No. 9 USC Men Roll To Westwood For Rivalry Clash At No. 13 UCLA

THIS WEEK

No. 9 USC takes another swing at crosstown rival UCLA for the second time this season, looking to make it a 2-0 mark against the Bruins to take the lead in the Pac-12 race. The Trojans (13-6, 3-0 Pac-12) pay a visit to Bruin territory with a 3:30 p.m. clash against No. 13 UCLA (10-4, 3-0) on Friday (April 5) in Westwood.

ORACLE/ITA RANKINGS UPDATES

For the 12th straight season, the USC men's tennis team kicked off the new year ranked in the nation's top-10 of the Oracle/ITA rankings, ranked No. 5 in the nation to open the spring. The latest ITA team rankings (released April 2) have the Trojans back in the top-10, now at No. 9 in the nation. The latest individual rankings also were released April 2, with seven Trojans ranked in singles and one ranked doubles team. Junior Brandon Holt now leads the way at No. 11 in the nation in singles. Sophomore Daniel Cukierman now sits at No. 13, with senior Laurens Verboven at No. 23. They're followed by fellow seniors Tanner Smith at No. 67 and Logan Smith at No. 74, while freshman Bradley Frye stands at No. 86, and redshirt junior Jake DeVine weighs in at No. 120. In doubles, USC has Holt and Riley Smith now ranked at No. 14 in the land.

SCOUTING UCLA

The No. 13 Bruins are 10-4 overall and 3-0 in Pac-12 play after getting 4-2 wins at Stanford and Cal last week. UCLA has three players ranked nationally in singles: #21 Maxime Cressy, #46 Govind Nanda and#49 Keegan Smith. In doubles, UCLA has #6 Cressy/Smith and #84 Cressy/Rapp in the national rankings. In a series dating back to 1929, USC is 96-113 all-time against UCLA after snapping a four-match losing skid to the Bruins with a 4-1 USC victory last month at Marks Stadium.

LAST ACTION

USC exacted revenge on the road with a Pac-12 sweep of Cal and Stanford last week. First, the Trojans avenged last month's loss to California with a 4-2 decision in Berkeley. USC drummed up the doubles point and then turned a 2-2 tie into victory when Logan Smith and Mor Bulis pulled out singles wins. It was Bulis' second straight clincher for the Trojans. USC came to play in doubles, ripping through to a 1-0 lead after Daniel Cukierman and Tanner Smith kickstarted things with a 6-3 win over Draper/Kikuchi on court three. At the No. 2 spot, Jack Jaede and Laurens Verboven hit the finish line next with a 6-4 win over Molloy/Zincirli to buckle the Trojans in with a 1-0 advantage. Singles play would see the Trojans snag first sets on four courts, with #10 Cukierman cleaning up a 6-2, 6-2 win on court two to take USC to a 2-0 advantage. Cal responded with Paul Barretto's 6-3, 6-4 decision over USC's Riley Smith on court three to get a point on the board for the hosts. Cal would follow that with an equalizer as Ben Draper topped USC freshman Jake Sands 7-6 (4), 6-4 on court five to make it 2-2. USC would fire back with a 6-4, 6-4 win from #71 Logan Smith over Cal's Bjorn Hoffman on court four to set the table for either #17 Brandon Holt on court one or More Bulis on court six to clinch it. Both Trojans were battling in third sets, but it was Bulis who silenced his opponent in the third, beating Meet Zincirli with a 6-1, 3-6, 6-0 decider to get USC the 4-2 win. The next day in Palo Alto, USC locked up a 4-1 upset of No. 10 Stanford to avenge another February loss. Again, USC rang up the doubles point and answered Stanford's equalizing singles win with a string of three straight-set Trojan victories, capped off by the cinched from senior Verboven on court three. USC's early lift to what would round out as the Trojans' third win over a top-10 foe this season came on the doubles courts. Emerging victorious from three tight doubles matches, the Trojans captured a 7-5 win by #16 Holt/Smith on court one before Cukierman/Smith held strong in a tiebreaker on court three for a 7-6 (3) decision that propelled the Trojans into singles play with a 1-0 lead. The hosts would knot things up 1-1 when Timothy Sah posted a 6-4, 6-3 win over Bulis on court six, but the Trojans were undeterred. At the No. 2 spot, #10 Cukierman kept his winning momentum rolling along as he captured a smooth 6-3, 6-3 win over #33 Alexandre Rotsaert to nudge USC back into the lead. Next, Riley Smith also followed his doubles victory with some singles success, beating Stanford's #61 Sameer Kumar 6-3, 6-3 as well to get USC into position, up 3-1. While three close matches raged on, it would be #28 Verboven who created some late space on his opponent, #60 William Genesen, to close things out with a 7-6 (3), 7-5 clincher on court three. That sealed USC's road win and avenged last month's 4-3 loss to the Cardinal.

