Owls Drop UTSA to Complete Unbeaten Weekend

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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 closed out an unbeaten weekend of action by downing UTSA 4-1 at the George R. Brown Tennis Center on Sunday and close out the 2019 C-USA Showcase with a 3-0 record.

Doubles: The Owls (13-11) captured their fifth straight doubles point thanks to a quick 6-1 win at the third position by Campbell Salmon and Conrad Russell and a 6-4 win by 46^th ranked Eric Rutledge and Sumit Sarkar at the first line.

Singles: Adam Oscislawski gave the Owls early breathing room with a 6-1, 6-2 win at the sixth singles line, but UTSA grabbed four first sets in singles and nearly grabbed a fifth as 41^st ranked Sumit Sarkar was trailing 5-3 before winning four straight games to take the set. Sarkar maintained his momentum in the second, winning 6-2 to improve to 15-4 at the top spot in the lineup. His 15 wins are the most since Bruno Rosa won 16 at the No. 1 spot in 2008. As they did on Saturday vs. UAB, Rice bounced back to force third sets on three of four courts, with Conrad Russell ultimately providing the clinching point with a three-set win at the fourth position.

Efe Ustundag: "Very satisfying weekend. I told the team that this late in the season, great tennis is surely welcomed, but heart, desire and focus is what you want the most. These guys proved to themselves that if it's not their best day, but they stay focused, stay hungry and fight for every point, they give themselves a shot. UTSA is a scary team and they are going to be dangerous at the conference tournament, no doubt. Our doubles was solid. Three was off quickly and our number one team won it with a phenomenal return game at the end. Then we lose four first sets, but Sumit and Adam got off the court and put that 3-0 lead on the scoreboard. Sumit was actually down 3-5 in the first, so we could have easily been down five first sets. But he and Adam both never gave their opponents a chance to respond in the second set. Every player looks at the scoreboard, It's not easy when you see you are down 3-0. That may have been a factor in our coming back in our second sets. We were able to get early breaks and before you know it, three of the four matches go to a third set. It was good to see Adam with a dominant win this late in the season. Great job be Conrad. It was a tough opponent for him, but he found what would work and he stuck to it. Tulane comes in next weekend for Senior Day. We'd love to finish the season on a high note heading into conference. We've won four in a row, but Tulane brings a lot of challenges. But we're brewing something and I hope we can use this weekend as a spark into this week of practice and see what we can do next Saturday."

Up Next: Rice wraps up its 2019 regular season next Saturday when they host No. 40 Tulane for Senior Day at noon.

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