ORLANDO, Fla. – The No. 33/21 UCF men's tennis team won their fourth straight match on Sunday afternoon as they defeated Stetson 6-1 at the UCF Collegiate Tennis Center at the USTA National Campus.
"Gabe and Juampi took care of business this weekend," said UCF Director of Tennis John Roddick, "They were our bright spot. As a team, we've got to clean some things up mentally. Our doubles has been good all week. That was a bright spot last year and it's starting to carry over into this season, but we can't be giving sets away. That's where we need to see some improvement."
The match started out with a dominating win at the top spot in doubles as No. 7 Gabriel Decamps and Juan Pablo Grassi Mazzuchi blanked Sven Thiergard and Fabian Penzkofer 6-0. UCF sealed the doubles point with a win on court two where Trey Hilderbrand and Bogdan Pavel defeated Josh Laka and Tim Gennes 6-3. Court three went unfinished as Mikhail Sokolovskiy and Alan Rubio trailed Clement Hamel and Alexandre Hillhouse 4-5.
The Knights struck first in singles after splitting the first sets evenly with the Hatters. No. 14 Decamps picked up the victory at the top singles spot over Hamel with ease, winning 6-2, 6-0.
No. 59 Grassi Mazzuchi pulled the Knights within one of the clincher with his win on court two as he edged Hillhouse 6-4, 6-4. The win was Grassi Mazzuchi's fifth in a row as he moves to 6-3 this season.
UCF clinched the match on court five where Pavel was victorious in straight sets, besting Thiergard 6-3, 6-4.
Stetson went on to pick up their lone point after the Knights had clinched as Penzkofer edged Rubio in a third set super tiebreaker 7-6 (7-2), 0-6, 10-7.
Hilderbrand won a three-set battle to pick up the Black and Gold's fifth point of the outing with a 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 win over Gennes on court four.
Sokolovskiy capped the match with a win on court six, topping Laka 4-6, 6-4, 11-9. Laka had match point at 9-7 in the super tiebreaker, but Sokolovskiy was able to come back and improve his record on the dual match season to 6-0.
UP NEXT
The Knights will face No. 18 Texas Tech at 5 p.m. on Friday in Lubbok before heading to Memphis on Sunday for their first conference tilt of the season.
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