While one group of four Golden Bears continues playing at the ITA All-American Championships in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the California men's tennis team will send another group of four Golden Bears to vie for singles and doubles titles in the Aggie Invitational starting Friday at UC Davis.
 
Sophomores Alex Aney, Jonathan Irwanto and Ethan Schiffman along with freshman Bernardo Munk Mesa – who'll make his collegiate debut – are slated to play in the annual tournament, which ends Sunday. This will mark the second appearance in the UC Davis tournament for Aney and Schiffman, who played in the Davis event last season.
 
Update On ITA All-Americans
Cal graduate student Theo Dean upset the nation's top-ranked singles player to win his opener at the ITA All-American Championships on Wednesday and join the Golden Bear doubles team of Mikey Wright and Alex Chang in Thursday's second rounds.
 
Dean, who's ranked 44th in singles, defeated Michigan State's Ozan Baris – who's also the top seed in Tulsa –  6-2, 2-6, 6-1 in the round of 64 in the singles main draw. He is the second Bear to beat Baris this month, as Carl Emil Overbeck bested the Spartan 6-1, 4-6, 6-3 in the singles quarterfinals of the Battle in the Bay Classic on Sept. 13 in San Francisco. Dean will next meet TCU's 39th-ranked Lui Maxted on Thursday at 8:30 a.m. PT in the round of 32. That sets up a rematch of their Battle in the Bay Classic quarterfinal, in which Dean fell to the Horned Frog in three sets.
 
Chang and Wright, ranked 13th, beat Texas Tech's seventh-ranked Piotr Pawlak and Sebastian Abboud 3-6, 7-6(5), 10-8 in the opening round of 32 in main draw doubles in Tulsa. They'll take on Vanderbilt's 86th-ranked Henry Ruger and Hugo Coquelin in the round of 16 on Thursday at 3 p.m. PT.
 
In Overbeck's first-round match in the singles main draw, the 56th-ranked senior lost to Wake Forest's 26th-ranked Dhakshineswar Suresh 6-3, 7-5. He moves to the consolation draw to face Baylor's 61st-ranked Devin Badenhorst on Thursday at 10 a.m. PT.
 
In their round of 32 doubles match, the 25th-ranked Overbeck and Dean fell in a close battle to Baylor's Oskar Brostrom Poulsen and Marko Miladinovic 7-5, 5-7, 10-6. The Bears next play Ohio State's 19th-ranked Aidan Kim and Alexander Bernard on Thursday at 2:30 p.m. PT in the consolation bracket.
 
Last Year At The Aggie Invite
In the 2023 version of the UC Davis tournament, Alex Aney (in flight B) and former Bear John Kim (flight A) reached their respective singles semifinals. But Aney fell to Brett Brinkman of UC Davis 6-4, 6-1, while Kim lost to the Aggies' Constantinos Djakouris 6-4, 2-6, 6-1.
 
Poll Position
In the first ITA individual polls of the 2024-25 season, the Bears earned three singles rankings – No. 44 Theo Dean, No. 56 Carl Emil Overbeck and No. 123 Alex Chang – along with two doubles rankings – No. 13 Chang and Mikey Wright and No. 25 Dean and Overbeck.
 
Next Time
The Bears head south to play in the San Diego Veterans Tennis Classic from Oct. 4-6 at the Barnes Tennis Center.
 
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