Owls Answer Blazer Challenge to Post 4-0 Win

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Men's Tennis

vs ITA Conference Masters

Nov 6

Men's Tennis

vs NCAA Individual Championships

Nov 18

The Lead: The Rice men's tennis team extended its winning streak to three matches by weathering an early full-court press by UAB in singles and answering with solid performances on all six courts in a 4-0 win Saturday at the George R. Brown Tennis Center. Mohamed Abdel-Aziz delivered his third consecutive clinch point, battling back from an opening set loss to win 3-6, 6-3, 6-2.

Doubles: Rice raced to the doubles point with wins at the first and third lines. Campbell Salmon and Conrad Russell picked up a 6-3 win at the third position and 46^th ranked Eric Rutledge and Sumit Sarkar closed it out with a 6-4 win at the first line.

Singles: Trailing 1-0, the Blazers made a strong early statement in singles, taking four of six first sets, leaving the Owls in need of at least one three-set win to clinch the match. Doubles partners Russell and Salmon maintained their momentum, capturing their first sets and not letting up to post straight set wins and extend the lead to 3-0. Russell only dropped five games on his way to a win, while Salmon, making his first appearance at the third singles position, won his fifth straight with a 7-5, 6-0 win. At the same time, Rice responded on the four other courts, sending three into third sets and serving for the second set on the fourth after the match was clinched.

Efe Ustundag: "I felt pretty good about the quality of doubles we put out there. We has some opportunities to put those matches out of reach earlier, but at least when it was on our racquet to serve out a match we took care of business. We took UAB's best shot by dropping four of six first sets in singles. It's pretty incredible to do that and you don't allow a point on the board. It goes a long way in telling you about the character and the fight from our guys today. Adam is down a set and 4-1, 40 love in the second (set). He's a point away from looking down a major deficit and yet when the match is clinched, he's serving for the set. Mo was being dominated early in his match, but splits the last six games and after that was very methodical, very smart and played very calm tennis to come back and clinch his third straight match. Sumit took a massive shot in the first set from a guy who played a very high level of tennis, but came back and was up in the third. Karol comes back from the first set to win 6-0. It was huge that while it looked like we were going to split a couple courts, we never did. Conrad was on and off quickly and Campbell after a tough first set was 6-0 in the second and off the court to make it 3-0 and shortly after that three of their four first set wins were in a third. It was a good battle. At this point in the year, it's about guts, it's about desire, it's about wanting to take care of business. Can we play better, sure. But I'll take heart and fight over quality any time. Tomorrow is going to be a very tough matchup. UTSA has come in here and is playing at a very high level. They got off the court quickly today. They are coming after us, since the last few years have gone our way. This is the strongest UTSA team since they won the conference in 2015. They are young and they want to make a statement. So do we. We want to head in to the conference tournament with as many wins under our belt that we can get. I think it's going to be a really good match. I'd love for the rain to stay away and for us to stay out here at GRBTC, but we have a backup plan for later in the day if we need it."

Up Next: Rice improved to 12-11 on the season and 2-0 in the C-USA Showcase. They will take on UTSA (13-7, 2-0 this weekend) on Sunday to wrap up the weekend of action. The match is scheduled for 2 p.m. at the George R. Brown Tennis Center, but in the event of weather will move to the Boniuk Family Tennis Center at the Jewish Community Center.

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