By Sam Vetto and Ben Yeargin
April 21, 2024, may have seemed like an ordinary day for everyone else. It wasn’t a holiday, it simply was just another Sunday in April. But not for the Quinnipiac men’s tennis team, who won its first MAAC Championship on that day.
Then-senior Donovan Brown played his final point against Fairfield graduate student Griffin Schlesinger and was immediately dogpiled by the rest of the team following an out-of-bounds return. The team hugged each other, celebrated and jumped around following it.
Now as Quinnipiac looks to make another run at the MAAC Championship, the team looks a little different
As the Bobcats — unanimously voted No. 1 in the MAAC preseason coaches poll — look to repeat this season, QU Sports Page’s Sam Vetto and Benjamin Yeargin bring to you everything you need to know about men’s tennis.
Roster
During Quinnipiac’s MAAC Tournament run last season, it used six players total in both the doubles and singles points. Two of those six are no longer with the team.
Shaurya Sood and Ayato Arakaki — the former team captain — both graduated in the spring, which leaves holes in the Bobcats top six.
Thankfully for Quinnipiac, it has the depth to counter that. The Bobcats retained reigning MAAC Player of the Year graduate Daniel Velek as well as mainstays in sophomores Finn Burridge and Carlos Braun Simo.
Velek, Burridge and Braun Simo will play a lot in the upcoming slate, with all of them hoping to add to their positive win-loss records in singles play. None of that trio has lost over eight singles sets.
But Velek lost his main doubles partner in Sood which went 19-9 overall. Brown also lost Arakaki; they went 12-12 together last season.
So who has Quinnipiac turned to to complete its top six? Mainly freshmen and graduate student Alex Yang, who transferred in from SMU. In the Bobcats 7-0 loss to Brown on Feb. 7, all of the aforementioned played but freshmen James Lorenzetti and Elias Hoxha each took a spot in the six-man rotation.
Head coach Brian Adinolfi has shaken up the doubles by splitting Burridge and Braun Simo. He’s paired Simo with Lorenzetti and Burridge with Hoxha. To fill in Sood’s spot with Velek, Adinolfi has turned to Yang. They haven’t won a point together.
Brown — who played in two matches in Quinnipiac’s fall slate — has not played any of the spring slate.
Additionally, the Bobcats carry five players that act as depth. Juniors Csanad Nyaradi and Gaurav Mootha and senior Yasha Laskin have spent their entire college careers at Quinnipiac. Freshmen Vishal Prakash and Carl Sjoholm join for their first MAAC campaign.
If the Bobcats want to repeat, they need Velek, Burridge and Braun Simo to carry the load. Otherwise, they’ll walk into the summer dreaming about what could’ve been.
The Returner
Velek is returning to the team where he made his mark on the MAAC. The Czech athlete, who was the 2023-24 MAAC player of the year, lost his previous doubles partner this past break, but replaced him with a new graduate student in Alex Yang.
Velek went 17-8 in singles competition over the past year, as well as 19-9 in doubles with his former partner, Sood. A big question going into this season for the returning MAAC POTY is how will his new partnership affect performance?
While the team has played one event since the start of the new year, Yang and Velek lost 1-6 to Penn State’s Reiya Hittori and Marcus Shoeman. This is something to keep in mind as the season goes on, but it is something to be taken with a grain of salt.
Although this new duo is fresh it is expected to make mistakes, a real sense of potential for the future of this duo can begin being stenciled in as the rest of the season progresses. Be prepared for a bump or two in the road, but with a player as strong as Velek returning to this roster, don’t be surprised if they end up figuring it out as the season goes on.
The New Face
Alex Yang, fresh off a stint at SMU, took his skills north to Hamden. The former Bronco came off an off year, going 5-3 in singles, as well as 1-1 in doubles playing in both mixed and standard doubles.
While numbers may be slim here in 2023-24, Yang made his mark in 2021-2022 where he made Second Team All-UAA and was named captain.
The right-hander is coming in with a bevy of experience in big moments. With the graduate student looking to take a step up, the real question will come from his performances going forward, as well as his success being paired up with Velek.
Schedule
The Bobcats have gone to NJIT, Penn State, St. John’s, Brown and Cornell — who have lost a combined three points — to start the season. So far, Quinnipiac has only won two points in its first five matches. That was because Lorenzetti’s opponent Penn State freshman Shrikeshav Murugesan was injured and couldn’t continue.
The Bobcats home opener is Saturday, Feb. 15 against Monmouth in North Haven, Connecticut. They’re at home again next weekend when they take on Bryant.
Although they do have courts on the Quinnipiac Mount Carmel Campus, the cold weather prevents Quinnipiac from playing on them until mid-March.
The Bobcats have a seven-match away stretch throughout the end of February and middle of March that’s punctuated with a MAAC semifinals rematch against Marist on March 22. The Red Foxes were picked to finish No. 5 in the coaches poll.
Then, Quinnipiac has a five-match homestand highlighted by a match against Siena on April 5. The Saints went 1-5 in MAAC play in 2024, only beating Mount St. Mary’s.
To close out the season the Bobcats have a MAAC finals rematch against Fairfield, at Fairfield. That game could be a pivotal turning point and potentially a preview for the MAAC Tournament, which will happen a week after that match.
Only the top four teams will make it to the Mercer County Park Tennis Center in April. Quinnipiac will look to play its way to a conference trophy for the second year in a row.