Owls See Invite Streak End Despite Valiant Effort

Saturday, March 24

George R. Brown Tennis Center

4:00 PM

Rice University

Wichita State

Owls See Invite Streak End Despite Valiant Effort

3/24/2018 12:00:00 AM | Men's Tennis

Box Score

March 24, 2018

VCU Box Score / WSU Box Score

by Chuck Pool (cpool@rice.edu) -

Wichita State' s Haru Inoue outlasted Rice's Mohamed Abdel-Aziz in three sets to give the Shockers at 4-3 win on Saturday night and end the Owls 10-year streak of winning the Texas Tamale Company Rice Invitational at the George R. Brown Tennis Center on Saturday night.

The Shockers (11-8) and VCU (10-5), who each won two matches on Saturday, will meet to decide the team title at 11 a.m. on Sunday, looking to become the first opponent to capture the title since Oklahoma in 2007. Rice (6-12) and Texas A&M Corpus Christi will close out the 2018 schedule with a 3 p.m. dual.

Over their run of 10 consecutive titles, Rice has on more than once occasion summoned an improbable narrative to spring an upset and as afternoon turned to evening, it appeared the Owls were about to write another chapter.

Playing without No. 1 singles player Eric Rutledge who aggravated a previous injury in a morning loss to VCU, the Owls were forced to piece together three new doubles teams that had never played together before. Despite that, Rice snapped a six-match doubles losing streak by winning its first doubles tiebreaker of the season to take a 1-0 lead.

Sumit Sarkar and Conrad Rusell rebounded from a 4-1 margin to win tie the match and then post a 7-3 win in the tiebreaker.

"What I really loved about the doubles today is that we played with some passion and we played courageous tennis," Rice head coach Efe Ustundag said. "Especially being down 4-1 at number one doubles. We really stepped up and went after our shots. Sometimes it's hard for young guys to believe they can strike a ball as well as their opponent. So many times this year, the opponent has come at us hard and we are surprised. Today I felt like we finally gave it back to somebody and our power was no less than our opponent."

The Shockers stormed back to take a 3-1 lead, but Sarkar cut into that lead with a straight set win on court one. Russell drew the Owls even by winning consecutive tiebreakers, while Abdel-Aziz shook off a 6-2 opening set loss force a third set with a tiebreak win of his own. Rice ended the match winning all four of its tiebreak opportunities.

Meanwhile on the GRBTC back courts, Texas A&M CC had closed to 3-2 against VCU and held third set leads on both remaining courts, leaving the door open for the Owls to write an 11th chapter to their Invitational history should both schools emerge with wins and have all four teams finish the first day at 1-1.

But VCU rallied to clinch its match and Abdel-Aziz was struck by cramps while leading the final set 4-3, providing the opening that Inoue needed to secure the win.

"When we lost Eric, we knew that it was going to require something magical to pull out the win tonight," Ustundag said. "Conrad was big all day today. To win two tiebreakers against a player with that much power, composure and experience, that was huge. From about three all in the second set until he was up 2-0 in the third, Mohamed played the cleanest tennis I have seen from him. I don't think he made an unforced error in about 25 points. Unfortunately, we couldn't take to the end. Cramping is just another part of the game and we have to be ready to deal with that.

"Overall, I am very proud of this afternoon. We became a better team than we were yesterday, now the question is, do we take a step forward tomorrow or do we take a step back? Everybody is hurting right now and this tournament has always been about grit and guts. We have a big opportunity to take a big stride forward tomorrow," Ustundag stated.