MOBILE, Ala. – The University of South Alabama men's tennis team doubles-pairing of Loïc Cloes and Clèment Marzol moved up seven spots Wednesday climbing up to No. 30 in the final fall rankings of the ITA Collegiate poll as announced by the organization. Cloes also moved up nine spots in the singles rankings as he ended the fall ranked 113th.

Cloes is the only singles player from the Sun Belt Conference to be ranked among the top 125, while Cloes and Marzol are also the only doubles team from the league to be among the ITA's top 60 at the end of the fall.

Cloes and Marzol were ranked 37th in preseason rankings released back in September, while Cloes appeared at No. 124 in the initial singles rankings earlier this fall.

In double action, Cloes and Marzol – who earned first-team all-Sun Belt honors last spring – went 6-3 this fall and advanced to the semifinal round of the ITA Southern Regionals.

Cloes won eight of his 13 singles matches this fall, including three of five against nationally ranked opponents. The first-team all-Sun Belt performer and the league's player to watch entering the season held singles wins over Bojan Jankulovski of Miami [Fla.], Brian Cernoch of North Carolina and Ryan Goetz of Virginia, who were all ranked at the time.

HE SAID IT
Head coach Nick Brochu
- On Cloes' singles ranking: "These rankings are a good start for us when we look at where we want to be when we start the spring. I feel Loïc had some pretty good wins during the fall, but rankings are all about balance. I think we were expecting Loïc to be a little higher and possibly in the top 80 because a couple of his wins were against opponents around the 50s. Unfortunately though he had a bad loss at regionals. We just have to work on being more consistent.
- On Cloes and Marzol's doubles rankng: "On the doubles side, the guys played well during the fall. If they had been a little luckier, especially at the All-American and closed the match out against the team from Princeton like we should have, I think our ranking would have been much higher. To be top 30 in the nation though is a good place to start for the spring. Those two will probably be playing at our No. 1 spot the entire spring, so they will have plenty of opportunities to improve their ranking. They already hold a win over a top 20 team; we just have to keep on pushing. We have to use these rankings as motivation for the spring."

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