DePaul University Athletics
Men's Tennis Celebrates Senior Day Saturday
3/11/2011 12:00:00 AM | MEN'S TENNIS
March 11, 2011
CHICAGO - The No. 47 DePaul men's tennis team closes out the home portion of its schedule on March 12, by welcoming No. 45 Michigan State to the Lakeshore Athletic Club for a 2 p.m. dual. Saturday's match also serves as Senior Day and the Blue Demons will honor the careers of Ben Hartman and Bartosz Jozwiak at the conclusion of the match.
DePaul (11-4) enter Saturday's dual with an unblemished 7-0 record on its home courts this season and has won five of its last seven matches. This season, the Blue Demons are 2-3 against ranked opponents with wins over No. 63 Iowa and No. 73 Princeton.
Michigan State (12-1) ranks No. 45 in the latest Campbell's/ITA Team rankings while Denis Bogatov is ranked No. 120 in singles. Bogatov is 7-2 in duals and is 18-4 overall. The Spartan pair of Jason Norville and John Stratton is ranked No. 69 in the doubles rankings and are 5-2 in duals and 8-3 overall.
Saturday's meeting is the fourth between the two programs since 2003. The Blue Demons won the 2007 clash, 5-2 on the road; while the Spartans took a 4-3 win in 2008 and swept DePaul, 7-0 in 2003.
Hartman enters his final match at the corner of Lakewood and Fullerton with a 70-52 singles record while he compiled a 71-40 mark in doubles competition.
An accomplished doubles player, Hartman and his partner Austin Doerner spent six weeks in the ITA doubles rankings in 2008-09. The Blue Demon pair reached a season-high No. 38 that season and tallied a team-best record of 17-5.
As a junior, Hartman teamed up with Jozwiak to win the Ball State Fall Invitational Flight A Doubles Championship and finished the season with a team-best 18-13 mark. In the two seasons - 2008-09 and 2009-10 that Hartman and Jozwiak played together the pair put recored a 25-17 record.
Jozwiak leads the Blue Demons this season with a 17-9 singles mark and has tallied a 10-4 record in duals.
Jozwiak enters Saturday with a 68-51 career singles record; while one of Jozwiak's most memorable wins came in 2009 when the then-sophomore, clinched DePaul's victory over No. 23 Louisville in the semifinals of the BIG EAST Championship. Jozwiak's win in the fifth position propelled the Blue Demons to their first-ever BIG EAST Championship final.
As part of the Senior Celebration and fan appreciation, all fans will receive pizza and wings at the conclusion doubles play.
Following' Saturday's dual with MSU, DePaul closes out the month of March on the road -- traveling to BIG EAST foe USF (March 23) before nonconference clashes with UCF (March 26) and Middle Tennessee State (March 30).
