Oklahoma tennis: Ohio State eliminates Sooners in NCAA Men’s Tennis Championships
By Chip Rouse
Oklahoma tennis will be absent from the NCAA Men’s Tennis Championship finals for the first time in four seasons after the Sooners were eliminated by Ohio State, 4-3, in the regional semifinals in Athens, Georgia.
The Sooners led the No. 3-seeded Buckeyes 3-2 late in the dual, but Ohio State held on to win the final two singles matches to put them over the top and advance to the round of eight, where the Buckeyes will meet up with another opponent out of the Big 12, the No. 6-seeded TCU Horned Frogs.
Oklahoma took the early lead in the overall match, winning the doubles point. The two teams split the first two doubles matches, but the Sooner doubles team of freshman Jochen Bertsch and Adrian Oetzbach starred down the barrel of three match points with the Ohio State pair holding a 6-3 advantage in the third and deciding set and eventually fought all the way back to win the set and the match in a 9-7 tiebreaker.
Ohio State won the first two singles matches, on the No. 5 and No. 6 lines, to take a 2-1 lead in the overall match, but the Sooners countered with a pair of wins of their own, by Alex Ghilea and Florin Bragusi, in the No. 3 and 4 positions.
“They were animals out there – in the heat, letting nothing bother them.” –OU men’s tennis coach Nick Crowell, speaking about the fight and resiliency of his Sooner men’s team
That brought the overall match down to the results of the No. 1 and No. 2 singles matches.
Spencer Papa fought like a true champion in his No. 1 singles match against Ohio State’s Mikael Torpegaard, the country’s No. 2-ranked singles player, but succumbed in three sets.
It all came down to the No. 2 singles match between OU senior Andrew Harris and Wolf of Ohio State, with the winner’s team moving on in the NCAA Men’s Championship and the loser’s team going home. The match went to a third-set tiebreaker, won by Wolf, 7-2. clinching the win by the Buckeyes.
“They were animals out there – in the heat, letting nothing bother them,” Sooner coach Nick Crowell told OU athletic department communications assistant Wes Moody, talking about the fight and resilience shown by his Sooner’s men’s team. “I’m really proud of those guys, but disappointed for them because they had such great careers.”
The Sooner men’s tennis team has been eliminated from this year’s NCAA Championship, but three members of the team remain in the championship as individual players. Ghilea and Papa will compete in the 64-player individual singles championship, and Papa and Harris will take part in the 32-team doubles competition.