Rice University
UT Arlington
Owls Bounce Back with Sweep
1/22/2017 12:00:00 AM | Men's Tennis
by Chuck Pool (cpool@rice.edu) -
The Rice men's tennis team shook off the residue of a hard-fought loss on Saturday and withstood the challenge of blustery conditions and an inspired UTA Maverick squad to post a 4-2 win on Sunday afternoon then picked up a second win of the day over Prairie View to improve to 4-1 on the season.
Sophomore Eric Rutledge stormed back from quadruple break point to provide the clinching point against a UTA squad that was within striking distance to register its first win over Rice in the 18-match history of the series. The transfer from Wake Forest responded with four consecutive points to down Daniel Armengol 3-6, 6-2, 6-3 and deliver the clinching point.
On Saturday, Rice head coach Efe Ustundag had voiced some concern how his team would respond less than 24 hours after a grueling thee hour battle with 16th ranked Texas A&M, knowing that challenging conditions and a somewhat unknown opponent in UTA was waiting.
"All the ingredients were there for a mishap," Ustundag said. "We certainly fought on every court, but I wasn't happy with the way we handled the conditions, which was poor. We weren't the solid team from yesterday and we were not keeping the focus on the person across the net. Thankfully we were a little deeper than UTA and ended up squeezing out the win, but we were very lucky."
After the Owls opened with their fourth straight doubles point to start the year, Ustundag's concerns began to materialize as the Mavericks picked up wins on courts four and six to take a 2-1 lead. Sophomore Emmanuel Llamas tied the match at 2-2 with a win on six, and Jake Hansen put Rice back in front with a win on court three.
Rutledge had fought back from a first set loss, setting aside the challenging conditions and held a 5-1 lead in the third set before Armengol broke his serve and then won a deciding point on his own serve to close to 5-3 and then stormed to a 40-0 advantage in the game.
"Anything can happen once you lose that second break," Ustundag noted. "Earlier in the match he was one who was not handling the conditions as well as needed to earlier, but he decided to go about his business and that's when his level of play improved. If that game gets to 5-4, then anything can happen."
The win also closed out the Owls' home schedule for more than a month. They will travel to Austin next weekend to take on Oregon in the opening round of the ITA Kickoff Weekend.
"Oregon is a tough team indoors and we will be playing indoors next weekend in Austin," he said. "We'll be practicing inside all next week to get ready for them. Oregon is going to be tough, but I like the fact we've had a number of challenging matches already. We know we have to play better, but we also know that we have shown some competitiveness when challenged."
Team Stats
#1 Doubles Match
#2 Doubles Match
#3 Doubles Match
Order of Finish:
3,2,1
#1 Singles Match
#2 Singles Match
#3 Singles Match
#4 Singles Match
#5 Singles Match
#6 Singles Match
Order of Finish:
5,4,6,2,3,1
Players Mentioned
