NCAA Men's Bracket | NCAA Women's Bracket

RICHMOND, Ky. – The Eastern Kentucky University tennis teams will represent the Ohio Valley Conference in this year’s NCAA championships. The EKU women will square off at top-seeded UCLA on May 11 while the Colonel men are lined up against UCLA the following day, May 12.

The Eastern Kentucky women (18-6) cruised through the conference season without losing a match. Eastern shut out six of its nine OVC opponents in the regular season before outlasting Austin Peay and UT Martin in the league tournament. This is the second time in the last four fours (2012, 2009) that the Colonels have earned a spot in the NCAA tournament.

Four of the six regular starters in the women’s singles line-up are freshmen while the other two starters are sophomores. Amandine Faouzi played at the No. 1 spot the entire spring and earned OVC Freshman of the Year accolades thanks to her 16-7 singles record and 8-1 OVC mark. Fellow freshman Kristina Labeja led all EKU players with 18 singles victories while playing mainly at the No. 2 position.

UCLA (21-2) earned its first ever overall No. 1 seed this season. The Bruins have won one national title, coming back in 2008.

This is the third consecutive year the Eastern Kentucky men (19-9) have advanced to the NCAA tourney. The Colonels finished the regular season in third place in the league standings, but rolled off three wins in three days to capture the OVC tournament title. Two of those victories came against the top two seeds in the tournament – #2 Austin Peay and #1 Tennessee Tech.

Senior Hugo Klientovsky headlines the men’s roster. EKU’s top player claimed All-OVC first team honors for the third consecutive year thanks to posting a 19-7 singles record this spring. Klientovsky’s lone OVC loss came against Austin Peay’s Sean Bailey, who went on to take the men’s OVC Player of the Year award. The native of Colombe, France nearly beat the No. 1 ranked player in the country in March before falling to Virginia’s Mitchell Frank in three tight sets, 3-6, 7-5, 7-5.

The UCLA (22-3) men were seeded No. 4 overall in this year’s championship draw after winning the Pac-12 regular season title. The Bruins have won 16 men’s tennis national titles with the most recent coming in 2005.

“I’m especially happy for our guys,” EKU head coach Rob Oertel said. “I know they were very excited to go somewhere special this time around. However, both teams face very tough competition in the opening round.”

First and second round competition will be conducted Friday-Sunday, May 11-13, at 16 different regional sites with the winner of each site advancing to the NCAA Division I Tennis Team Championships at the Dan Magill Tennis Complex in Athens, Ga., May 17-22.