SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Alex Maggs, Arda Azkara and Nicolas Prieto won singles matches to lead the way for UNM on day one of the UC Santa Barbara Classic.
Azkara took a 6-2, 6-4 win in the opening round of 16 in the “B” Bracket over BYU’s Dominik Jakovljevic. That win advanced him into the quarterfinals where he will play Noah Gampel of California, a 6-1, 5-7, 6-3 winner over San Francisco’s Stevie Gould. In the same bracket, Georgia Samaha lost to Austin Di Giulio of Loyola Marymount 6-2, 6-4. Samaha will drop into the backdraw and he will face Alex Lee of Stanford.
In the “C” Bracket, Maggs defeated Lincoln Bellamy of Loyola Marymount 6-4, 7-6 (7-4) and will take on Ben Keyser of Cal Poly, who won 6-4, 6-2 over Stanford’s Dean Stratakos. Also in “C”, Prieto defeated Anders Matta of Stanford 6-3, 6-2 and now faces Johan Gaspered of San Francisco, a 6-4, 6-1 winner of Cal Poly’s Carter Crookston.
In the “A” Bracket, Rafael Abdulsalam lost 6-3, 6-1 to Phillip Jordan of UCSB, and will face BYU’s Jack Barnett in the backdraw.
In doubles, both UNM teams lost, with Maggs and Azkara falling 8-7 (8-6) to Joe Leather and Bastiaan Weststrate of Cal Poly. They will now face UCLA’s Max Wild and Timothy Li. Samaha and Prieto lost 8-5 to San Francisco’s Nitzan Ricklis and Johan Garpered and will now face Fernando Fonseca and Carter Crookston of Cal Poly.