Men's Tennis Has Top Seeds in Singles & Doubles at Patriot League ITA Conference Masters Qualifier

Setting the Scene
What: Patriot League Qualifier for ITA Conference Masters Championships
Dates: Friday-Sunday, Oct. 24-26
Where: Bethlehem, Pa. (Ulrich Varsity Tennis Courts & Lewis Indoor Tennis Center)

DRAWS/RESULTS

About the Event
• The Bison will be looking for a repeat performance at this week's Patriot League qualifying tournament for the ITA Conference Masters Championships, which will be hosted by Lehigh this Friday through Sunday. In the inaugural event last season at West Point, Amar Tahirovic defeated teammate Adam Stavrakas in three sets to win the singles title, and Tahirovic and Brendan McDonald won the doubles crown.
• Bucknell will have the same trio in action this weekend at Lehigh. The singles and doubles champions move on to the ITA Conference Masters in San Diego Nov. 6-9. At that event, the four singles semifinalists and the top three doubles finishers will qualify for the NCAA Championships Nov. 18-23 at the USTA National Campus at Lake Nona, Fla.
• Tahirovic is the No. 1 seed and Stavrakas the No. 3 seed in the singles bracket. Both have byes into the Round of 16. Tahirovic will play the winner of the opening-round match between Lafayette's Ricardo Espaillat and Colgate's Wittman Bulger. Stavrakas will play Holy Cross' Matthew Carlson, whom he beat 6-1, 7-5 in a dual last season.
• Tahirovic and McDonald are the top seed in doubles, and their first match will come in the quarterfinals against either Espaillat/Nicolas McKenzie of Lafayette or Nick Lawliss/Ryan Gill of Loyola.
• Last year's event was dominated by the Bison. Neither Tahirovic nor Stavrakas dropped a set on the way to the singles title, and then Tahirovic pulled out a marathon 6-7, 6-3, 7-6 verdict in the final, with both tiebreakers extending to 8-6. Tahirovic and McDonald were tested in the doubles bracket, as they needed tiebreakers to beat Army in the semifinals and Lehigh in the final.
• Last year's ITA Conference Masters was held in Rome, Ga., and Tahirovic won twice in singles to reach the quarterfinals, but he fell one win shy of the NCAA bid when he lost 6-3, 6-2 to top-seeded Sebastian Dominko of Notre Dame. On day one of the event, he earned straight set victories over Eduardo Dias of Gardner Webb and Joseph Wayand of UNC Wilmington.
• In doubles, Tahirovic and McDonald won their first-round match in straight sets against a duo from Weber State, but they fell 6-2, 6-2 to reigning NCAA quarterfinalists Petar Jovanovic and Benito Sanchez-Martinez of Mississippi State in the second round.

About the Bison
• Bucknell had six players in action last weekend at the ITA Northeast Regional at Princeton. Tahirovic led the way with a run to the singles quarterfinals. He received a bye into the main singles draw and then posted three straight wins over opponents from Fordham, Penn State, and Columbia. That left him two wins away from an NCAA bid, but his run ended in the quarters with a loss to Manfredi Graziani of Penn.
• Stavrakas also received a bye into the main singles draw but fell in the Round of 64 to Penn's Adam Bain. Liam Kilmer had a strong tournament with two wins in the qualifying bracket to earn a spot in the main draw. He defeated Penn State's Kyle Chesman and Saint Joseph's Santiago Valle to reach the main draw, where he had to retire due to injury after one set against Penn's Matthew Rutter.
• In doubles, Tahirovic and McDonald won their opening match 8-3 over a team from NJIT, and then they dropped a heartbreaker in a tiebreaker that went all the way to 10-8 to Princeton's Milan Markovits and Sawyer Severin.
• The Bison had eight players in action at the Richmond's River City Open two weeks ago, and the squad combined for a 12-10 record in singles and 5-7 in doubles against good competition.
• Tahirovic and Stavrakas both went 3-0 in singles at Richmond, while Kilmer and McDonald went 2-1. Tahirovic and McDonald led the way in doubles, winning two of their three matches.
• Tahirovic and Stavrakas both competed at the ITA All-American Championships in Tulsa, Okla. Tahirovic earned a bye into the main draw and dropped two hard-fought matches to opponents from TCU and Baylor, the latter in three sets. Stavrakas started in the pre-qualifying round and fell to opponents from Florida and Wake Forest. The Bison tandem were the only two Patriot League players in the field.
• Bucknell returns virtually its entire roster from last year's Patriot League championship team. The list of returnees is headlined by Tahirovic, the 2025 Patriot League Player of the Year and Scholar-Athlete of the Year, and Stavrakas, the Patriot League Tournament MVP and First Team All-PL honoree. Those two, along with Bain and McDonald, comprise one of the most accomplished senior classes in program history.
• Tahirovic is No. 43 in the ITA men's singles rankings. He now has 89 career singles wins, second-most in team history behind Nick Bybel's 112. Stavrakas ranks eighth with 65 wins, and Bain is 16th with 54.
• Last year's championship was Bucknell's first since claiming the 1991 Patriot League title. That was the league's inaugural season, and the men's tennis championship was decided by an individually flighted tournament. The 2025 crown was the team's first in the Patriot League's team-format era, and the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament was the first in team history.

A Look Ahead
• The ITA Conference Masters will be in San Diego on Nov. 7-9, and the Bison will also have a contingent at the Navy Invitational in Annapolis that weekend.

Men's Tennis Has Top Seeds in Singles & Doubles at Patriot League ITA Conference Masters Qualifier

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Players Mentioned

Liam Kilmer

Brendan McDonald

Adam Stavrakas

Amar Tahirovic