April 16, 2003

After navigating through a difficult spring schedule, UK sophomore Jesse Witten, the 2002 NCAA men’s singles runner-up, was named First-Team All-SEC for the second time in as many years Wednesday evening at the SEC Awards Banquet in Oxford, Miss. The ceremony is a prelude to the SEC Men’s Tennis Tournament, set to begin Thursday morning at the Palmer/Salloum Tennis Center on the campus of the University of Mississippi. As the fourth seed, Kentucky earned a first-round bye and will play the winner of Thursday’s Arkansas-LSU match Friday at 8 a.m. CDT.

Witten enters the SEC Tournament with a 10-10 dual-match record and a 5-6 tally in SEC play. Playing at No. 1 singles through the duration of the season, Witten’s most notable victories came against Florida’s Hamid Mirzadeh and LSU’s Jason Hazley, who were also named to the SEC’s first team. Witten also posted victories over Alabama’s Max Belski and Tennessee’s Mark Dietrich, who were named to the SEC’s second team. UK’s shining sophomore entered the dual-match season ranked fourth in the Omni Hotels/ITA Collegiate Tennis Rankings and now sits at No. 16.

The 14th-ranked Cats enter the tournament at 17-10 overall and 6-5 in the SEC. In the 2002 tournament, 16th-ranked Kentucky defeated Mississippi State in the first round and upset No. 5 Ole Miss in the quarterfinals, before falling to 15th-ranked Auburn in the semifinals. The Cats will journey to Oxford in hopes of winning the school’s second tournament crown. Current UK Head Coach Dennis Emery won Kentucky’s first SEC Tournament Championship in 1992.

During the regular season, the Cats split a pair of matches with the 12 seed, Arkansas and fifth-seeded LSU, one of which the Cats will battle Friday. Kentucky shut out the Hogs in Fayetteville, 7-0, but the Cats were upended in Baton Rouge, falling 4-2 to LSU. If UK were to battle LSU once again, the Wildcats would have their hands full with the aforementioned Hazley and another All-SEC first-team honoree, Bryan Fisher.