Griz open spring season at Utah

The Montana men's tennis team opens its third season under head coach Jason Brown this weekend in familiar territory: picked to finish in the top half of the Big Sky Conference standings in April when the league's championship tourney rolls through Phoenix.

The Griz will also head to a familiar venue to start this season's 21-match slate as UM travels down I-15 to Salt Lake City to face the Utah Utes and Nevada Wolfpack in a pair of duals on Saturday and Sunday.

The Griz have faced the Utes in a nonconference tune-up every year since 2009, and for this year's team, that familiarity could prove more useful than ever.

A total of eight of the ten players that make up the 2020 Grizzly roster are sophomores or freshmen and are led by only two upperclassmen: seniors Max Korkh and Ludvig Hallgren. Around this time last year, six of those eight underclassmen made the trip to Salt Lake for the first time ever as Grizzlies in the early stages of their freshmen seasons.

Now a year older and wiser, Montana returns to Utah looking to build the foundations of a project that will wrap up in April.

"I feel like everyone came back from break ready to play. We've had a good training block since school started and we're really excited to start competing," said Brown.

"I'm also excited to see the development of the six, now, sophomores. This is their first repeat trip. They've been to Utah, they've seen this before. There was zero of that last season for the vast majority of our squad. Now they'll know what to expect, and we can just go get after it."

Even with only a year of college tennis under their belts, Montana's youngsters are shaping up to be formidable come conference play, with the Griz selected second in the preseason poll.

Korkh, a team captain and UM's lone returning All-Big Sky selection, is expected to lead-off the Grizzly lineup this year on the No. 1 court. Since returning to campus in mid-January, he says he also likes where the team is headed and is looking at the matches against the Utes and Wolf Pack as opportunities to get a good litmus test of where the team stands.

"Everyone's looking sharp. One of the biggest things for us has always been that desire to win, and everyone has that and showed it by training so hard over the break. I think a lot of the guys came back looking better than when they left," said Korkh.

"It will be good for the guys to be put in tricky positions and battling adversity. There's a lot the young guys can learn from that."

The Griz enjoyed a breakout performance from sophomore Milo Benn in the fall, charging out to a 10-4 overall record in the tourney season and claiming the singles and doubles title at the Peak Fall Championships.

Brown will also be expecting big things from two of last year's freshmen standouts in Ed Pudney and Oisin Shaffrey, who anchored the bottom of the Grizzly lineup with Pudney going 6-4 in Big Sky play, and Shaffrey going 7-3.

Despite being a young team as well with six underclassmen on the roster, Utah still has the firepower to give the Griz adversity. Gone is one of the Pac-12's finest in Dan Little, but at 2-2 on the early season, the Utes have already blown past Big Sky opponents in Idaho (7-0) and Weber State (5-2) so far this season, while dropping close matches to Tulsa (2-4), and Purdue (3-4) at the ITA Kickoff Weekend in Columbus, Ohio.

Meanwhile, Nevada is also off to a hot start this season at 5-0, but have yet to face a Division-I opponent with wins over Point Loma, Azuza Pacific, UC San Diego, Sonoma State, and Holy Names.

The Pack is led by senior Julien Evard, who advanced to the consolation final the ITA Mountain Regional Tournament this fall, and also represented Nevada at the ITA All-American Championships.

First serves against Utah (2-2) go up on Saturday, Feb. 1, at 5 p.m. at the Eccles Tennis Center. UM will then play a neutral site dual against the Wolf Pack (5-0) on Sunday at 11 a.m., and a link to a live stream of the Utah matches can be found at gogriz.com.

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Players Mentioned

Milo Benn

Ludvig Hallgren

Max Korkh

Ed Pudney

Oisin Shaffrey

University of Montana Athletics