MOSCOW, Idaho – The Idaho men's tennis team kicks off spring season play with a trip to Seattle to compete in a dual match against Washington on Sunday, Jan. 14 at 11 a.m. inside the Lloyd Nordstrom Tennis Center
First-year head coach
Raleigh Grossbaum takes over the reins as the program's new leader after spending the past two seasons as the assistant coach at Dartmouth College. Prior to his time in the Ivy League, Grossbaum helped lead Georgia to a top 10 national ranking and a trip to the NCAA Elite 8.
Idaho welcomes back a solid core of upperclassmen with championship experience and two freshman newcomers.
Francisco Gay returns to the lineup after earning All-Big Sky honors in 2023 and recording two match-clinching victories in the conference tournament to help the Vandals secure a conference title.
Taiyo Kurata jumpstarts his sophomore season with All-Big Sky singles and doubles honors to his credit, as he posted a 12-9 singles record and 13-8 doubles mark in 2023.
Alex Asenov,
Mario Duron,
Matteo Masala and
Alejandro Salvador make one last run at a tournament championship in their senior season.
2023 RECAP
Idaho finished the 2023 season with a 15-9 overall record that ended with the Vandals' second consecutive trip to the first round of the NCAA Tournament. UI tallied non-conference wins over Utah State and No. 55 New Mexico before defeating No. 71 Northern Arizona, 4-3 to win the Big Sky Championship. The Vandals captured their most wins in a single season since 2018.
Five Vandals received seven All-Big Sky honors and Daniel Hangstefer was named Big Sky Coach of the Year. Fransico Bascon capped off a historic career at Idaho by winning his second Big Sky Most Valuable Player award, becoming the first Idaho men's tennis player to win the award more than once and the eighth in Big Sky history. He also received his third All-Big Sky First Team honor, which made him only the second Vandal (Felipe Fonseca, 2015-17) to be named first-team all-conference three times.
SETTING THE STANDARD
Heading into the 2024 season, Idaho has won the Big Sky tournament championship in five of the last eight seasons and earned a trip to the NCAA Tournament six times in the past nine years. The Vandals captured their second straight championship and 16th in program history in 2023. The title a season ago was the Vandals' 15th in the Big Sky (Western Athletic Conference, 2014), which is four more than the next closest conference foe (Weber State, 11).
Idaho has set the standard and remained a top competitor in their conference over the last 10 years, accumulating 36 all-conference awards, four conference MVPs and five conference coach of the year awards.
FALL PLAY
Francisco Gay and
Taiyo Kurata each recorded 10 singles wins during the fall campaign. Gay registered an individual championship at the Gonzaga Invite after a perfect 4-0 record and went on to finish runner-up at the General Patton Invite in Boise to cap off a solid effort in the fall.
Yu-Shun Lai went 8-6 in fall singles action while
Sebastian Medica was 6-7.
Alex Asenov recorded a 5-5 singles mark and
Mario Duron finished with a 4-7 record.
On the doubles side, Medica posted the most doubles wins with six, while Asenov and Duron both went 5-5.
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