ORLANDO, Fla. (UCFKnights.com) – The No. 33 UCF men’s tennis team swept the FAU Owls on Sunday night by a score of 7-0 to pick up their eleventh win of the season, tying last season’s win total.
“We played some good doubles again today, we’ve been pretty consistent in doing that,” said Director of Tennis John Roddick, “Singles was good. Gabe came out and played a nice match against a good player. Some other matches were a little up and down from what I saw, but the nice thing is that we dug through it. That’s something we’ve really been working on since January and February when we were struggling a little bit and get better at those things. That’s a good team, they’ve been in the top-50 this year so it was nice to get the sweep.”
Doubles play began with the Knights taking court one where No. 54 Bogdan Pavel and Trey Hilderbrand picked up a victory over No. 69 Jason Legall and Ignacio Garcia 6-4. The top pair for the Black and Gold has defeated five straight opponents and are 4-1 against nationally ranked duos. UCF would clinch the doubles point on court two where Gabriel Decamps and Juan Pablo Grassi Mazzuchi controlled their match with Mehdi Laalej and Gabriel Sidney to win 6-2. Court three remained unfinished as Manoel Alencar and Mikhail Sokolovskiy were trailing Kirac Bekisoglu and Thomas Guy 3-5.
The first singles point was claimed by the Knights rather quickly as No. 38 Decamps cruised to a 6-1, 6-1 win over Legall on court one.
Pavel won his match next for UCF as he defeated Sidney in straight sets 6-4, 6-2 on court four. The Knights clinched the match on court five where Grassi Mazzuchi topped Garcia 7-5, 6-1.
The two teams played out the remainder of the match. Picking up the next singles point was Sokolovskiy as he beat Alvaro Fernandez Horta 7-6 (7-0), 6-1. This was Sokolovskiy’s tenth win of the season, as he was the first Knight to climb into double digits.
Alan Rubio won his match next, edging Bekisoglu in a third set super tiebreaker on court two 4-6, 6-3, 10-3. Their third set was played as a super tiebreaker since the match was already clinched before the two began the final frame.
The final court to finish was court three as Hilderbrand battled through a tough third set to defeat Laalej 6-3, 1-6, 6-4 to seal the sweep. Hilderbrand picked up his tenth win of the campaign and is tied with Sokolovskiy for the team lead in wins. Hilderbrand’s victory was also his fourth in a row and is 8-1 over his last ten matches played.
UCF continues their reign of terror over FAU as the Knights now lead the all-time series 27-9.
UP NEXT
The Knights have some time off before hitting the road. UCF will renew their rivalry with the USF Bulls as the War on I-4 resumes in Tampa on April 14 at 1:30 PM. The Black and Gold will return home the following day to round out their regular season against the Memphis Tigers.
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