No. 7 Illinois Heads to Iowa, Nebraska This Weekend

Men's Tennis March 30, 2018

No. 7 Illinois Heads to Iowa, Nebraska This Weekend

Match 18 and 19: Illinois at Iowa, Nebraska

Date	Saturday at Iowa - 12 pm \| Sunday at Nebraska - 12 pm
Location	Roger Knapp Tennis Center \| Dillon Tennis Center
Live Links	Iowa Scoring \| Iowa Video \| Nebraska Scoring \| Nebraska Video
2018 Information	Match Notes \| Record Book

The No. 7 Fighting Illini men's tennis team travels to Iowa and Nebraska for a pair of noon matches this weekend. The Illini will first take on the Hawkeyes in Des Moines on Saturday. UI continues the road trip in Lincoln on Sunday. Illinois is coming off a pair of 5-2 victories last weekend against Indiana and Purdue to improve to 3-0 in Big Ten play.

Match Points

Illinois holds a perfect 6-0 all-time record against the Nebraska Cornhuskers.
The Illini have won 23-straight matches against the Iowa Hawkeyes. UI's last loss in the series was a 5-2 decision on March 24, 1996 in Des Moines.

Seniors Aleks Vukic and Aron Hiltzik Continue Final Big Ten Season

Entering play on Friday, Illini seniors Aleks Vukic and Aron Hiltzik boast incredible numbers against Big Ten opponents. The pair are a combined 52-3 in singles all-time versus Big Ten foes. Vukic's last loss against a Big Ten player was on April 17, 2015, good for a 23-match winning streak.

Sophomore Success: Kovacevic Rolling in 2018

Sophomore Aleks Kovacevic has picked up right where he left off in 2018. The New York native is 9-1 in singles since February 2 at Duke. Aleks has won each of those matches in straight sets with three of them involving a tiebreaker. Kovacevic clinched the Illinois victories at Duke and against Florida.

Brown Garners Second-Straight B1G Weekly Honor

Freshman Alex Brown was named the Big Ten Men's Tennis Athlete of the Week for the second-straight week on March 13. The Urbandale, Iowa, native earned his third B1G weekly honor after a 4-0 week against Notre Dame and Northwestern. The three weekly honors matches the most by an Illinois freshman in program history. Former Illini All-American, Jared Hiltzik, garnered three B1G weekly honors during his freshman campaign in 2013, which is also the last time a conference freshman won three weekly awards in a single season.

Vukic Reaches 100 Career Singles Wins

Vukic earned his 100th career singles victory on March 2 against TCU's Trevor Johnson. Vukic grinded out a 6-4, 2-6, 7-6(4) win to become Illinois' 15th men's tennis player to reach 100 career singles wins and the first since former three-time All-American, Jared Hiltzik, in 2015. The Sydney, Australia native, won his first singles match at the Southern Intercollegiates in Athens, Georgia on September 12, 2014. Vukic bested Kennesaw State's Simon Pritchard, 6-3, 6-4. Over the next 1,268 days, Vukic won 99 more singles matches.