Tennis

ISU’s Kadleckova and UT’s Spizzirri Earn Weekly Tennis Honors

Iowa State’s Miska Kadleckova and Texas’ Eliot Spizzirri received Big 12 Tennis Players of the Week after leading their teams to wins over ranked opponents.

Kadleckova finished the weekend at the ITA National Indoor Championships 3-0 in singles play to improve to 10-0 on the season in dual matches. She added two wins over ranked opponents as she defeated No. 27 Bridget Stammel (2-6, 6-2, 6-4) and No. 69 Malaika Rapolu (6-3, 6-3).

Her win over Stammel helped the Cyclones beat No. 9 Vanderbilt, giving Iowa State what was then its highest-ranked win in program history. The next day Kadleckova clinched the win against No. 1 Texas as Iowa State beat the Longhrons for the first time in 27 matches.

The junior concluded her weekend with a 6-0, 6-0 win over No. 5 Georgia’s Meg Kowalski, who entered the match unbeaten.

Kadleckova competed in three doubles matches with all three of them being stopped before they could finish.

Texas’ Eliot Spizzirri finished the weekend 3-1 and added two top-100 singles victories to his season resume. The junior tallied his first win of the weekend against No. 89 Tim Zeitvogel (Pepperdine) in straight-sets (6-4, 6-2) before picking up another straight-sets victory against Arizona’s Jonas Ziverts (6- 2, 6-3) who is ranked No. 22. He collected his final win of the weekend with doubles partner Cleeve Harper as they defeated the duo from No. 18 Arizona, Jonas Ziverts and Jay Friend, 6-3.

Spizzirri is 19-3 overall and 6-0 in dual matches this season, all at the No. 1 line, and became the first Longhorn since 2015 to ascend to No. 1 in the ITA singles rankings. His only three losses are to Georgia’s Ethan Quinn (two losses in the fall) and Stanford’s Nishesh Basavareddy (one loss), who both climbed to top-two rankings. He has played 13 other ranked singles players this season, defeating all of them.

The full list of the season’s Big 12 Players of the Week can be found here.