ORLANDO, Fla. – The No. 19 UCF men's tennis team picked up a clean sweep in it's match over FGCU on Friday afternoon, collecting their second consecutive 7-0 victory.
"I think we took care of doubles today, that's something we've been working on in the past few days," said assistant coach Georgi Rumenov. "Number one did a fantastic job again, number two came back from two breaks down and three was much better than last time. Overall, doubles was the key to a good start today and we took that momentum into singles and won the first set on every court."
FGCU came out strong in doubles, taking early leads on all courts. UCF worked their way back and got the advantage in doubles with a 6-4 win on court one where Gabriel Decamps and Trey Hilderbrand topped Randy Wilson and Felipe Ramirez. The Knights sealed the segment on court two as Juan Pablo Grassi Mazzuchi and Bogdan Pavel came all the way back from 5-2 down to win 7-5 over Juan Montes and Pedro Maciel. Court three went unfinished and saw Mikhail Sokolovskiy and Kento Yamada were leading 6-5 over Magnus Johnson and Max Damm.
The Knights kept the momentum rolling in singles and took all six first frames. UCF tallied an early point on court two where Alan Rubio won set number one and was ahead in set two. Ramirez of FGCU was forced to retire in the second set due to injury, resulting in a 6-3, 3-1 victory for Rubio.
Court six was the first to complete a match and saw Sokolovskiy earn a 6-3, 6-1 victory over Maciel. The victory is Sokolovskiy's fourth in a row and gets him to a total of 64 career singles wins. With that mark, Sokolovskiy moves one shy of fifth place on the Knights' career singles victory list.
The Black and Gold picked up the clinching point on court five where Yamada advanced to a perfect 3-0 on the season, triumphing over Stefanacci 6-3, 6-3. The two sides determined they'd play out the remainder of the match.
No. 52 Grassi Mazzuchi was next to finish, collecting a 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 win on court three over Wilson to give the Knights a 5-0 lead.
The final two matches entered the third set after the match was clinched, so a 10-points super tiebreaker was played in place of a full frame. Hilderbrand got UCF to half a dozen points on the scoreboard with his 6-4, 6-7 (7-9), 10-8 win over Conca on court four. The final match to wrap up was court one where No. 16 Decamps bested Johnson 7-6 (8-6), 3-6, 10-8.
The Knights have strung together 14 consecutive points in their matches, earning back-to-back 7-0 sweeps. UCF went on the road and beat North Florida in their last match before soaring to another sweep against the Eagles. The Knights advance to 7-0 all-time against FGCU.
UP NEXT
The Black and Gold will continue their homestand as they host Stetson on Mar. 7 at noon. UCF will face South Alabama two days later at 11 a.m.
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