April 16, 2012
IRVING, Texas - For a second straight week Baylor's Mate Zsiga has been named the Big 12 men's tennis player of the week for play from April 9-15.
Zsiga is the first Big 12 men's freshman to be honored in back-to-back weeks since Baylor's Benjamin Becker accomplished the feat during the weeks of March 18 and 25, 2002. He is the sixth Bear to earn two or more awards in a single season. Baylor's John Peers was the school's last back-to-back winner in 2011.
Zsiga raised his overall record to 32-5 on the season and 18-2 in dual match play with singles victories over three ranked players last week. The 23rd-ranked freshman first took down No. 92 Japie De Klerk (Tulsa), then upset 11th-ranked Costin Paval (Oklahoma), and finally knocked off No. 100 Vlad Bondarenko (Oklahoma State).
In doubles, Zsiga and his partner freshman Diego Galeano, downed OSU's Rifat Biktyakov and Bondarenko, 8-4. The 67th-ranked tandem narrowly missed upsetting the nation's No. 6 and 8 ranked doubles teams. Zsiga and Galeano took Tulsa's sixth-ranked Clifford Marsland and Ashley Watling to a tiebreak, but fell 9-8 (13-11) and lost to OU's eighth-ranked duo of Paval and Dane Webb, 8-6.
