Wednesday, 03/18/2009

NEW ORLEANS - For the second straight week, the University of New Orleans is home to the Sun Belt Conference Player of the Week in men's tennis as Calvin Kemp received the honor, the conference announced on Wednesday afternoon.

Kemp, who led UNO to victories over Lamar and Southern Illinois in the team's final home duals of the season last week, follows Vinay Kamineni who was acknowledged last Thursday with the same honor.

A freshman from Atlanta, Ga., Kemp posted a 4-0 record during the two duals, by matching his 2-0 singles' record with a 2-0 mark in doubles' play.

The two victories in doubled propelled Kemp and teammate Ben Smith into the recently released Campbell/ITA College Tennis Rankings as the No. 42 ranked doubles' team in the nation. The doubles' ranking is the first known ranking for a UNO pair in school history.

The tandem of Kemp and Smith won their fifth and sixth consecutive matches, dispatching the top doubles' teams from SIU and Lamar. The two defeated Maciej Bogusz and Marton Horvath of LU by an 8-6 score, before defeating the SIU duo of Waked and Anton Leoneko 9-8 (8). Kemp and Smith are now 6-1 on the season, dropping just their first match together, before running off the current streak, which includes a win over the then nationally ranked No. 9 duo of Michael Venus and Neal Skupski from LSU.

In singles', Kemp upped his win streak to seven straight matches with victories over LU's Bogusz and SIU's Lucas Waked, defeating both at the No. 1 position in straight sets. This season, Kemp is 13-3 with two of the three losses coming to either regionally or nationally ranked opposition.

The accolades by Kemp and Kamineni represent the first time that the Privateer men have had two separate conference honorees in the same season. UNO will head to Gulf Shores, Ala. this Saturday for a 12 p.m. for a match against NAIA power Auburn-Montgomery.