SPREADING THE WEALTH

Riley Smith's match-clinching singles win vs. UCLA made him the seventh Trojan to clinch victory this year. In fact, USC's first seven wins had each been secured by a different Trojan. Daniel Cukierman (Cal Poly), Brandon Holt (Florida), Jake Sands (UC Santa Barbara), Logan Smith (UC Davis), Tanner Smith (San Francisco) and Laurens Verboven (South Carolina) all claimed a clincher apiece in USC opening stretch. Coming through with the double? That was freshman Sands, who snagged his second match-clinching victory in USC's road win at Utah. He's since clinched his third match (ASU), while Verboven also has three clinchers to his name now after netting the winner at Stanford. Meanwhile, the newest Trojan clincher is freshman Mor Bulis, who clinched his first match as a Trojan with a big win from court six at No. 3 Texas.

BY THE NUMBERS

USC's winningest player to date is sophomore Daniel Cukierman, who has racked up 27 singles wins to stand as the lone Trojan in that 20-win zone. Closing in on that club is Jake DeVine with 18 singles wins so far. In the doubles realm, two Trojan duos have hit double digits in the win column. Brandon Holt and Riley Smith hold 13 wins together, while Cukierman and Tanner Smith lead the charge with 14 win as a doubles tandem. In dual matches, Cukierman is on top with 11 dual-match singles win, just ahead of Holt's tally of 10.

BULIS BREAKS THROUGH

USC freshman Mor Bulis dealt the deciding blow for the Trojans in their 4-2 upset of No. 3 Texas in Austin. For his heroics, he was named the Pac-12 Player of the Week. Standing tall on court six, Bulis stepped up to secure his first match-clinching singles win with a 6-2, 7-5 decision over Texas' Chih Chi Huang. Bulis' victory sealed the deal on a 4-2 win over the Longhorns, and claimed USC's second win over a top-5 opponent this season. Bulis, who joined the Trojans this spring, is now 4-4 overall in singles play after this clincher in Austin. He's the second Trojan to be named Pac-12 Player of the Week this season, following two selections for Brandon Holt, as USC now boast 53 all-time picks for the conference's weekly award.

HOLT DOUBLES UP ON PAC-12 PLAYER OF THE WEEK HONORS

Junior Brandon Holt has now snagged two Pac-12 Player of the Week honors, running his career total up to three and USC's all-time count to 52. On Jan. 29, Holt was honored after USC's 3-0 start to the season, in which Holt collected the first doubles win of the new year, winning on court one in USC's historic season-opening dual match against No. 25 South Carolina — played on the courts of the Australian Open in Melbourne. Then, back in Los Angeles, Holt swept through two singles and two doubles victories in USC's winning run at ITA Kick-Off Weekend. Most recently, Holt snagged three singles wins — two over ranked opponents — and went 2-1 in doubles during USC's run to the final at the BNP Paribas Collegiate Challenge in Indian Wells. Holt is now 13-5 overall in singles play this season, while he and Smith boast a 13-4 record together in doubles.

