Men's Tennis Opens 2024-25 Season with Home Invitational Saturday-Sunday

Setting the Scene
What: Bucknell Invitational
Teams: Bucknell, Lafayette, Millersville, Mount St. Mary's, Saint Francis (Pa.)
Dates: Saturday-Sunday, Sept. 14-15
Where: Varsity Tennis Courts – Lewisburg, Pa.
Results: ITA

Tournament Details
Format: Round-robin style play in four-player singles groups and four-tandem doubles groups; flight champions based on overall record, with sets W/L and games W/L used as tiebreakers

Schedule:
Saturday (8 a.m. start): 2 rounds of singles, 1 round of doubles
Sunday (8 a.m. start): 2 round of doubles, 1 round of singles

Bucknell at a Glance
• The Bison kick off the 2024-25 season with its annual home invitational this weekend. It will be a tennis fan's delight, as there will be wall-to-wall tennis on 10 courts all day Saturday and Sunday starting at 8 a.m. Bucknell's men's and women's teams will both be in action.
• This weekend's tournament features World Cup-style four-player group play in both singles and doubles. Competitors will play each of the other three in his group, and the player with the best record will be the group champion. Under this format, each individual has an opportunity to play three singles and three doubles matches.
• Third-year head coach Jason Cohen has an experienced, albeit still youthful roster this season. The 10-man squad features no seniors, but five of the six regular singles players from last season are back, in addition to a promising four-player freshman class.
• Bucknell's lone graduation loss was Tim Zelikovsky, who went 29-3 in singles and 17-11 in doubles last season. Zelikovsky was a stalwart at the bottom of the lineup, playing primarily in the 5 and 6 positions.
• The Bison junior class is loaded, led by returning No. 1 Amar Tahirovic, who went 27-6 in singles and 27-9 in doubles on the way to First Team All-Patriot League honors last year. No. 2 Adam Stavrakas (22-10 singles, 20-16 doubles), No. 3 Oscar Bain Moreno de Vega (24-10 singles, 25-13 doubles), and No. 5 Brendan McDonald (11-16 singles, 21-13 doubles) round out the junior class, while No. 4 Liam Kilmer (23-7 singles, 22-10 doubles) is also back after an impressive freshman campaign. Sophomore Will Robinson (10-2 singles, 8-7 doubles) was outstanding in a fill-in role last season as well.
• New to the squad this season are freshmen Nelson Alapi (San Diego, Calif.), Oumar Diallo (Miramar, Fla.), Shiv Singh (Bethesda, Md.), and Felix Steindl (Vienna, Austria). All four will make their Bucknell debuts this season.
• Bucknell is coming off an outstanding spring campaign. The Bison went 16-7 in dual matches, producing the second-most wins in a season in team history, including a 4-2 mark in Patriot League play. Bucknell dropped a tight 4-2 decision to Navy in the Patriot League Tournament semifinals, marking the second straight year that the team fell a few points short of a berth in the final.

A Look Ahead
• This is the first of seven fall tournaments on the Bison schedule. Next up is the Carnegie Mellon Invitational in Pittsburgh next weekend.
• The Bison will then attend events at Loyola and Richmond in advance of two ITA tournaments in October. Bucknell is playing in the ITA Northeast Regional this fall after several seasons in the Atlantic Region. This year's Northeast Regional will be in Philadelphia Oct. 17-20. New to the tournament lineup this year is a Patriot League ITA qualifier, which will be held at West Point Oct. 25-27.

Men's Tennis Opens 2024-25 Season with Home Invitational Saturday-Sunday

Next Event

Players Mentioned

Nelson Alapi

Oscar Bain Moreno de Vega

Liam Kilmer

Brendan McDonald

Will Robinson

Shiv Singh

Adam Stavrakas

Felix Steindl

Amar Tahirovic

Tim Zelikovsky