Lobos Edge No. 39 Wichita State, 4-2
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —The energy was electric at the McKinnon Family Tennis Stadium, and it wasn’t just the free bagels for the fans coming out for the 11 a.m. match. The University of New Mexico men’s tennis team (3-5) defeated Wichita State (6-7) 4-2 in a match lasting three hours and nine minutes. The doubles played out all three matches to determine the point-winner, and all but one of the singles matches were played out for New Mexico to clinch the team win.
This was the first match of the season in which the weather was nice enough to play the game outdoors, and the Lobos now improve to 2-0 at home.
The tone of competitiveness was set early in the day in doubles, as Wichita State was the first to post a win. Wichita State’s doubles team of Stefan Latinovic and Haru Inoue defeated New Mexico’s Tim Buttner and Casey Recci 6-1 to give the Shockers a one-game advantage.
New Mexico was not far behind in posting a win of their own in doubles as freshman Facundo Bermejo and junior Dominic West defeated Wichita State’s Andrea Caligiana and Marius Frosa in a similar fashion to the match just before, 6-1.
With the point now tied in doubles, UNM’s sophomore Stepan Holis and senior Ricky Hernandez Tong edged out Wichita State’s Murkel Dellien and Eddie Stoica 6-4. This match gave the Lobos the doubles win and a 1-0 advantage going into singles.
From that point on, the score was back and forth through the rest of the day, and it started with Wichita State’s Stoica defeating Buttner 6-4, 6-1. The momentum then shifted in the Shockers favor as Orel Ovil defeated Recci 6-3, 6-2. This win now gave Wichita State a 2-1 advantage over the Lobos, and this is where the New Mexico powerhouses came to life.
Holis did his part to ensure that the Lobos did not give another point to the Shockers and finished his match versus Frosa 6-2, 6-2, tying the it at two apiece.
With three other matches in progress, all eyes turned to Hernandez Tong as he had been battling with Haru all the way into the third set. The first of the three was in Hernandez Tong’s favor as he defeated Inoue 6-2. Inoue was then quick to jump back into the game as he fought his way to a 6-4 win to force the game into the third set. This is when the senior stamina from Hernandez Tong came into play as he jumped ahead of Inoue 6-1 to secure another Lobo point. The Lobos now led 3-2.
Based on the back and forth action that was witnessed earlier, the game could have gone either way as New Mexico’s West was, at the time, battling a tiebreaker and Bermejo was overcoming a first set deficit. Bermejo has been seasoned with neck-to-neck wins as the Lobos’ last match versus Pacific came down to him battling off a tiebreaker to help edge to Lobos to their win.
In this one, Bermejo’s match just so happened to be the deciding factor in Saturday’s game. The first set was a Wichita State win after the tiebreaker went in Latinovic’s favor. Bermejo made sure that this did not turn into a trend and answered back with a 6-4 win to tie the match. The Lobo fighting spirit came alive as all fans flocked to court one to watch Bermejo dominate the last set. The freshman led Latinovic 5-0 before dropping three straight games and suddenly it was 5-3. But, Bermejo took control of the final game, and he went on to win the set 6-3 clinching the Lobo win at 4-2.
The only other match was Dominic West’s, and West took a while to realize his teammate had clinched the UNM win, but did not hold back in excitement when he rushed to court one from court four to hug his teammates. All this excitement may have stemmed from the match that was taking place between West and Murkel. Although it was left unfinished, the match does not go unrecognized.
It seemed as though Murkel had all of the momentum after defeating West 6-1 in the first set. West battled his way back to a tiebreaker win in the second set to tie the match. The last point of the tiebreaker was the only quiet moment during the day, as the crowd fell silent to allow West the concentration to end the set, and erupted as soon as West did so.
The Lobos improve to 3-5 on the season and will attempt to continue their undefeated homestand on March 17th versus Rio Grande Rival, New Mexico State.