Senior Jorge Delgado won his team-leading 14th singles match of the season on Saturday.
CORPUS CHRISTI — The No. 2 seed UTSA men’s tennis team returned to the Southland Conference Tournament Championship Match with a 4-1 win against third-seeded Nicholls on Saturday.
The Roadrunners improved to 12-9 and will make their fifth final appearance in the last six years and first since 2008. Meanwhile, the Colonels saw their season come to end at 14-6 overall.
UTSA quickly won the doubles points to take the 1-0 lead.
The junior-freshman combo of Max Stratmann and Tyler Brown won for the 12th time this season when they quickly blanked Phenyo Matong and Roy Knight at the No. 3 position. Junior Daniel Moreiras and freshman Martin Ayala then gave the Birds the point with an 8-5 victory at No. 2.
UTSA was able to carry the momentum into singles play.
Moreiras made it 2-0 when he came off the court with a 6-1, 6-0 win against Razvan Cojocaru at the No. 5 slot, but Radu Ionescu cut the deficit in half with his straight-sets victory (6-4, 6-2) at the top spot.
First-team All-Southland performer senior Jorge Delgado served up a 7-5, 6-2 win at No. 6 to give the Roadrunners a commanding 3-1 advantage. The El Paso native pushed his win total to a team-best 14 on the season, including an 11-3 mark at that the same spot.
Senior Rodrigo Morgado then put UTSA in the finals with a three-set triumph against Matong at No. 2. Morgado and Matong split the first two sets, but the Balneario Camboriu, Brazil, native collected the 6-2 win in the final frame.
The Roadrunners will face top seed UT Arlington at 3 p.m. on Sunday and the winner will earn the league's automatic berth to the NCAA Tournament. The Mavericks defeated UTSA, 4-3, last Sunday in the Alamo City.