Baylor
[2] Texas A&M
Men's Tennis Falters in Big 12 Semis
5/1/2010 12:00:00 AM | Men's Tennis
May 1, 2010
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
AUSTIN, Texas - For the first time in eight years the Baylor men's tennis team will not be a part of the Big 12 Championship final as the 10th-ranked and second-seeded Texas A&M Aggies handed the Bears a 4-1 loss on Saturday afternoon at the Penick-Allison Tennis Center.
"Our guys competed well," head Coach Matt Knoll said. "There is not much to feel bad about. We have some things we have to do better and we will get to the business of doing those things better, but A&M has a great team. They were tough at every position and today just wasn't our day, but the good thing is we have more days ahead of us."
Baylor had been to the finals every year since 2001 and had won the event seven of those eight years, including a current streak of three titles in a row. However, for the second time in a month Texas A&M (23-5) was just too much for Baylor (21-6). The loss was also Baylor first defeat in Big 12 Championship play since a 4-1 loss to Texas on April 30, 2006, in the finals in Waco.
"We can't get down," Knoll said. "Nothing has happened yet. We played another good match against a good team. We would have loved to have won, but we didn't and now we have to go back for a couple of weeks and get better."
In the two teams' first meeting on April 7 in College Station, the Aggies claimed a 6-1 victory as they won the doubles point and five out six singles contests.
Like the first match Texas A&M would jump out to the lead with a doubles point victory to deal Baylor its first doubles point loss in five matches. However, unlike the previous meeting when the Aggies took No. 1 and No. 2 doubles by identical 8-3 scores, the Bears made things interesting, before Texas A&M earned the point.
On court one the 27th-ranked duo of Denes Lukacs and Roberto Maytin dueled Austin Krajicek and Jeff Dadamo to a 4-4 tie, but the Aggie tandem took the next three games and cruised to an 8-5 win. The Baylor pair falls to 12-7 on the year and has lost four of their last six. When the match on one wrapped up, Jordan Rux and Attila Bucko were locked in a tie with Marcus Lunt and Alexey Grigorov on court two. The two duos held serve throughout the match until the match-tiebreaker where the Aggies would claim a 7-2 win to take the match 9-8. Rux and Bucko have now lost two matches in a row.
"We felt good about it," Knoll said of the doubles play. "We felt like we were playing better in doubles and we showed that today, relative to how we played them last time. We had a chance. The two doubles was holds all the way to the end and they played a way better tiebreaker than we did. We were a little passive in the tiebreaker I thought. The one team fought hard. It was competitive. We certainly did not leave the doubles feeling down."
In singles, the Bears were quick to jump back in the match as senior Dominik Mueller rolled to his seventh straight victory with a 6-2, 6-3 win over Alberto Bautista at the five spot. Mueller is 21-4 in dual match play and increased his own Baylor record of career dual match wins to 94.
"We have to think about moving Dominik up," Knoll said. "He has played so well lately. That was the guy that beat him when we played them before and he clearly controlled the match, so that is something we will have to look at. He is playing well enough to warrant moving up a spot or two."
After Mueller's win, Baylor would not be able to muster another point as Texas A&M would claim the next three singles contests to close out the match. First, 44th-ranked Dadamo beat No. 34 Rux 6-4, 7-5 at the No. 2 position. Then Grigorov got past Bucko at three singles in a back and forth battle with a 6-4, 1-6, 7-6(4) win. Finally, 14th-ranked Lukacs fell 6-4, 6-7(2), 6-3 to seventh-ranked Krajicek at one singles.
"Denes fought the whole way," Knoll said. "He wasn't quite good enough. You have to give Austin (Krajicek) a lot of credit for that, he served great."
The Bears will now wait for Tuesday afternoon to learn the opponents and site of their first and second rounds of NCAA Championship play. ESPNews will carry the 2010 NCAA Tennis Championship selection show live at 4 p.m. (CT) and the Baylor men's and women's programs will host a watch party for the event that is open to the public in the XTO room on the second floor of the Simpson Athletics and Academic Center.
"I feel like we have gotten better in the last couple of weeks and I think if we keep doing the things we have been doing and tracking in the right direction, I am pretty certain we will do well in the NCAAs," Knoll said.
Match Notes: Baylor falls 28-7 all-time in Big 12 Championship play. The Bears are now 3-2 against Texas A&M in the Big 12 Championships and are 16-32-1 all-time versus the Aggies. The two straight losses to Texas A&M this season mark the first time the Bears have dropped two in a row to the Aggies since matches on April 30, 2000 and April 31, 2001. It is the first time ever the Bears have lost two matches in one season to Texas A&M.
Players Mentioned
