Jan. 19, 2006

WACO, Texas - Baylor head men's tennis coach Matt Knoll will take four players to Houston this weekend to participate in the 9th Annual Rice/Downtown Club at the Met Collegiate Indoor Invitational. Junior Michal Kokta and freshmen Matt Brown, David Galic and Will Ward will participate in the 32-player singles bracket and 16-team doubles action that begins on Friday and ends on Sunday.

Kokta, the tournament's No. 3 seed and ranked No. 31 nationally, will take on Mikail Pavlov of Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in first round action beginning at 8:30 a.m. on Friday. Kokta comes into the match after posting a 12-3 fall record, having won his last five matches of the fall season. Kokta's last two fall wins came over 21st-ranked Bojan Szumanski (Texas Tech) and 22nd-ranked Travis Helgeson of Texas.

Galic is seeing his first action as a Baylor Bear after enrolling in January. The Frankston, Australia native will begin his Baylor career at 8:30 a.m. on Friday taking on Texas A&M-CC's Andrey Kumanstov, the tournament's No. 7 seed.

Also seeing his first action for Baylor after redshirting last season is New Zealand native Will Ward of Auckland. Ward, the No. 8 seed, begins action at 10:30 a.m. on Friday against Alberto Agis of UT-Arlington.

Brown enters the tournament after posting a 6-4 fall record, He draws the tournament's No. 2 seed, Raul Rivas-Morant (TAMU-CC), that match will begin at 10:30 a.m. on Friday.

Winners of Friday's 8:30 a.m. matches will play again at 2 p.m. and 10:30 a.m. winners will take to the court for second round action at 3 p.m. First round losers will enter the consolation bracket with play beginning Saturday at 10 a.m.

Kokta and Ward will team up in doubles on Friday and take on Clemson's Sander Koning and Clement Reix while Brown and Galic will match up against TAMU-CC's Kumantsov and Pavlov. Both matches are slated to begin at 6 p.m.

Tournament results will be posted at www.baylorbears.com at the completion of each day's competition.