Just as winter begins to let up on Cambridge and the rest of the Northeast, the Harvard men's tennis team has headed south to the Blue-Gray Classic in Montgomery, Ala.

The Crimson (8-2) will carry its No. 16 national ranking into a tournament which features six other schools ranked in the Top 30 among the sixteen-team field.

The team will luckily avoid these tougher sides in the first round when it faces No. 55 Boise State (3-7) today.

The Crimson has won its last three matches, and before its losses to No. 4 Mississippi and No. 12 Tennessee in the middle of February it had gone undefeated in match play in its first six meetings.

Last weekend at Old Dominion the Crimson won a hard-fought 5-2 victory. In a highly uncharacteristic fashion, the Crimson dropped the doubles point to start off the match.

Harvard's No.1 doubles team of sophomore James Blake and co-captain Kunj Majmudar, currently ranked No. 2 in the nation, dropped a close match to ODU's No. 1 team, 9-8 (7-5).

The Crimson's No. 2 team of co-captain Mike Passarella and sophomore Scott Clark also lost, 8-3.

The sole doubles win came from the No. 3 duo of junior John Doran and freshman Cillie Stewart, who beat the previously undefeated team of Johan Barras and Ollie Lundberg by a convincing 8-3 score.

The team then carried on as it has all year, picking up five of the six singles matches for its eighth win of the season.