USTA Announces Master'U Collegiate Team; Qualifier Crawford Defeats Top Seed at Naples $25K

Kovacevic reached the semifinals of the NCAA singles tournament this year

Today the USTA announced the members of United States Team that will compete in the annual Master'U BNP Paribas International Collegiate Team competition next month in Grenoble France. University of Illinois senior Aleks Kovacevic, UCLA junior Keegan Smith and Stanford sophomore Alexandre Rotsaert are the men selected, with UCLA senior Jada Hart, Stanford junior Michaela Gordon and University of North Carolina senior Alexa Graham the women chosen to represent the United States.

Hart was on the team that won the championship last year, and the United States has finished in first place in eight of the last ten years.

Greg Patton, the former Boise State men's coach, has been a fixture guiding the team over the past decade and he returns this year. UCLA women's associate head coach Rance Brown is making his debut as a coach this year. A list of the past US teams and coaches is available here.

Other teams participating in the competition, which begins November 29 and runs through December 1, are Belgium, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland and Italy.

Florida's Oliver Crawford, who was on last year's Master'U championship team, made his way through qualifying at this week's $25,000 USTA Pro Circuit event in Naples Florida and today defeated top seed Matias Descotte of Argentina 6-3, 4-0 retired. Another qualifier, 37-year-old Jesse Witten(Kentucky), also advanced to the second round, joining Americans Jordi Arconada[2](Texas A&M), wild card Sam Riffice(Florida) and Stefan Kozlov[6], who won their first round matches Tuesday.  Crawford and Riffice have advanced to the doubles semifinals, continuing their winning streak after taking the doubles title last month at the $25,000 tournament in Houston.

It's been raining in Tyler Texas, keeping the first round from being completed at the women's $80,000 tournament there.

It's been raining for two days at the ITF Grade 4 in South Carolina, and without indoor courts, no matches have been played, with second round matches on the order of play for Thursday.

There are no weather problems at the $60,000 ITF World Tennis Tour women's event in Toronto, which is played indoors, and the first round is now complete. Three Americans have advanced: No. 2 seed Francesca Di Lorenzo(Ohio State), Catherine Harrison(UCLA), and qualifier Hayley Carter(North Carolina).

Also indoors is the ATP Challenger 80 in Charlottesville Virginia. Americans in Thursday's third round are Sekou Bangoura(Florida), No. 5 seed Marcos Giron(UCLA), wild card Brandon Nakashima(Virginia), lucky loser Dennis Novikov(UCLA) and No. 15 seed Mitchell Krueger. One second round match, between former Virginia standout JC Aragone and No. 3 seed Denis Kudla, has yet to begin this evening.