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Two Netters To NCAAs
Nenad Zivkovic and Paulina Janus earn spots to national singles championship.
May 3, 2001 LAS VEGAS - UNLV will send a representative to both the men's and women's NCAA tennis tournaments for the first time since 1998, as both the individual and team fields were announced by the collegiate governing body Thursday.
Senior Nenad Zivkovic, ranked 87th nationally but second in the region, earned his first bid to the national singles tournament. The native of Belgrade, Serbia, went to the 1999 doubles event with Gregor Skorin, and lost in the first round.
Zivkovic posted a record of 17-10 overall this season and stands 54-49 in his career. He is the fifth UNLV men's player to earn a spot in the NCAA singles tournament and first since Asaf Tishler in 1999. UNLV has two NCAA tennis titles to its credit as Luke Smith won the singles crown and then teamed with Tim Blenkiron to win doubles in 1997.
The news was not so good for Zivkovic's team, however, as the 49th-ranked Rebels did not receive an at-large bid in the 64-school tournament. UNLV, which defeated seven ranked teams en route to a 13-11 finish, began the year unranked and moved all the way up to No. 32 in March. However, the Rebels lost to BYU in the finals of the Mountain West Conference championships last Saturday and the Cougars received the automatic bid and will host the first and second rounds in Provo this weekend. The men's singles tournament will run from May 24-28 in Athens, Ga.
"Before the championship match last week, I told our players that our ranking was borderline and we had a chance to take it out of the committee's hands," UNLV head coach Larry Easley said. "Unfortunately, we didn't do that. At least we will be well represented at nationals with Nenad."
On the women's side, Lady Rebel head coach Kevin Cory said he was pleasantly surprised to learn that the team's No. 1 player, Paulina Janus, received an at-large bid into the NCAA's 64-player draw. Janus, a sophomore from Warsaw, Poland, transferred to UNLV this spring from Azusa Pacific. She earned her spot by going 16-11 overall, including a late-season surge that saw her win 10 of 11, her last six matches and upsetting two highly ranked opponents from BYU and Fresno State.
Ranked 68th, Janus is only the fourth UNLV women's player to earn a bid into the NCAA singles tournament. Last year, then-senior Katarina Malec turned in the best showing in program history by posting four victories before falling in the national semifinals to the top seed. This year's singles portion of the women's tournament runs from May 21-25 in Stone Mountain, Ga.
UNLV NCAA MEN'S TENNIS CHAMPIONSHIPS HISTORY
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