ITHACA, N.Y. -- In a conference that features seven of the top 75 teams in the country, the Cornell men's tennis team will have no off days in league play. That will be readily apparent when the Big Red opens Ivy League play when it visits No. 9 Columbia on Saturday, March 29 at 1 p.m. at the Philip & Cheryl Milstein Family Tennis Center.

The Big Red enters the week ranked No. 40 nationally with a 10-5 record - all five of its losses have com to teams in the top 40 of the ITA rankings. The Big Red owns six wins over top 75 squads - No. 32 Michigan State, No. 45 Penn, No. 52 Purdue, No. 54 St. John's, No. 59 Tulsa and No. 60 Old Dominion among its 10 triumphs. Big Red head coach Silviu Tanasiou has a 180-103 record in his 14 seasons on the sidelines for the Big Red. Senior All-American Radu Papoe, ranked No. 47 nationally, is 16-6 on the season to lead Cornell's singles lineup at No. 1, with Adit Sinha going 14-7 while playing in the top three spots on the ladder.

The Lions are 10-4 on the season under the direction of Howard Endelman, who guided Columbia to the program's 17th Ivy title in school history. Junior Michael Zheng is the top-ranked singles player in college tennis after finishing as the national runner-up as a sophomore and claiming the title this season. He joins with fellow ranked players Nicolas Kotzen (No. 42), Hugo Hashimoto (No. 59) and Max Westphal (No. 123) to form a stacked team from top to bottom. Hashimoto and Zheng team up as the No. 22 doubles squad, and when Zheng teams with Kotzen the Lions tandem is ranked No. 35.