Two Home Tournaments, Ranked Foes Highlight 2016-17 Men's Tennis Schedule

2016-17 Men's Tennis Schedule

Two home tournaments in the fall, at least 15 matches in the spring against teams that ended their season ranked by the ITA, hosting the ECAC Championship, and a spring break trip to California highlight the 2016-17 assembled by Princeton men's tennis head coach Billy Pate.

"Undoubtedly, this is our most challenging schedule we've had during my time as coach at Princeton," Pate said. "We should be pushed in almost every match, but this will make us stronger and ready for the Ivy League race and postseason. The ITA national rankings are based on quality wins so we need to give our guys those opportunities to elevate their level and get the most out of their potential. We have an experienced and incredibly deep squad this year which will afford us the opportunity to get some different looks at guys throughout the course of the year. I'm really excited about the prospects of so many attractive home matches. We hope to get great home support for these matches which will feature many nationally ranked squads. It's also nice to host the ECAC Championship and it goes without saying the Ivies have become remarkably balanced and strong top to bottom so that will be another set of key home matches."

The fall will send Princeton to Newport, R.I. for its season-opening Hall of Fame ITA Grass Court Invitational, a rare opportunity for collegians to compete on a grass-court surface. Princeton alums in the New York and New England areas will be invited to a reception at the event on Saturday, Sept. 17, with details forthcoming. Defending national champion Virginia as well as TCU, which ended last season ranked No. 3 in the nation, and top-25 team Michigan will also compete at the event.

Along with ITA All-America (Tulsa), regional (Philadelphia) and national indoor (New York) competitions around the country in late September and October, Princeton will host two home tournaments, the Ivy-Plus Invitational Sept. 23-25 and the Farnsworth Invitational Oct. 7-9. The Ivy-Plus will be co-hosted by Penn and Princeton with the top 64 players competing at Princeton and the next 64 at Penn.

Princeton will close the fall with Georgia's Bulldog Scramble, featuring the host and seventh-ranked Bulldogs as well as Louisville, Georgia Tech and Auburn, and the clay-court Lakewood Ranch Invitational in Sarasota, Fla., both during the first weekend in November.

Once the spring season begins during the first weekend of February, Princeton will take a trip to face Big Ten foes Michigan and Indiana before returning home the following weekend to face Rice, Wisconsin and VCU, giving Princeton four opponents in its first five of the spring who were ITA-ranked to close last season. The ECAC Championship, which Princeton will host by virtue of winning its first ECAC title since 2001 last year, will come to Jadwin Gym Feb. 17-19.

A return trip to the Blue Gray National Tennis Invitational in Montgomery, Ala., follows Feb. 24-25, featuring Alabama, Auburn, Boise State, Rice, South Carolina, Texas Tech and Virginia Tech as possible opponents. All of those teams ended the 2016 season ranked by the ITA, headed by Texas Tech at No. 11.

Five consecutive home matches will fill the time between the Blue Gray and the spring trip, with Denver, Buffalo, Bryant, NJIT and William & Mary coming to Jadwin Gym before the Tigers head to Southern California to take on Pepperdine, San Diego and UC Santa Barbara, all ITA-ranked at the end of last season.

Finally, the Ivy League season will begin April 7 at Cornell. Princeton will have four home Ivy matches, with Columbia (April 9), Harvard (April 22), Dartmouth (April 23) and Penn (April 29) visiting.

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