Men’s tennis opens Big Sky play at Northern Colorado

After a brief two-match tune-up, the Montana men's tennis team jumps right into Big Sky action this week, hitting the road to face Northern Colorado and North Dakota to open league play.

The Griz (2-0) open up league play in Greeley, Colo., on Friday, taking on the Bears (1-4, 1-1 BSC) on Feb. 10 at 2 p.m. in UNC's West Indoor Courts. UM then hops a flight bound for Grand Forks to take on the Fighting Hawks (0-6, 0-2 BSC) on the morning of Sunday, Feb. 12 at 8 a.m. (MT).

With only the pair of wins over NAIA Lewis-Clark State to the team's name this spring, the Griz are looking to build momentum on the road, but don't have the luxury of time on their side.

"Northern Colorado is going to be tough on Friday," said veteran head coach Kris Nord. "They just beat North Dakota 5-2, gave MSU a tough match a week ago, and played Grand Canyon tough, so they're a tricky team to open against."

Though the Bears enter Friday's match with only the single win over North Dakota so far this season, UNC will be eager to improve on their tenth-place finish in last year's standings, and Greeley never provides an easy environment.

"It's a tough place to play. It's indoors, it's fast, it's a mile high, and those things aren't really in our wheelhouse," added Nord.

"Both teams (UNC and UND) are improved, so I'm taking the same approach I always do that we had better show up, because there's not that much difference between teams in our conference."

Montana's last trip to Greeley was back in the spring of 2015, when UM won the doubles point and cruised to a 5-2 victory. Last season, the two met in Missoula, with the Griz taking a 6-1 victory to give UM two-straight wins over the Bears.

Despite Montana only getting the single doubleheader so far this spring, the Griz have seen improvements from the fall semester where they posted some impressive individual results, but sometimes struggled to put together a competitive lineup 1-6.

"It was a great start for us, to just get some matches under our belt and hopefully get some of the early season jitters out of the way," added Nord.

"Max Korkh and Alex Canellopoulos were real bright spots; they showed the fall work has helped. They're stronger, they played well, I was happy to see that. Yannick and Pete (Mimnagh-Fleming) showed some mental toughness too, which is important."

Yannick Schmidl got the chance to play on the No. 1 singles court against L-C State, and overcame a tough test from his opponent to take a three-set win 6-3, 3-6, 11-9. Rising UM star Victor Casadevall battled through a niggling injury to also pick up a singles win on the No. 4 court.

All 24 men's and women's Big Sky tennis teams are in action this weekend for the first time this season. At 2-0 the Griz currently sit at No. 4 on the league table with only six conference matches played so far.

Men’s tennis opens Big Sky play at Northern Colorado

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Players Mentioned

Victor Casadevall

Max Korkh

Yannick Schmidl

University of Montana Athletics