ORLANDO, Fla. – Aziz Kijametovic (Zivinice, Bosnia & Herzegovina) and Francois Musitelli (Dijon, France) of the ODU men’s tennis team fell to the No. 2 seeded and nationally ranked tandem Maxime Cressy/Keegan Smith of UCLA by a 4-6, 4-6 score on Tuesday night in the First Round of the 2019 NCAA Division I Men's Tennis Doubles Championships.
Kijametovic and Musitelli are currently ranked No. 26 by the ITA for doubles and earned the Conference USA automatic bid to the 2019 NCAA Doubles Tournament. The duo compiled an overall 23-8 record for the season and went 12-3 in dual matches in the No. 1 slot. They had wins over six currently ranked doubles teams. Kijametovic and Musitelli qualified for the ITA Fall Nationals and advanced to the semifinals. This tandem also earned First Team All-Conference USA accolades a season ago.
Automatic qualification into the Division I doubles championship was awarded to any conference with one or more eligible doubles teams ranked in the ITA Top 60 for eligible/entered doubles teams. For conferences with more than one doubles team within the ITA Top 60 eligible/entered doubles teams, the subcommittee applied the NCAA selection criteria to determine which doubles team is the automatic qualifier from those conferences. All doubles teams must have started a minimum of 10 doubles matches, with a minimum of four matches in the spring, in order to be selected as an automatic qualifier or an at-large selection.