| Senior Andre Moreira won his doubles and singles matches on Friday. |
SAN ANTONIO ? The UTSA men's tennis team fell, 4-3, to Marquette (5-2) in a nail-biter on Friday afternoon at the UTSA Tennis Center. The loss drops the Roadrunners to 2-5 on the season.
UTSA jumped out to the early 1-0 lead by sweeping all three of the doubles matches. Senior Andre Moreira paired up with freshman Pedro Zanotelli in No. 1 doubles to knock out Trent Hagan and Stephen Shao, 8-4. Matching the No. 1 team, sophomore Max Stratmann and junior Jorge Delgado landed an 8-4 win over Mark Rutherford and Jonathan Scherwin at No. 3.
Rounding out doubles play, junior Rodrigo Morgado and sophomore Daniel Morieras beat Niko Boulieris and Dusan Medan, 8-6, at No. 2.
"We played phenomenal doubles," head coach Dr. Oliver Trittenwein said. "We're capable of playing great doubles and today was the first day I've actually seen it all on the court. The guys were doing exactly what they needed to be doing on the court today."
The Golden Eagles quickly rebounded, however, taking the first two singles matches to go ahead, 2-1. In their No. 2 matchup, Zanotelli fell to Medan in straight sets, 6-4, 7-6 (7-5). Shao defeated Stratmann at No. 4, 7-5, 6-3, shortly after.
It took the other four singles matches three sets to decide the winner. At No. 3, Moreira quickly dropped the first set, then rebounded to take the last two sets and the match, 2-6, 6-4, 6-3, tying the team score at 2-all.
Marquette snatched the lead back when Rutherford finished off Delgado at No. 5 singles, 6-4, 5-7, 6-3. It took a third-set tie-break to decide the No. 6 spot where Moreiras outlasted Scherwin for the win, 7-5, 4-6, 7-6 (7-0).
With the team score tied 3-3, it all came down to the No. 1 singles matchup between Morgado and Hagan. Morgado dropped the first set, 3-6. He battled back in the second, taking the set, 7-5. The third set was back and forth before Morgado fell to Hagan, 7-5.
"If the teams are evenly matched like today and they both show up to play, you're going to see a close one like you did today," Trittenwein said. "These matches are good, in a sense, because you want the guys to play in these tight matches. Obviously we would have liked it to go the other way, but I think it was a good experience for my guys.
"You don't want to go into the conference season having won and lost all of your matches by a big margin. If we get into these sort of matches in conference, it's good for them to have the experience of having played in some close ones early in the season."
The Roadrunners will be back in action on Sunday at 10 a.m. when they square off against the No. 63-ranked Nebraska Cornhuskers at the UTSA Tennis Center.