Saturday, April 15
Houston, Texas
10 AM
Rice University
2
vs
4
#52 SMU
Mustangs Strike Back in Singles
4/15/2023 3:32:00 PM | Men's Tennis
Conference USA Championship begins on Friday at Rice
Houston: SMU shook off the loss of a tightly-contested doubles point and came back to defeat Rice 4-2 in the fourth-annual Turpin Cup match.
Doubles: The opening point of the day was in doubt until the final games on all courts before the Owls took the early lead and improved to 16-5 this year in doubles. After missing out on two deciding points to break serve at the second line earlier in the match, Santiago Navarro and Campbell Salmon converted the opportunity at 4-4 and held their serve to give Rice the initial advantage. Wes Barnett and Trinity Grear broke a 5-5 tie at the first line with a break and then held to give them a 7-5 win over SMU's 66th-ranked team of Adam Neff and Kyle Sillman. The ranked win was the second in Barnett and Grear's last three matches. The defeated Texas A&M's 39th-ranked Trey Hilderbrand and Noah Schachter two weeks earlier.
Singles: After Rice honored its three seniors (Barnett, Dylan Heap and Salmon) in ceremonies, the Mustangs broke fast in singles, taking four of six first sets, including a pair of tiebreakers. While they swiftly closed out matches at the first and fourth lines, freshman Kaber Kapasi took an early lead at the sixth line, then fought off a late challenge to win his 10th match of the year to add a second point for Rice. SMU closed out the match with wins at the third and second lines.
Efe Ustundag: "I'm always proud of what we do out there, but certainly not satisfied. We had chances. We had set points at number three, we had a chance at five and really the only two matches we didn't really quite have a shot at were at one and four. Other than that, I thought we competed very well."
Up Next: The match between Rice and UAB, which was a late addition to the dual schedule has been canceled and the Owls will now turn their attention to preparing to play in their final Conference USA Championship, which will be hosted by Rice. Seedings for the event will be released early in the week and play opens Friday at noon,
Doubles: The opening point of the day was in doubt until the final games on all courts before the Owls took the early lead and improved to 16-5 this year in doubles. After missing out on two deciding points to break serve at the second line earlier in the match, Santiago Navarro and Campbell Salmon converted the opportunity at 4-4 and held their serve to give Rice the initial advantage. Wes Barnett and Trinity Grear broke a 5-5 tie at the first line with a break and then held to give them a 7-5 win over SMU's 66th-ranked team of Adam Neff and Kyle Sillman. The ranked win was the second in Barnett and Grear's last three matches. The defeated Texas A&M's 39th-ranked Trey Hilderbrand and Noah Schachter two weeks earlier.
Singles: After Rice honored its three seniors (Barnett, Dylan Heap and Salmon) in ceremonies, the Mustangs broke fast in singles, taking four of six first sets, including a pair of tiebreakers. While they swiftly closed out matches at the first and fourth lines, freshman Kaber Kapasi took an early lead at the sixth line, then fought off a late challenge to win his 10th match of the year to add a second point for Rice. SMU closed out the match with wins at the third and second lines.
Efe Ustundag: "I'm always proud of what we do out there, but certainly not satisfied. We had chances. We had set points at number three, we had a chance at five and really the only two matches we didn't really quite have a shot at were at one and four. Other than that, I thought we competed very well."
Up Next: The match between Rice and UAB, which was a late addition to the dual schedule has been canceled and the Owls will now turn their attention to preparing to play in their final Conference USA Championship, which will be hosted by Rice. Seedings for the event will be released early in the week and play opens Friday at noon,
Team Stats
#1 Doubles Match
#2 Doubles Match
#3 Doubles Match
Order of Finish:
2,1
#1 Singles Match
12
Adam Neff / 0 (66/-) [SMU]
66
42
#2 Singles Match
123
Liam Krall / 0 [SMU]
566
712
#3 Singles Match
12
Antonio Muniz-Hidalg / 0 [SMU]
76
63
#4 Singles Match
12
Julian Steinhausen / 0 [SMU]
66
31
#5 Singles Match
123
Pranav Kumar / 0 [SMU]
760
65UF
#6 Singles Match
12
Louis Cloud / 0 [SMU]
36
67
Order of Finish:
4,1,3,6,2
Players Mentioned
/ Men's Tennis
/ Men's Tennis
/ Men's Tennis
/ Men's Tennis
/ Men's Tennis
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