May 23, 2006
Notes:
No. 2 Pepperdine wins first NCAA men's tennis championship ... Waves finish season with 36-2 record ... 36 victories are most ever for an NCAA champion since teamchampionship format wasestablished in 1977...This is first title tennis title by a West Coast Conference school (University of San Francisco won the 1949 title, however the WCC wasn't actuallyestablisheduntil 1952)... Pepperdine also reached in the `82 and `86 NCAA finals ... No. 1 Georgia falls short in bid for unbeaten season, finishing 30-1 ... UGA was trying for fourth title, falls to 4-7 in NCAA title matches ... Only four teams have gone unbeaten en route to the NCAA title (Stanford in `77, `95 and `98 and Illinois in 2003)... Georgia beat Pepperdine 4-0 back on Feb. 20 in the final of the USTA-ITA National Team Indoor Championships in Seattle ... Ivor Lovrak was also on Baylor's 2004 NCAA championship team- first player to playfor two different NCAA champions under team tournament format that began in `77 ... Lovrak was named Most Outstanding Performer of the tournament... Waves out-scored six opponents 24-4 en route to the championship .. Pepperdine leads all-time series against UGA 9-8 ... Pepperdine beat Montana State in first round, TCU in second round, Florida in round of 16, UCLA in quarterfinals and Texas in semifinals ... Pepperdine's Pedro Rico went 3-0 at No. 2 singles at Stanford these last four days; Ivor Lovrak went 4-0 at No. 3; Andre Begemann went 3-0 at No. 4 and Omar Altmann went 2-0 at No. 6 ... Begemann won clinching point. He transferred from NAIA College of Santa Fe in December. The player he beat, Matic Omerzel, had won clinching matches for UGA in two of their last three matches... Georgia's John Isner went 4-0 this past week; he won his 28th straight match tonight ... UGA's Colin Purcell won his 20th straight match tonight ... beat Furman in first round, Georgia Tech in second round, Notre Dame in round of 16, Virginia in quarterfinals and Baylor in semifinals ... California schools have now won 50 of the 61 men's tennis championships.