Sunday, March 12
Houston, Texas
11 AM
Rice University
4
vs
0
New Orleans
Navarro and Salmon Lead Owls to Rice Invite Title
3/12/2023 3:04:00 PM | Men's Tennis
Owls claim title for the first time since 2017
George R. Brown Tennis Center: Santiago Navarro and Campbell Salmon combined to clinch the doubles point then each won their fifth consecutive singles match to lead Rice to a 4-0 win over New Orleans in the championship match of the 64th Ralph O'Connor Rice Invitational, the Owls first title in the event since 2017.
Doubles: Rice took the early advantage with a win at the first line and New Orleans came back to hold off a late rally to take the match at three. Navarro and Salmon made an early break hold up and took the point with a 6-4 win.
Singles: Unlike Friday night's win over Samford, the Owls did not open the door for New Orleans to mount serious challenge at the start of singles, taking four of six first sets. Kabeer Kapasi continued his strong weekend of tennis, winning 6-1, 6-0. After dropping a first-set tiebreaker vs. Samford on Friday night, Kapasi only lost two games over his last four sets. Salmon followed shortly after to increase the lead to 3-0, setting the table for Navarro to record his fourth clinch point in the last five matches.
Efe Ustundag: "It's easy to come back from a set of good solid road wins and be complacent, so it was good to see us come through this weekend. We knew New Orleans would be tough as we had a tough match with them last year. We had not seen Samford before, but we knew they had some capability up at the top of their lineup. I think our depth was really the key in both days, you know, cleaning at the bottom. I'm very happy about the form of our doubles right now. I think everybody is playing at a solid level. In singles, we just kept rolling at five and six. I am very happy about the performance from Campbell and Santi. At the top, I thought Amir played much better tennis than he has in the last three, so hopefully, this will propel him to get into his groove and, and finish the second half of the season strong. Trinity was, as usual, just fighting his butt off."
Up Next: The Rice men will join with the women's team to host Texas A&M Corpus Christi in a combined dual match at 2 p.m. on Wednesday.
Doubles: Rice took the early advantage with a win at the first line and New Orleans came back to hold off a late rally to take the match at three. Navarro and Salmon made an early break hold up and took the point with a 6-4 win.
Singles: Unlike Friday night's win over Samford, the Owls did not open the door for New Orleans to mount serious challenge at the start of singles, taking four of six first sets. Kabeer Kapasi continued his strong weekend of tennis, winning 6-1, 6-0. After dropping a first-set tiebreaker vs. Samford on Friday night, Kapasi only lost two games over his last four sets. Salmon followed shortly after to increase the lead to 3-0, setting the table for Navarro to record his fourth clinch point in the last five matches.
Efe Ustundag: "It's easy to come back from a set of good solid road wins and be complacent, so it was good to see us come through this weekend. We knew New Orleans would be tough as we had a tough match with them last year. We had not seen Samford before, but we knew they had some capability up at the top of their lineup. I think our depth was really the key in both days, you know, cleaning at the bottom. I'm very happy about the form of our doubles right now. I think everybody is playing at a solid level. In singles, we just kept rolling at five and six. I am very happy about the performance from Campbell and Santi. At the top, I thought Amir played much better tennis than he has in the last three, so hopefully, this will propel him to get into his groove and, and finish the second half of the season strong. Trinity was, as usual, just fighting his butt off."
Up Next: The Rice men will join with the women's team to host Texas A&M Corpus Christi in a combined dual match at 2 p.m. on Wednesday.
Team Stats
#1 Doubles Match
#2 Doubles Match
#3 Doubles Match
Order of Finish:
1,3,2
#1 Singles Match
123
Max Heinzel / 0 [UNO]
450
65UF
#2 Singles Match
123
Karim Al-Amin / 0 [UNO]
450
64UF
#3 Singles Match
123
Espen Lagarde / 0 [UNO]
750
53UF
#4 Singles Match
12
Lilian Dubois / 0 [UNO]
61
76
#5 Singles Match
12
Matthew Armbruster / 0 [UNO]
12
66
#6 Singles Match
12
David Tesic / 0 [UNO]
10
66
Order of Finish:
6,5,4
Players Mentioned
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