Women fall to WVU, Men top Cleveland State in weekend tennis action

Over the last few weeks, tennis has been one of the busiest sports at UB. Though the women have been slowed by rain in El Paso, both squads hit a bit of a breather after only a single match apiece this weekend.

Women: Lost 5-2 vs West Virginia Friday

West Virginia had a strong outing against UB back in the fall, so I would have been surprised by a win here. 5-2 doesn't look that close, but as you can expect from me, I draw a number of positives from this:

• UB only narrowly lost the doubles point, falling 1-2 but in the tiebreaker of the final pairing.
• UB's two points came from the #1 and #2 singles spots.
• Both the #3 and #4 matches went to a third set and were only won by a two-game margin

I'm making no argument that UB should have won, or that this was a fluky result, but power-conference advantages don't magically go away in sports other than football and basketball, and you would completely expect WVU to have an advantage deeper in the lineup. That Stojanovska and Kotok pulled off wins at #1 and #2 is very good.

UB is still just 1-2 on the season, having only gotten one match in each weekend so far.

Men: Won 4-3 at Cleveland State Saturday

A UB men's team went into Cleveland and won! Even better, Buffalo did it by taking the doubles point, a relatively rare occasion so far this year. Cleveland State was previously unbeaten, and put up a fight after UB had a 2-0 lead.

Buffalo claimed the doubles point by a slim margin, winning and losing 6-4 at #1 and #2, respectively, only for Noah Hajdu-Andersson and Akhil Mehta to pull out a 7-6 victory in the decisive set.

Even after Sebastian Ionescu put another point on the board in singles, the doubles point proved big as Cleveland State topped Damien David (#1) and Pablo Alvarez (#3) in two sets. Johnathan Hannestad won in three and Hajdu-Andersson fell in the third, leaving Sergio Arevalillo in the swing match at #5.

That fifth spot was probably the closest of the day, as Sergio dropped the first set 5-7 before coming from behind with a 6-4 win in the second and relatively comfortable 6-3 victory in the match-clinching third. With the win UB moves to 5-3 on the young season.

Next Up

Both teams take a weekend off and aren't back til the second half of February. The men have a Big 4 home match Friday, 20 February against Niagara, and also bring in Youngstown State on Saturday, while the women will take on ASA College on Friday and likewise face Youngstown State the next day.

Go Bulls!