Drake Edges UNM 4-1 in Tight Contest
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — In baseball, the tie goes to the runner. Unfortunately on Monday evening in tennis at McKinnon Family Tennis Stadium, most of the ties went to the Drake Bulldogs. In a ridiculously close match, Drake won five of seven tiebreakers, and that was just enough to give the Bulldogs a 4-1 win over New Mexico.
The loss dropped UNM to 4-6 overall, while Drake, in the middle of a month-long road trip, is now 14-8. The Lobos host Cal Poly on Sunday afternoon at noon at McKinnon in a big home day for UNM Athletics as Lobo baseball and softball will also be home at the Spring Sports Complex, while beach volleyball is also home at noon.
Of the seven tiebreakers, Ricky Hernandez Tong was involved in three of them, including in the deciding match in doubles. He was paired at No. 1 with Stepan Holis and they went against Bayo Phillips and Barny Thorold. UNM was down 6-5 and 30-40, giving Drake double set point, but a sparkling passing shot from Holis and a drop shot from Hernandez Tong sent the set to a tiebreaker.
Tied at 3-3, Drake took the lead at 5-3 after a mini-break, and UNM couldn’t recover, saving a third set point at 6-3, but succumbing finally at 7-4. That gave Drake a 1-0 lead despite a nice win at No. 2 doubles from Dominic West and Facundo Bermejo, who won 6-3.
In singles, a pair of matches ended quickly, making the score 2-1 Drake. First Drake added to its lead at No. 6 singles as Casey Recci of UNM fell 6-4, 6-1. West however, playing No. 2 singles, continued his hot hand, picking up his third straight singles win (and 14th of the season) with a 6-3, 6-0 victory.
From there, tiebreakers told the story. At both No. 4 singles and No. 5 singles, the first two sets in each went to tiebreakers. At No. 4, UNM’s Tim Buttner was on the wrong end of both tiebreakers. In the opening set, his passing shot at 5-4 clipped the net, and one point later he was down one set after losing 7-4. In the second set, again into a tiebreaker, he couldn’t keep opponent Thorold at bay. Thorold opened a 6-1 lead, giving him five match points.
Buttner responded, forcing an error by Thorold, and then hitting a forehand winner to make it 6-3, but Thorold’s cross court winner caught the inside edge of the line, and that made it 3-1 with three matches left, and those three were dandies.
Hernandez Tong and Holis were both in third sets while Bermejo was battling in a second set, down 1-0. Hernandez Tong picked up UNM’s first tiebreaker win of the evening in his opening set, forcing his opponent Vinny Gillespie back and forth along the baseline, eventually taking the final three points to win the tiebreaker 7-5.
Gillespie bounced back with a 6-0 win to get the match into a third set. Next to him on Court 2, Holis was in a barn-burner of his own with Phillips. Holis won his opening set 6-3, getting a key break of the big-serving Texas native in Phillips, but Phillips bounced back with a 7-5 win in the second set, pushing that to a third.
Bermejo was the other Lobo involved in two tiebreakers, losing his opening set 7-3. In the second, Bermejo was down 6-5 and never faced match point in serving out a 40-30 win to force the sixth tiebreaker of the evening. It didn’t start well at all for Bermejo who was down 4-1 early, the only point an ace. But, he won his serve to send it to the switch at 4-2, and then got another slice that his opponent Finley Hall couldn’t do anything with to make it 4-3.
After tying it, Hall passed on the right to retake the lead at 5-4, but that was it. Bermejo won both of his serves, including an ace, and then Hall mishit a forehand off the back scoreboard and suddenly UNM had life.
While that was going on, Holis went up 5-4 in the third in his match, and Hernandez Tong had a pair of match points to make it 3-2, but he hit his passing shot at 40-30 into the net, and then couldn’t handle a cross court return, and suddenly it was 5-5. He fell behind 6-5 before winning his service game to force the tiebreaker.
The tiebreak, like four of the other six, went to the change-over at 3-3, but Hernandez Tong then fell behind 5-4 and hit the net cord, the ball staying on his own side, and Drake had two match points. They needed them both. Gillespie hit into the net to make it 6-5, but with Hernandez Tong coming to the net, Gillespie squeezed a passing shot between Hernandez Tong and the line to clinch the win at 4-1.
The match took 3:11 to play, and had Hernandez Tong and Holis won, it probably would have eclipsed four hours as Bermejo and Hall got delayed and had to switch courts due to a light malfunction.
NOTE: The seven tiebreakers in one match was the most this season … West tied both Hernandez Tong and Holis for the team lead with 14 singles wins … the loss ended UNM’s winning streak at three.