The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
University of Texas
SMU
Men's Tennis tops SMU, 4-2
01.28.2016 | Men's Tennis
Longhorns drop the doubles point but respond with four singles wins to seal the team win.
AUSTIN, Texas – No. 26 Texas (4-3) registered singles wins from freshmen Harrison Scott and Rodrigo Banzer, redshirt freshman Julian Zlobinsky and senior Michael Riechmann in a 4-2 victory over No. 49 SMU (1-2) Thursday evening at UT's Weller Indoor Tennis Center.
SMU won two of three doubles matches to claim the doubles point and a 1-0 lead, but UT's Zlobinsky evened the tally at one with his 6-3, 6-4 win over Arkadijs Slobodkins at sixth singles.
UT freshman Harrison Scott took the first set off of Markus Kerner at second singles, 6-4 before falling behind 3-0 in the second. Scott, however, quickly wiped out the deficit and held on for a 6-4 second-set win that staked Texas to a 2-1 lead.
SMU evened the match at two with a three-set win at third singles, but UT's Riechmann outlasted the Mustangs' Yates Johnson, 7-6, 7-5 at fifth singles to give the Longhorns a 3-2 lead.
Banzer split the opening two sets with SMU's Ronald Slobodchikov at fourth singles but raced out to a 3-0 lead and took control of the match. Banzer closed out the final set, 6-3 to preserve the 4-2 Texas win. The remaining match at first singles featuring UT's George Goldhoff against SMU's Hunter Johnson was suspended.
Texas hits the road this weekend and meets Ohio State on its home indoor courts on Sunday (Jan. 31).
POST-MATCH COMMENTS
Texas head coach Michael Center
On doubles
In this format, if you don't bring the aggressiveness from the first point, you're going to put yourself in a hole. But they were good. SMU is going to win a lot of doubles points this year. They were pretty physical, and they took it to us.
On singles
I thought we played a great match. We're improving. And that's a very good SMU team that will win a lot of tennis matches this year; they're way underrated right now. But we've got to continue to be the aggressors in the moment. I thought we had some opportunities to finish some matches and we played a little passively. So hopefully, we can continue to try to dictate what's happening at the end of those matches when we're serving for matches. But overall, it was a great team win and I'm really proud of the guys. We've got some big matches coming up, so we've got to keep going.
No. 26 Texas 4, No. 49 SMU 2
Doubles – Order of Finish: 1, 3
1 Hunter Johnson/Yates Johnson (SMU) def. Michael Riechmann/Adrian Ortiz (UT), 6-1
2 Markus Kerner/Samm Butler (SMU) vs. George Goldhoff/Julian Zlobinsky (UT), 5-3, susp.
3 Arkadijs Slobodkins/Ronald Slobodchikov (SMU) def. Colin Markes/Harrison Scott (UT), 6-3
Singles – Order of Finish: 6, 2, 3, 5, 4
1 George Goldhoff (UT) vs. No. 32 Hunter Johnson (SMU), 2-6, 6-4, 5-6, susp.
2 No. 94 Harrison Scott (UT) def. Markus Kerner (SMU), 6-4, 6-4
3 Samm Butler (SMU) def. Adrian Ortiz (UT), 6-2, 2-6, 6-2
4 Rodrigo Banzer (UT) def. Ronald Slobodchikov (SMU), 6-3, 6-7 (3), 6-3
5 No. 114 Michael Riechmann (UT) def. Yates Johnson (SMU), 7-6 (1), 7-5
6 Julian Zlobinsky (UT) def. Arkadijs Slobodkins (SMU), 6-3, 6-4
Players Mentioned
