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No. 5 Men’s Tennis sweeps doubleheader with 4-3 win over UTSA
02.23.2020 | Men's Tennis
The Longhorns won both home matches on Sunday to move to 9-2 this season.
Austin, Texas – The No. 5 Texas Men's Tennis team completed a sweep of its doubleheader Sunday with a 4-3 win over UTSA at the Texas Tennis Center in the afternoon. Earlier in the day, the Longhorns had defeated Nebraska, 6-1, and are now 9-2 this season.
Against UTSA, Texas collected its second doubles point of the day and received straight-set singles wins from seniors No. 2 Yuya Ito at No. 1 and No. 6 Christian Sigsgaard at No. 2, and freshman Evin McDonald at No. 6.
"It was definitely a positive day," head coach Bruce Berque said. "It's never perfect, you have 18 matches overall to play throughout the day, so it's almost impossible for everyone to feel great about every match they played, but I felt like we got better as a team today, and that was the biggest goal we talked about the last few days. I liked the fact that everyone got to play, Evin McDonald got his first college dual match opportunities and won them both, they all supported each other, our doubles improved from this past weekend, and Christian and Yuya played better than they had been playing. Overall, there were a lot of positives, and the guys who didn't do as well as they would have liked to have done in this last match, they're going to learn from it, and in their defense, some of them haven't played a match in a month and a half or so."
Sigsgaard got off the court first in a quick fashion with a 6-1, 6-1 win over Sebastian Rodriguez. Sigsgaard jumped out to a 3-0 lead before Rodriguez took one game on serve, but after that, Sigsgaard collected wins in seven consecutive games to take a 4-0 lead in the second set. At that point, Rodriguez won one more game on serve before Sigsgaard closed the match for his 101st career win at Texas, which ties him for 12th in school history.
McDonald was next with his second win of the day to start his dual match college career. He earned a 6-1, 7-5 victory over Joao Alcantra to give Texas a 3-0 lead overall. McDonald made quick work of the first set with Alcantra only winning the second game on serve before McDonald finished the frame on a 5-0 run. The second set appeared to have the makings of being a mirror image in reverse with McDonald only winning the second game on serve and trailing 5-1, however he turned it on from there and ran off six-straight wins to come back and win the match.
Just behind McDonald, Ito brought home the clincher with a 6-3, 6-2 win over Kai Breitbach. Ito got out to a 3-0 lead with a deuce-point break in the second game, and from there, the set stayed on serve to a 6-3 win. The final game was the first of five-straight wins for Ito who posted a 4-0 lead in the second set. That set also stayed on serve the rest of the way for the 6-2 result and Ito's 108th career victory, which is sixth in school history.
The remaining matches went UTSA's way leading to the 4-3 final. Freshman Nevin Arimilli fellin his first dual match of the season, 6-3, 6-2, to Javier Gonzalez at No. 5, freshman Cleeve Harper played No. 3 for the first time in his career, dropping a 6-3, 6-2 decision to Juri Reckow, and freshman Jacob Bullard played No. 4 for the first time and came up just short in a third-set superbreaker, 3-6, 6-3, 1-0 (8), to Javier Rodriguez. Bullard led 4-0 in the first set and trailed 3-0 in the second set on the way to the 6-3 scores in each frame. In the superbreaker, he trailed 3-1 to start, but went on a 4-0 run for a 5-3 lead. Reckow answered with a 3-0 run to reclaim the advantage at 6-5, and from there, the players alternated points to 9-8 for Reckow when he broke the pattern for the win.
Texas finished all of the doubles play of the doubleheader only trailing for one game in any match. Like they did against Nebraska, the Longhorns won matches at No. 1 and No. 2 in that order despite a different pairing at No. 1 where Huang and Sigsgaard led off with a 6-3 win over Alcantra and Sebastian Rodriguez. The Texas duo served for a deuce-point win in the opening game, and the match stayed on serve up to 3-2 when they picked up a break and then held for a 5-2 lead. UTSA got one game back on serve, but Huang and Sigsgaard closed in the next game.
Bullard and freshman Eliot Spizzirri paired again at No. 2 to secure doubles for the second time during the day with a 6-2 win over Reckow and Joao Ceolin. The Texas pair held and broke to open the match with a 2-0 lead before the teams split the next four games that all went to deuce points. UTSA took the first and last of those with the Longhorns taking the middle two Bullard and Spizzirri won the final two games of the match. Harper and Ito combined to play at No. 3 and were leading Breitbach and Gonzalez, 4-2, when play stopped.
Texas will next face No. 8 Stanford in a rematch of their meeting in the ITA National Indoors last week. This time, they will face off in Austin on Friday, Feb. 28, at 5:30 p.m. at the Texas Tennis Center. The match will also be broadcast by Longhorn Network.
No. 5 Texas 4, UTSA 3
Singles – Order of Finish (2,6,1,5,3,4)
1. No. 2 Yuya Ito (UT) def. Kai Breitbach (UTSA), 6-3, 6-2
2. No. 6 Christian Sigsgaard (UT) def. Sebastian Rodriguez (UTSA), 6-1, 6-1
3. Juri Reckow (UTSA) def. Cleeve Harper (UT), 6-3, 6-2
4. Javier Rodriguez (UTSA) def. Jacob Bullard (UT), 3-6, 6-3, 1-0 (8)
5. Javier Gonzalez (UTSA) def. Nevin Arimilli (UT), 6-3, 6-2
6. Evin McDonald (UT) def. Joao Alcantra (UTSA), 6-1, 7-5
Doubles – Order of Finish (1,2)
1. Christian Sigsgaard/Chih Chi Huang (UT) def. Sebastian Rodriguez/Joao Alcantra (UTSA), 6-3
2. Eliot Spizzirri/Jacob Bullard (UT) def. Juri Reckow/Joao Ceolin (UTSA), 6-2
3. Yuya Ito/Cleeve Harper (UT) vs. Kai Breitbach/Javier Gonzalez (UTSA), 4-2, unf.
Players Mentioned
