By Steve Lansdale
AUSTIN, Texas — The No. 2 University of Texas men’s tennis team won every match en route to crushing No. 24 Cal, 4-0, Saturday at the Texas Tennis Center in the round of 16 in the NCAA Championship.
The Longhorns will head to Orlando, Fla., for their third appearance in the NCAA quarterfinals in the last six years, and their 16th overall. UT will face No. 9 TCU Thursday. The Horned Frogs, who reached the round of eight via a 4-2 win over No. 7 Mississippi State, have enjoyed similar success in recent years: the trip to the quarterfinals will be their 10th in program history and their third in the last five years.
Saturday’s victory over the Golden Bears [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]improved the Longhorns’ season record to 26-3, their best through 29 matches since 2010.
“It’s not easy to get to this point,” interim head coach Bruce Berque said. “To get to the final site was hard enough in previous years when you only had to reach the sweet 16. This year, you had to reach the final eight.
“These guys worked hard, and they competed hard just like they have all year, and they earned it. For these five seniors to have one more opportunity to play in front of their home crowd was really meaningful for them.”
College matches are called once a team clinches its fourth point, but UT’s win over Cal was even more decisive than the 4-0 score suggests, as the entire Cal team only claimed victory in a single set.
Texas started the scoring by winning the doubles point when Chih Chi Huang and Yuya Ito hammered Cal’s Jack Mollow and Ben Draper, 6-1, and the No. 5 team of Harrison Scott and Christian Sigsgaard knocked off Yuta Kikuchi and Jacob Brumm, 6-3.
No. 7 Sigsgaard grabbed the first singles win for the Longhorns at the No. 1 singles spot, topping Kikuchi, 6-2, 6-4. Sigsgaard actually fell behind, 2-0, before roaring back. He and Kikuchi stayed on serve through nine games, with Sigsgaard leading, 5-4, before he finally broke Kikuchi’s serve to win his match.
Scott doubled up Draper, 6-3, 6-3. The players stayed on serve through three games, but the trend then flipped, with three consecutive service breaks leaving Scott up, 4-2, en route to winning the firs set. The second set also featured three consecutive breaks, allowing Scott to claim a 4-3 lead before icing the set.
The victory improved Scott’s season record in dual matches this season to 18-5.
No. 12 Ito then clinched the match for Texas when he beat Molloy by the same 6-3, 6-3 score in the No. 2 singles position. Like Sigsgaard, Ito fell behind his opponent, 3-0, but then reeled off seven straight games to win the first set and go up, 1-0, in the second. Each player won a pair of service games to give Ito a 3-2 lead, until he broke Molloy and held serve to go up, 5-2. Molloy won his service game, but Ito then returned the favor to give Texas the victory. The win improved Ito’s season record in dual matches to a stellar 25-3.
The Longhorns and Horned Frogs, Thursday’s quarterfinals opponent, met once during the season, when UT beat TCU, 6-1, April 6 in Fort Worth.
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