed Pepperdine. The Lions (10-10, 1-1 WCC) will face second-seed and 31st-ranked San Diego (14-5, 1-0 WCC) in Friday's first round.

The Lions, who ended the regular season last Wednesday with a 5-2 win over UC Riverside, finished the season with four straight victories and won six of their final seven matches. LMU faced two conference foes in dual match play this spring, defeating eighth-seed Gonzaga 6-1 and falling to top-seed and then-16th-ranked Pepperdine 5-2 early in the season.

Sophomore Nico Terrien gave the Lions a huge upset win in the match against the Waves, defeating the defending WCC Player of the Year, Pedro Rico, 3-6, 6-4, 12-10. Terrien, the 2004 WCC Freshman of the Year, earned his first win of the season over Rico, who was ranked as high as eighth in the nation this season and sat at No. 24 in singles at the time of the match. Terrien was forced to save two match points in the third set tiebreaker, before closing it out 12-10. The win at the No. 2 spot gave Terrien the highest-ranked win in program history, beating the previous record set by Tigran Martirosian, when he defeated a 55th-ranked player from UC Santa Barbara in 2003. Another match highlight for the Lions was the play of sophomore Matt Phillips, who upset Pepperdine's Ivor Lovrak 6-4, 4-6, 10-3.

Phillips went on to have a hot March, going 8-3 in singles play at the No. 4 and 5 spots over the course of the month. His March play was highlighted by big wins over #57 Utah, #75 Princeton, and Dartmouth and he finished the month winning 10 of his final 13 matches.

Overall, the Lions finished the season at 10-10, with eight of their losses coming at the hands of teams who were nationally ranked in 2005. LMU had five 4-3 heartbreakers this season, and four of the five were to ranked opponents. LMU has finished third in the WCC two of the last three seasons, including at the 2004 championships, without ever holding the third seed.

"We have lots of close matches against good teams," LMU Head Coach Nik DeVore said, "and I think that will benefit us heading into the conference championships. "We have finished third twice in the last three seasons when we have not been the favorite. We always play our best at the end of the season, and that is when I would rather peak. I've told the guys, `We need to do what we've always done.'"

-GO LIONS-