Spring Break
Cold cocked
Men's tennis struggles early, falls to Texas in frigid weather
By: Scott Jannarore
Issue date: 4/9/07 Section: Sports
 Spencer Selvidge - THE BATTALION Texas A&M Senior John Nallon returns a serve. Nallon won his singles match in straight sets and is 11-2 in singles this year. |
The No. 29 Texas A&M men's tennis team fell at home by a score of 2-4 to the No. 15 Texas Longhorns on Friday. The 771 fans in attendance at the George P. Mitchell Tennis Center were encouraged to "maroon out," which is customary in any game or match in the Lone Star Showdown Series.
Not surprisingly, the bleachers were a sea of maroon with the occasional flicker of half-hidden burnt orange. The two teams had nearly identical winning percentages coming into the match with the Aggies at .700 and .706 for the Longhorns. The two teams took to the courts for doubles matches just after 6 p.m. under unusually cold and windy conditions, which affected the entire country this weekend.
In the top-seeded doubles match, Aggie seniors John Nallon and Brett Joelson fell 8-3 to the Longhorns' No. 17 ranked duo of Josh Zavala and Dimitar Kutrovsky. However, the Aggie team of senior Bryan Wooten and freshman Luka Ocvirk closed out the third seed doubles match against Bernhard Deussner and Luis Diaz Barriga of Texas with a score of 8-5. This tied the score at two matches apiece, with only the second seed doubles match remaining.
The second seed A&M team, consisting of juniors Conor Pollock and Matt Bain, looked to be in command, with a 6-5 lead and only a single point needed to break the Longhorns' serve. However, Longhorns Milan Mihailovic and Miguel Reyes Varela rallied back from a 15-40 deficit to hold their serve and tie the match at 6-6.
The wasted opportunities were costly to the Aggies, as the Longhorns came back to win the next two games, giving them the match win 8-6 and clinching the doubles point.
"If you allow matches to get that close, this is what ends up happening," said A&M head coach Steve Denton. "We had 6-5 and a couple of chances to break serve, and we didn't. You've got to take advantage of those opportunities when you get them, and they capitalized and we didn't."
A&M went into singles play needing to win four of six matches to claim a victory. The teams battled through six hard-fought matches, but in the end, Texas prevailed
4-2. Much like weeks past, the doubles point proved to play a pivotal role in team momentum, as the Aggies were never able to gain control over the match after the initial loss in doubles.
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