National Indoors – Day 2

Tagged with: 2015 Men's National Team Indoors

It was a great day of tennis on Saturday with the final match of the day just as thrilling as the 1st one. Even though Georgia never trailed it felt like it was a come from behind win due to Georgia being so far down on so many courts early one.

Illinois seemingly had the doubles point in the bag when they were up 5-3 in the deciding match at #1 with Ross Guignon serving for it but Georgia got the break on the deciding point and held on to take it in a tiebreak.  In singles action Illinois jumped out to a break lead on all 6 courts and would take 6-1 first sets at 1, 2, and 5 and a 6-2 set at 4.  Georgia’s Nathan Pasha would come back from a 3-0 opening set deficit to take the set 7-5 and at 6 Georgia’s Paul Oosterbaan would come back from 4-2 down to take the set 6-4.  While both Pasha and Oosterbaan maintained their 2nd sets leads so would both Jared and Aron Hiltzik at 2 and 4. The biggest turn around came at #5 where Georgia’s Ben Wagland trailed 6-1 4-2 and was completely out of the match.  Nothing was going Wagland’s way, his head and shoulders were down, he was missing shot after shot then he changed up his strategy and chipped/sliced every shot over a 2 to 3 game stretch while also taking all the pace off the ball and Vukic seemed unsure how to respond. Wagland won 4 straight to take the 2nd and then in the final set he starting picking the pace up and moving the ball all over the place off his forehand wing. Wagland had a match point when Vukic served at 5-6 40-40 but a big serve sent it the tiebreak.  At the same time over at #1 singles, Wayne Mongomery and Farris Gosea were starting a tiebreak so both of the remaining matches were in 3rd set tiebreaks at the same time.  Montgomery would jump out to a 5-2 while Wagland went up 4-2 but as Vukic came back to go up 6-5, Montgomery would finish off Gosea 7-3.

Order of finish: Doubles (3,2,1); Singles (2,6,4,3,1)

Baylor came to play on Day 2 of the National Indoors and the Bears upset #3 Virginia in a 4-3 thriller.  Baylor took the doubles point winning at 2 and 3 and then picked up 4 first sets and actually looked like they were going to run away with it before Virginia started slowly turning the tide. Julian Lenz would put Baylor up 2-0 with a 6-2, 6-0 rout over Mitchell Frank at #1 but Collin Altamirano would get Virginia on the board with a rout of his own winning 6-1, 6-2 at #4 singles over Diego Galeano.  Virginia would tie it at 2-2 when JC Aragone closed out Vince Schneider in straight sets winning 6-3, 6-4 at 6 and then at #2 Ryan Shane would come back from dropping the 1st set to roll over Max Tchoutakian 6-1, 6-1 in the 2nd and 3rd.

Baylor’s Tony Lupieri had what appeared to be a command 6-4, 4-1 double break lead over Thai Son Kwiatkowski at #3 but Kwiatkowski would rally back and go ahead 6-5 in the 2nd.  Lupieri would hold to get it to the tiebreak and would then win an epic 12-10 tiebreak to tie the overall match at 3-3. Kwiatkowski would have sets points up 7-6 and 8-7 in the tiebreak with the 8-7 point coming on his serve but Lupieri would hit a forehand winner down the line and not trail again.  (For point-by-point details on the tiebreak check out my twitter feed @College10s2day which had a running commentary)

In the remaining match Baylor’s Mate Zsiga was up 4-3 in the 3rd and receiving Ritschard’s serve at 15-40 before Ritschard would double fault the break.  Zsiga would then serve out the match after falling behind 15-30 and Baylor had the monumental upset over perennial powerhouse Virginia.

Below is a clip of match point though I forgot to move the phone toward the net as Zsiga came forward on the final point (Ritschard put it in the net)

Order of finish: Doubles (1,3,2); Singles (2,4,5,1)