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Stanford
No. 26 Men's Tennis rallies for thrilling 4-3 win over No. 18 Stanford
02.07.2016 | Men's Tennis
Sophomore Adrian Ortiz saves a match point against him, outlasts Stanford’s Nolan Paige in third-set tiebreaker to preserve the Texas win.
Here's the winner from Ortiz pic.twitter.com/B9SzWe85ax
— Texas Tennis (@TexasMTN) February 7, 2016
AUSTIN, Texas – Texas sophomore Adrian Ortiz saved a match point against him in the third set and held off Stanford's Nolan Paige in a third-set tiebreaker to help deliver a 4-3 win for the Longhorns over the Cardinal Sunday afternoon at UT's Weller Indoor Tennis Center.
With the match score knotted at three, the match's deciding point came down to the third singles slot with UT's Ortiz and Stanford's Paige. Ortiz yielded the first set, 6-1 but left nothing to chance in the second set and blanked Paige, 6-0.
Paige broke Ortiz's serve for a 6-5 third-set lead. At 6-5 and 30-all in Paige's next service game, Paige struck a lob that forced an errant Ortiz return and set up a match point for Stanford.
Paige smacked a forehand wide on the next point, and with no-ad scoring in place for collegiate tennis, the winner of the ensuing deuce point would give the match to Stanford or send the third set into a tiebreaker. Paige double-faulted on the next point to give the game to Ortiz and set up the tiebreaker.
Ortiz took a 3-0 lead in the tiebreak, but his double fault coupled with a pair of Paige passing forehand winners evened the breaker at three. Paige assumed a 5-3 lead, but a big Ortiz serve yielded an errant Paige backhand, as Ortiz cut Paige's lead to 5-4. Paige double-faulted once more for 5-all, and his long backhand on the next point set up match point for Ortiz at 6-5.
Ortiz smacked a forehand into the net for 6-all, though Paige went into the net once more to give Ortiz a 7-6 lead and another match point with Paige serving. Ortiz lofted a well-placed top-spin lob over Paige and in bounds with room to spare to win the tiebreaker, 8-6 and seal the 4-3 Texas win.
"Really throughout the whole match I was hanging some pretty decent lobs, and I just thought to myself that I needed to make a decent return on that point," Ortiz said. "I saw the opportunity, executed it and it worked."
"They were both getting a little nervous there at the end," said UT head coach Michael Center. "They were both fighting their nerves, and he (Ortiz) gave up the serve on 5-all and got the break back. He just held it together, stayed with his routine in between points and at the end of the day he made the play to win the match. It was a great shot by Adrian to finish it off."
At the match's outset Texas' Ortiz and Michael Riechmann broke the serve of Stanford's Paige and Maciek Romanowicz at 4-3 and held for a 5-4 lead at first doubles. Riechmann held serve in the following game to seal the 6-4 win for Texas.
Stanford put away a 7-5 win at third doubles, but George Goldhoff and Julian Zlobinsky held on for a 6-4 win over Tom Fawcett and Sameer Kumar at second doubles to clinch the doubles point and give Texas a 1-0 lead.
Kumar evened the match with his 6-1, 6-1 win over UT's Rodrigo Banzer at fourth singles, and the Cardinal assumed a 2-1 lead with a straight-sets win at first singles.
Stanford claimed a 3-1 lead behind a straight-sets win at fifth singles before UT commenced its rally. UT freshman Harrison Scott finished off a 6-2, 6-4 win over Stanford's 57th-ranked David Wilczynski at second singles to cut the Stanford lead to 3-2.
UT's Zlobinsky held off Stanford's 61st-ranked Michael Genender in a first-set tiebreaker at sixth singles and overpowered Genender in the second set, 6-1 to even the match and set the stage for Ortiz's clinching win at third singles.
Texas resumes play in two weeks (Feb. 21) when it visits Rice.
ADDITIONAL POST-MATCH COMMENTS
Texas head coach Michael Center
On today's match: I think Stanford has a great team. We knew this was going to be a tough stretch opening the season with such a young team, but we kept working hard and kept improving. Even though we lost some matches 4-0, we were actually in a lot of those matches. I just told them to stay with it, keep their patience, keep competing, and stay aggressive, and that's what they did. The key was getting that doubles point, which we've been coming up short in. I thought that gave us good momentum. Then we hung around and came through after being down 3-1, so it was a great team win today.
Sophomore Adrian Ortiz
On coming back in the second set: I started off pretty slow. I was pretty nervous and he was actually playing pretty well. In the second set after losing 6-1, I said that I'm going to start playing better and playing loose. I started playing pretty good tennis and kind of got the strategy working against him, which was very solid. I was able to break him every game; I was serving well to close out that set 6-0.
No. 26 Texas 4, No. 18 Stanford 3
Doubles – Order of Finish: 1, 3, 2
1 Adrian Ortiz/Michael Riechmann (UT) def. No. 42 Nolan Paige/Maciek Romanowicz (SU), 6-3
2 George Goldhoff/Julian Zlobinsky (UT) def. Tom Fawcett/Sameer Kumar (SU), 6-4
3 Yale Goldberg/David Wilczynsky (SU) def. Rodrigo Banzer/Harrison Scott (UT), 7-5
Singles – Order of Finish: 4, 1, 5, 2, 6, 3
1 No. 9 Tom Fawcett (SU) def. George Goldhoff (UT), 6-2, 6-1
2 No. 94 Harrison Scott (UT) def. No. 57 David Wilczynski (SU), 6-2, 6-4
3 Adrian Ortiz (UT) def. Nolan Paige (SU), 1-6, 6-0, 7-6 (6)
4 Sameer Kumar (SU) def. Rodrigo Banzer (UT), 6-1, 6-1
5 No. 89 Maciek Romanowicz (SU) def. No. 114 Michael Riechmann (UT), 6-3, 6-2
6 Julian Zlobinsky (UT) def. No. 61 Michael Genender (SU), 7-6 (3), 6-1
Players Mentioned
