{"id":521548,"date":"2026-03-06T02:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T02:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/521548\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T02:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T02:18:08","slug":"owls-open-ralph-oconnor-rice-invitational-with-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/521548\/","title":{"rendered":"Owls Open Ralph O\u2019Connor Rice Invitational with Win"},"content":{"rendered":"

HOUSTON \u2013 The Rice men’s tennis team opened the 67th Ralph O’Connor Rice Invitational with a 6-1 win over DePaul on Thursday at the George R. Brown Tennis Center.
\n\u00a0
\nThe Owls (5-6) secured their seventh doubles point of the season to take an early lead. On Court 1, Yair Sarouk<\/a> and Kabeer Kapasi<\/a> defeated Sebastian Medica and Tobias Leitner, 6-3. Rice clinched the point on Court 2 when Santiago Navarro<\/a> and Joshua Mandelbaum<\/a> topped Alejandro Gandini and Pablo Almeida, 7-6. When play was halted, Tommy Czaplinski<\/a> and Rafael Botran<\/a> trailed 6-5 on Court 3.
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\nIn singles play, Navarro earned the first point for Rice with a 6-1, 6-0 win over Gandini. Botran followed with a 6-0, 6-1 victory over Andy Hadziabdic on Court 2. Porras clinched the match for the Owls with a 6-2, 6-2 win over Sven Moser.<\/p>\n

Play continued after the clinch, with Kapasi defeating Almeida, 6-4, 6-2, and Noey Do<\/a> earning a 6-2, 6-3 win over Augusto Pardo-Cano. DePaul secured its lone point of the match when Medica defeated Czaplinski, 1-6, 7-5, 10-2, on Court 4.

\n\u00a0

\nRice will close out the Ralph O’Connor Rice Invitational on Saturday against UAB at a time to be determined.

\n\u00a0

\nRESULTS

\nDOUBLES

\nY. Sarouk\/K. Kapasi (RICE) def. S. Medica\/T. Leitner (DEPAUL) 6-3

\nS. Navarro\/J. Mandelbaum (RICE) def. A. Gandini\/P. Almeida (DEPAUL) 7-6

\nT. Czaplinski\/R. Botran (RICE) vs T. Giles\/S. Moser (DEPAUL) 5-6

\nOrder of Finish: 1, 2

\n\u00a0

\nSINGLES

\nS. Navarro (RICE) def. A. Gandini (DEPAUL) 6-1, 6-0

\nR. Botran (RICE) def. A. Hadziabdic (DEPAUL) 6-0, 6-1

\nK. Kapasi (RICE) def. P. Almeida (DEPAUL) 6-4, 6-2

\nS. Medica (DEPAUL) def T. Czaplinski (RICE) 1-6, 7-5, 10-2

\nG. Porras (RICE) def. S. Moser (DEPAUL) 6-2, 6-2

\nN. Do (RICE) def. A. Pardo-Cano (DEPAUL) 6-2, 6-3

\nOrder of Finish: 1, 2, 5, 3, 6, 4

\n\u00a0

\n\u00a0

\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2013 The Rice men’s tennis team opened the 67th Ralph O’Connor Rice Invitational with a 6-1 win…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-521548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}