Kentucky men’s tennis earns No. 4 overall seed in NCAA Tournament and will host regional

The University of Kentucky men’s tennis team, which advanced all the way to the national championship match last season, is the No. 4 overall seed for the 2023 NCAA Tournament.

The field of 64 teams was revealed Monday night and provided Kentucky the opportunity to host first- and second-round matches Friday and Saturday at the Hilary J. Boone Tennis Center.

Kentucky (24-4) will take on Presbyterian (16-9) on Friday at 1 p.m., following a match in Lexington between Northwestern (20-9) and UCLA (12-10), which gets underway at 10 a.m.

The winners of those two matches meet Saturday at 1 p.m. with a spot in the NCAA Sweet 16 on the line.

Kentucky, which won the Southeastern Conference Tournament last week for the first time since 1992 and only the second time ever, will be joined in the NCAA field by nine other SEC teams — Auburn, Georgia, Florida, LSU, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas A&M.

Kentucky, which fell to Virginia in last year’s NCAA finals, is seeded this year behind only No. 1 Texas, No. 2 TCU and No. 3 Ohio State. The defending national champion Cavaliers round out the top five seeds.

Each of the 16 seeded teams hosts a four-game first-round regional. Joining the top five in that honor are No. 6 Georgia, No. 7 Michigan, No. 8 Tennessee, No. 9 South Carolina, No. 10 Southern California, No. 11 Harvard, No. 12 Duke, No. 13 Columbia, No. 14 Arizona, No. 15 Mississippi State and No. 16 North Carolina.

Louisville (16-11) was the only other school from Kentucky to qualify for the NCAA field. The unseeded Cardinals travel to Columbus, Ohio, to face Texas Tech (14-10) on Friday at 10 a.m. No. 3 Ohio State (29-2) hosts East Tennessee State (12-13) in the other first-round match in Columbus.

The eight winners in the round of 16 will move on to the USTA National Campus in Orlando, Florida, to compete for the national championship.