Baylor
Texas
No. 4, Second-Seeded MT to Face No. 12, Third-Seeded Texas in Semifinals
4/22/2022 5:51:00 PM | Men's Tennis
Bears start Big 12 Championship play against the Longhorns
By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
Nothing like a little home-court loss to put a rather large chip on your shoulder. Especially when it eventually costs you a Big 12 championship.
Fourth-ranked Baylor (24-3) has a "little bit of a sour taste in our mouths" going into the Big 12 Tournament that began Friday at TCU's Bayard Friedman Tennis Center in Fort Worth.
Nine days after beating top-ranked TCU, 5-2, in a non-conference match, the Bears dropped a 4-3 decision to the Frogs at home to keep them from repeating the regular-season title they shared with TCU and Texas last year.
Baylor plays third-seeded and 12th-ranked Texas (16-9) in Saturday's 3 p.m. semifinal and would likely see top-seeded and No. 1-ranked TCU (22-3) in Sunday's 4 p.m. final.
"For us, we're going there to win, 100%," Baylor coach Michael Woodson said. "Our guys want to win Big 12 championships. I think we have a little bit of a sour taste in our mouths that, even though we split with TCU, they were able to get the regular-season title. It's not going to be easy . . . but I think we're really going there to accomplish one goal."
The Bears have dominated the Big 12 in the 27-year history of the league, winning 14 regular-season championships and 10 tournament titles, including the last two. They beat Texas in the final in 2019 and again last year, with Adrian Boitan getting the clinching point in both.
"We're going (there) to win this," said the third-ranked Boitan, who is 17-0 in dual-match singles, all on Court 1. "We just show up differently in these types of matches. . . . I'm just confident that if we control the controllables, we are going to have a pretty good chance to win this whole thing."
While Baylor had a first-round bye, Texas advanced to the semifinals by beating sixth-seeded Oklahoma State, 4-0, and has won five of its last six matches. Top-seeded TCU plays fifth-seeded Oklahoma in the other semifinal, with the winner advancing to Sunday's 4 p.m. final.
With Boitan "on the brink of history," a middle part of the lineup that "are going to play their best tennis under pressure and the big moments," and the bottom half "just consistently putting up wins," this is a Baylor team that will be hard to beat.
"There's just something about walking out on the court with the best player every match," Woodson said. "What he's doing is unprecedented. Having that confidence of, your best player is not as good as our best player, that trickles down throughout the lineup. And I think it really kick-starts what we're trying to do out there, especially in singles."
A returning All-American and still unbeaten in dual-match play this season, Boitan said it was actually a loss that was "life-changing for me." Playing for Romania in a Davis Cup World Group Qualifier last month, he lost to Roberto Bautista Agut, 6-3, 6-1.
Top 20 in the world and a quarterfinalist at the 2019 Australian Open, Agut was playing on clay courts in Marbella, Spain, "with the crowd being so pumped up," Boitan said.
"What I've learned is the gap between us and them, it's not that big," said Boitan, who beat Peru's Jorge Panta, 6-4, 6-4, in a World Group Play-Off in his Davis Cup debut last year.
"What they're doing really well is the small things. They use what they're owning in the big moments really well, and they're just really disciplined. They do not try to do more if they don't need to do more. That was really life-changing for me, because I felt it, I saw it, and now I'm trying to apply it, because I don't feel like right now I'm playing close to my best."
In Baylor's two previous matches against Texas this season, Boitan defeated Micah Braswell, 6-0, 6-3, in the Bears' 6-1 home-court win in February, and followed that up with a 6-1, 6-4 win over Braswell in a 6-0 sweep of the Longhorns in a conference match earlier this month in Austin.
While Boitan wants to bring home another Big 12 trophy on Sunday, his bigger goal is to win a national championship. Baylor lost to Florida in last year's final and is trying to win its first national title since 2004.
"That's why I'm here. That's why I will probably come back next year," he said. "I don't want to settle for the finals or the Final Four. For me, that will be underachieving."
Texas advanced to Saturday's semifinals with a 4-0 win over sixth-seeded Oklahoma State, while fifth-seeded Oklahoma knocked off No. 4 seed Texas Tech, 4-0. TCU, which has won six-straight after the 5-2 home-court loss to Baylor on March 25, takes on the Sooners in the other semifinal.
"I think it's about being confident, enjoying the process and just competing really hard together," Woodson said of the keys to postseason success. "It's hard, in that moment, in that environment, to be able to do it just for yourself. You have to be able to do it for somebody else. And I think that's something that this team does really well."
Live results and video streaming for the tournament are available at big12sports.com.
WACO, Texas – The No. 4-ranked, No. 2 seeded Baylor men's tennis team is set for the semifinals of the Big 12 Championship on Saturday, facing No. 12 and third-seeded Texas.
The Bears (24-3, 4-1 Big 12) will take on Texas (16-9, 3-2 Big 12) at 3 p.m. on the public courts at the Bayard H. Friedman Tennis Center.
The Longhorns bested No. 54-ranked and sixth-seeded OSU on Friday, winning 4-0 to move on to the semifinals.
BU previously faced UT earlier in the season, besting the Longhorns most recently at 6-0 in Austin for Big 12 play and 6-1 in Waco for non-conference play in early February.
Baylor will be the home team in the match. Against the Longhorns, No. 3 Adrian Boitan is 2-0, both against Micah Braswell on court one. No. 43 Matias Soto went 2-0 on court two as well, both against Pierre-Yves Bailly. Court three with No. 77 Sven Lah went UT's way in one match and unfinished in the other against Richard Ciamarra and Eliot Spizzirri, respectively. On court four, Marko Miladinović and Finn Bass both won their matches against UT, with Miladinović besting Siem Woldeab while Bass bested Ciamarra.
On court five, Bass bested Cleeve Harper in the first match while No. 70 Tadeas Paroulek bested Woldeab in the second. Juan Pablo Grassi Mazzuchi took the first match against Evin McDonald and took the second against Harper as well.
For doubles, the No. 6 pairing of Lah and Bass went 1-0 on court one, going unfinished in the conference matchup in Austin. On court two, No. 15-ranked Grassi Mazzuchi and Soto went 2-0 against Bailly/Woldeab and Spizzirri/Woldeab. Court three of Boitan and Paroulek went 2-0 against Chih Chi Huang and Braswell.
Boitan went 17-0 in the regular season, all on court one, for the first time in BU's history. He's the second to go undefeated overall in a regular-season schedule, with Igor Lovrak going undefeated, 17-0, in 2003 on various courts.
The match will not be livestreamed, though live scoring can be found here.
A full recap and final stats can be found on BaylorBears.com after the conclusion of the match.
There are no concessions available for the Big 12 Tournament. Fans may bring their own food and drink to the Friedman.
To stay up to date throughout the season on all things Baylor men's tennis, follow the team on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram: @BaylorMTennis.
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