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NCAA Tennis Championship: Sooner doubles team takes national championship from No. 1 seed

By Chip Rouse

Oct 22, 2016; Lubbock, TX, USA; An Oklahoma Sooners cheerleader entertains the crowd during the game with the Texas Tech Red Raiders at Jones AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Michael C. Johnson-USA TODAY Sports
Oct 22, 2016; Lubbock, TX, USA; An Oklahoma Sooners cheerleader entertains the crowd during the game with the Texas Tech Red Raiders at Jones AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Michael C. Johnson-USA TODAY Sports /
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You could feel the momentum building for the Oklahoma men’s doubles pair of Andrew Harris and Spencer Papa back in the quarterfinals round in the NCAA Tennis Championship.

First the Sooners took down No. 6 Arkansas in the round of 16, and then they moved up the ladder to upset the No. 2 seed in UCLA in the quarterfinals.

Next up was No. 4 Wake Forest in one of the two national semifinal matches. Harris and Papa came from one set down to defeat the Demon Deacon pair in the semifinals to earn a spot in the national championship match against top-seed Georgia on Monday.

Oklahoma, the No. 15 overall seed, was a big underdog going up against the No. 1 doubles seed. To make matters even more difficult, the Sooners were taking on the top-seeded Georgia doubles pair of Robert Loeb and Jan Zieliniski on the Bulldogs’ home court at the Dan Magill Tennis Center in Athens.

“We said, ‘You have to get mean out there and be more aggressive.” –OU head coach Nick Crowell after the OU doubles team had lost the first set and fallen behind 0-2 in the second

The Sooners lost the first set to Georgia, 4-6, and were down 0-2 in the second set before taking control of the set and the match by winning the next six games. That set up a deciding tiebreaker to determine the national champion. Harris and Papa jumped out to a 4-1 advantage in the tiebreaker, and held on 10-6 to take the tiebreaker point and win the first national championship in doubles in OU program history.

Just when things looked the bleakest for the Sooner doubles duo, “We challenged them,” said OU coach Nick Crowell. “We said, ‘You have to get mean out there and be more aggressive.’

“These guys let out some huge eruptions in the middle of the second set, and it got their energy going.”

Harris and Papa are the first Sooner tennis players to win an individual national championship in singles or doubles.

As a team, Oklahoma had finished runner-up in the national champions in three of the four previous years. The Sooners advanced to their fifth consecutive round of 16 this season, but that is where their season came to an end, losing to the third-seeded Ohio State Buckeyes.

Senior Alex Ghilea made history for the Sooners on Friday, becoming the first OU player to advance to the quarterfinals round in individual singles. Ghilea, however, lost to Tom Fawcett of Stanford in the round of 16.

Oklahoma finished the season with a team record of 17-11 in Crowell’s first season as men’s head coach.

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