BERKELEY – With a stellar first season – that has yet to end – on his résumé, California's Yuta Kikuchi earned the Pac-12 Freshman/Newcomer of the Year honor and a spot on the All-Pac-12 Second Team when the conference office announced its annual awards on Tuesday.

He is Cal's third men's tennis player to receive the award, including Balazs Veress in 2001 and Campbell Johnson in 2013.
 
The first-year Golden Bear from Yahaba, Japan, has been Cal's No. 1 singles player and with Jacob Brumm has formed the team's top doubles pair most of the season. Kikuchi has a 20-14 singles record, which includes wins over Tennessee's Adam Walton, now ranked 51st, 6-4, 7-6(6), and Arizona State's 99th-ranked Nathan Ponwith, 6-2, 4-6, 6-3. He also clinched Cal wins over Pacific, with a 6-4, 6-3, result over Ross Watson, and over ASU, with that victory over Ponwith.
 
Kikuchi has made many of his headlines in doubles with Brumm, with the duo compiling a 16-15 record ahead of Cal's NCAA round of 16 match at Texas on Saturday. In the recent Pac-12 Championship, the Bears upset Arizona State's 12th-ranked Ponwith and Dominik Kellovsky, 6-0, in Cal's eventual 4-1 quarterfinal win over the Sun Devils. Kikuchi and Brumm also beat the same ASU duo, 6-2, on March 17 in the third-place match of the BNP Paribas Open Collegiate Tennis Challenge.
 
In the fall, the two upset the top-ranked team of Nuno Borges and Strahinja Rakic from Mississippi State, 6-3, 4-6, 1-0(5), in the opening round of 32 in the Saint Francis Health System ITA Men's All-American Championships. The Bears then upset Virginia Tech's 16th-ranked Carlo Donato and Mitch Harper, 7-6(1), 6-3, in the round of 16 before falling in the quarterfinals.
 
Kikuchi and Brumm posted more upsets in the Oracle ITA National Fall Championships, with the Bears topping N.C. State's 15th-ranked Igor Saveljic and Ivan Saveljic, 7-6(2), 6-3, in the round of 16 and beating Florida's 24th-ranked Brian Berdusco and Johannes Ingildsen, 7-5, 6-4, in the quarterfinals before bowing out in the semifinal round.
 
Kikuchi and the 24th-ranked Bears face second-seeded and second-ranked Texas at 1 p.m. CT on in Austin, Texas, in Saturday's NCAA super regional.