 "Photo: Natasha Sankovich")
The No. 12 Texas A&M men's tennis team lost a close match to the No. 40 Rice Owls Monday at the George P. Mitchell Center.
The Aggies (13-7) entered Monday night's match having won eight of their previous nine matches, but have now lost two of their previous three.
Rice (15-9) went into the match having lost three of its previous four matches.
"Give Rice credit, they played well, but it was a disappointment that a couple of our guys didn't come to play tonight," said A&M Head Coach Steve Denton. "It's one of those things that happens, but I thought this was the first subpar match that we've played in awhile."
A&M opened the evening with doubles play, featuring one of the top ranked duos in the country in senior Conor Pollock and sophomore Austin Krajicek.
After Pollock and Krajicek easily won their match with a final score of 8-3, it was up to one of the other tandems to win and secure the doubles point for A&M.
Rice junior Bruno Rosa and freshman Isamu Tachibana evened up the score for the Owls with their own 8-3 win against freshman Austin Klores and sophomore Alexey Grigorov.
The Aggies needed sophomore Wil Spencer and junior Marcus Lunt to win for the decisive point, but the pair did not get the job done. They raced out to an early 4-1 lead and were close to clinching when they had a 6-2 lead. Rice freshmen Sam Garforth-Bles and Christian Savaria did not back down as they fought back and tied the game at 6-6.
After scoring again, the Aggies had numerous opportunities to close out the match and earn the doubles point for their squad, but squandered the chances, giving the Owls the first point of the match.
Needing four points to end the night as the victors, the Aggies had their work set out in front of them. Some of the Aggies answered the call, and won their singles matches in straight sets. Pollock beat Rosa 6-2 and 6-3 to start the rally for A&M. Krajicek also did his part with a 6-2 and 6-1 win against senior Christoph Mueller, and Spencer won his match against senior Toby Scheil 6-4, 6-0.
The Owls won the next two matches with Garforth-Bles beating Grigorov 6-4 and 6-1, and Tachibana disposing of Lunt 6-3, 6-2.
With the match tied at 3-3, the win depended on the last match between Klores and Savaria.
The first set went to Savaria 7-6 before Klores battled back and won the second set 6-4. With the match lasting longer than two hours, Klores took an early 2-1 lead during the third set. Savaria responded and scored six consecutive points to secure the match for the Owls 4-3.
"Nerves got him in the third set," Denton said. "The temperature out here is 55 or 60 degrees, you can't cramp in this kind of weather unless it's nerves. You have to be able to relax and trust your shot, and you've got a freshman over there that hasn't had any success yet, and he had an opportunity there, but it just didn't happen tonight."
The Aggies will return to the court Thursday to play Texas for the final match of the regular season. A&M played the Longhorns in a nonconference meeting on Feb. 6 when they lost 7-0.
"We'll regroup and will get ready to play Thursday and kind of learn from this one," Denton said. "We're going to have some adversity along the way; it's how we deal with it and if we can bounce back and play well."
Be the first to comment on this article!