Men's Tennis Heads to Auburn for ITA Southern Regional

Thursday, October 14

Auburn, Ala.

All Day

Southern Miss

ITA Regionals

Men's Tennis Heads to Auburn for ITA Southern Regional

10/13/2021 4:37:00 PM | Men's Tennis

Tournament Central

HATTIESBURG, Miss. - After an impressive showing at the ITA All-American in Tulsa, Okla., the Southern Miss men's tennis team will travel to Auburn, Ala. to compete in the ITA Southern Regional this weekend. The six-day event stats Thursday morning with qualifying singles and will run through Tuesday.

"This is another great opportunity to see where we stack up with some of the best teams in the country," said head coach Zubin Engineer. "We had a great showing at the ITA All-American and I'm hoping we carry that over to this tournament."

Other participating schools include Alabama, Alabama State, Alcorn State, Auburn, Jacksonville State, Louisiana, LSU, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Samford, South Alabama, Troy, Tulane and UAB.

Seven Golden Eagles will start in the qualifying draw in hopes of making it to the main draw that starts Saturday night. Dhruv Sunish qualified as the No. 12 seed in the main draw and is exempt from playing in the qualifying rounds. At No. 11, Olimjon Nabiev is the highest-ranking Golden Eagle in the qualifying draw and opens against the winner of Alabama State's Chris Andre and Louisiana's Alejandro Sanchez Gonzalez. Other Southern Miss players in the qualifying draw include Christopher Cahour, Alexander Gima, Pasawee Reansuwong, Antoine Audrain, Pawin Jirapoomdaje and Alan Sanson. All qualifying draw play will wrap up Friday morning.

Southern Miss also entered four doubles teams into the doubles draw that starts Friday night. Gima and Audrain play Alabama State's Juan Rodriguez and Chris Andre at 4:30 p.m. on Friday. Sunish and Sanson play at 4:30 p.m. against Mohammed Ali Bellaloung and JB Pickard of Samford, while Jirapoomdaje and Reansuwong play at the same time against Harrison Willans and Mattew Gooch of Samford. Cahour and Nabiev will be the last doubles pair of as they play at 5 p.m. against UAB's Roman Postolka and Nikola Puric.

Hear from the squad
"I just got back from an injury, but I am feeling healthy and ready to go this weekend," said Alan Sanson. "The team has really improved, and the guys are playing really well. Practices have been hard and that has brought the energy up a lot. I caught up really fast after coming back from the injury, so now it's just getting back into the rhythm of play on the court."

"This season has been great, and I am so happy to be playing for Southern Miss," said Olimjon Nabiev. "The goal for this tournament is to win it."

"We've been playing against really good teams and really good players," said Alexander Gima. "The way we practice has us set up to succeed this weekend. The goal for regionals is to do our best and see good results."

"The season so far has been really great," said Dhruv Sunish. "It's been a lot of learning the first three weekends. The team is really putting in the effort and that is all we can ask for. This weekend our goal is to use our training to our best ability and try to translate our practice play onto the court."