Photos by Yamlak Tsega / XULA Athletics

        NEW ORLEANS — Xavier University of Louisiana has five entries, including defending women's doubles champion Angela Charles-Alfred and Lailaa Bashir, in Friday's opening round of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association's ITA Cup championships.
        The event is for NAIA schools only this season. Singles matches will begin at 9 a.m. EDT at Rome Tennis Center at Berry College in Rome, Ga., with the next round at 1 p.m. Doubles matches will start at 4 p.m. The three-day event will conclude Sunday.
        Here are XULA's entries:
        •  Bashir will play Nicole Christiansen of St. Francis (Ill.) in women's singles. Both are unseeded. That winner will play in the quarterfinals against third-seeded Lisa Khamassi of Keiser or unseeded Barbara Damiani of San Diego Christian.
        •  Kyra Akinnibi, the only XULA athlete to earn an at-large bid to this event, will play women's singles top seed Maria Genovese of Georgia Gwinnett. That winner will advance to the quarterfinals against Peeraya Charoensirisutthikul of Brenau or Angela Rinaldi of San Diego Christian, both of whom are unseeded.
        •  Charles-Alfred and Bashir are top-seeded and will open defense of their doubles title against unseeded Erica Paradise and Polina Khoroshevskaya of McPherson.
        •  Santiago Perez, third-seeded in men's singles, will play unseeded Martin Carrizo of Indiana Wesleyan. The winner will play Christopher Kerswell of Judson (Ill.) or Claudio Quinones of Ottawa (Kan.), both of whom are unseeded, in the quarterfinals.
        •  Perez and Shaikh Abdullah are unseeded in doubles and will play No. 1 seed Valentino Caratini and Federico Bonacia of Georgia Gwinnett.
        The next round of doubles — the quarterfinals — will begin at 1 p.m. Saturday.
        Perez and Bashir in singles and both XULA doubles teams earned automatic bids to the ITA Cup by winning titles at the ITA NAIA Gulf Regional Championships. Akinnibi earned an at-large bid after upsetting two seeded singles players in the Gulf Regional, including No. 1 Lucy Carpenter of city rival Loyola, and finishing second to Bashir.