Gamecocks look to end regular season on high note
The South Carolina men’s tennis team will travel to Gainesville, Fla., Saturday to play their final regular season match of the spring when they take on the No. 9 Gators.
Both the Gamecocks (15-9, 2-8 SEC) and the Gators (13-8, 6-4 SEC) are coming off wins last weekend against Arkansas and losses to Louisiana State. The Gators are led by first singles player Bob van Overbeek, ranked No. 41 in the nation, and at second singles by No. 49 ranked Tripper Carleton. They also boast the No. 10 doubles team in the country at first doubles with junior Billy Federhofer and senior Nassim Slillam.
Slillam is ranked No. 71 in singles, but has recently only played in the doubles lineup, sitting out from singles play because of an injury. Senior Ivan Machado and sophomore Nick Jones will again play at first and second singles, respectively, for South Carolina. Jones also teams with sophomore Chip Cox in the doubles lineup at the first position. The tandem is ranked as the nation’s No. 47 doubles team.
USC coach Josh Goffi said he’s looking for his team to keep up the quality tennis they’ve displayed in the past couple weeks.
“We have to play exactly the way we’ve played our last four matches”, he said. “The last four matches we’ve done a good job collectively of taking care of the details, and everyone’s pretty much gone the distance. And we took two of them and lost two 4-3 against two top 20 teams. If we bring what we brought to the past few matches I think we’ll be in the position to win again.”
He talked about Florida’s top two singles players, and how they would match up with South Carolina’s. He described Florida’s van Overbeek as a solid player, though the matchup could be to Machado’s advantage.
“Bob is a very good player. He has a huge serve, a big forehand and he likes to go after it, and has a solid backhand”, he said of van Overbeek. “But he’s also a very streaky player, he’s either on or off…he likes to play clean tennis, and that’s what our number one, (Machado), refuses to let the opponent do.”
He described Carleton as a tough player who excels playing in the corners of the court rather than the middle, particularly off his backhand wing. He said Jones would have to play a similar match against Carleton to the one he played against Neal Skupski of LSU last Saturday, which he lost in a third set tiebreak.
He described Slillam as “one of the better players in the country” but wasn’t sure whether he would be in Florida’s singles lineup come Saturday and noted that his team would need to prepare for Florida’s entire lineup. As for Cox and Jones’ matchup against Slillam and Federhofer, he expects it to be a good matchup between two good teams.
“Jones and Cox are playing pretty good tennis. Federhofer and Slillam are a great team, but at the same time, a lot of their results came in the fall”, he said of Florida’s first doubles team. “Our guys are in the hunt for an NCAA berth (for the individual doubles tournament), so they’re hungry and eager to get that win. So it should be a good match between those two teams.”
Goffi said he didn’t expect the Florida humidity to be a factor, noting his team’s conditioning and the recent weather in Columbia being similar. Overall, he felt his players were beginning to hit their strides, and that he wanted them to continue their recent play this upcoming weekend. The Gamecocks will look to end their regular season on a high on Saturday before the SEC tournament begins.