AUSTRALIAN ADVENTURES

In the first-ever collegiate dual match to be played at a Grand Slam, No. 5 USC showed resilience under a warm Australian sun on its official 2019 opener, gutting out a 4-0 victory over No. 25 South Carolina on the courts of the Australian Open in Melbourne. The Trojans snagged a quick doubles point and looked in position for a swift string of singles wins until the Gamecocks dug in and forced three sets on four courts. USC was able to net straight-set wins from freshman Jake Sands and sophomore Daniel Cukierman before things got tangled, and then Laurens Verboven came through with the clincher to wrap USC's memorable visit to Melbourne and get USC a 1-0 start to the 2019 campaign. The doubles point was a quick fix for the Trojans, who rattled off two swift victories to pocket a 1-0 lead. At the No. 1 spot, Brandon Holt and Riley Smith peeled out to a 6-1 win, putting Daniel Cukierman and Bradley Frye in position to snag the opening point. The sophomore-freshman duo locked in with a 6-2 victory on court three, and the Trojans were off to singles play with the 1-0 advantage in their court. In singles, USC claimed first sets down the line, but the Gamecocks fired back on four courts. At the No. 6 spot, however, USC freshman Jake Sands held firm and scored USC's first singles win of the day on a 7-5, 6-3 victory over Jake Beasley to make it 2-0 Trojans. Next, USC's #8 Daniel Cukierman sidestepped a third and closed out a 6-2, 7-5 win over South Carolina's Yancy Davis on court two, and USC was up 3-0 with four courts tangled up in third sets. On court one, Brandon Holt rebounded from dropping the first set in a tiebreaker against #7 Paul Jubb, and the top guns would continue to battle in the third while the finish line neared on other courts. Jack Jaede and Riley Smith were both in tight third sets on courts four and five, respectively, while #19 Laurens Verboven also was in lockstep with South Carolina's Daniel Rodrigues on court three. Finally, Verboven found the finishing touch, getting one last break to clinch the match on his 6-4, 2-6, 6-4 win. That suspended the remaining matches, and sends USC home to Los Angeles with a key win to build momentum in the early goings of the 2019 season.

FALL SUCCESS

Several Trojans had impactful falls, with Daniel Cukierman winning the SoCal Intercollegiate title and reaching the Oracle ITA Fall Singles Final, Logan Smith winning the ITA Southwest Regional title, Laurens Verboven claiming the ITA Oracle Masters championship, and Tanner Smith reaching the ITA Southwest Regional final. In November, Jack Jaede would scoop up the Jack Kramer Collegiate singles title with a championship match win over teammate Jake DeVine. DeVine and Bradley Frye also had strong showings at the ITA All-American qualifying rounds.

LAST SEASON

USC went 20-9 overall last year with a run to the NCAA Quarterfinals, finishing the 2018 season ranked No. 11 in the nation. For the first time since 1993, USC men's tennis landed multiple Trojan doubles pairs on the ITA All-America honor roll. It also was 25 years ago that USC last finished a season with more than three ITA All-Americans, as the Trojans boasted four honorees for 2018 in Brandon Holt, Riley Smith, Jack Jaede and Laurens Verboven. All but Holt were first-time All-Americans, with Holt adding 2018 singles and doubles All-American honors to his 2017 singles pick from his freshman campaign. Holt and Smith finished 2018 ranked as the No. 9 doubles team in the nation to secure their doubles All-American status, while Jaede and Verboven snagged their first All-American honors as a 5-8 seed in the NCAA Doubles draw as well as a No. 10 final ranking. A three-time All-American, Brandon Holt secured his second singles selection as a 9-16 seed in his second appearance in the NCAA Singles draw. Holt also powered through to the NCAA Round of 16 in singles and in doubles with Smith.

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Players Mentioned

Mor Bulis

Daniel Cukierman

Jake DeVine

Bradley Frye

Brandon Holt

Jack Jaede

Jake Sands

Logan Smith

Riley Smith

Tanner Smith

Laurens Verboven