ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. --- UNLV and New Mexico waged a fun battle, but in the end, the Rebels were too much for an undermanned and under-the-weather Lobo squad, taking a 4-0 win at McKinnon Family Tennis Stadium.
With the win, UNM moved to 12-6 overall and 3-2 in the Mountain West, while UNM had its two-match win streak snapped, dropping to 8-13 and 1-4 in the league.
No. 57 Snitari for UNLV did what no one had done in over four years, win at No. 1 at UNM, as the Lobos had won 30 in a row dating back to January 23, 2022. However, Snitari took a 6-2, 6-0 win to make it 2-0 UNLV. The Rebels added wins at Nos. 2 and 6 singles for the clinch.
UNM’s Prachar did take an opening set win at No. 4 over Michael Kouame, but couldn’t close out the win before UNLV got the clinching singles win. Alberto Perez, who was very much under-the-weather, forced a third set with a 6-4 win in his second against Maksymchuk.
The doubles point was a tight affair with all three matches finishing within a minute of each other.
No. 2 doubles finished first with UNLV’s Marko Maksimovic and Illia Maksymchuk edging out Tyler Waddock and Connor Dils, who were broken in the second game and could never quite make up that difference. It was the opposite on court 1, where Alberto Perez and Jakub Prachar took an early break and rode that to a 6-4 win over Illia Snitari and Arda Karakas. UNLV’s pairing was ranked No. 73 in the latest ITA rankings and was undefeated in the spring at 11-0 before the Lobos top tandem took them down.
UNLV took the point 6-4 as Michael Kouame and Taiyo Hirano won over Philip Bosin and Dario Ciobotaru. The key spot came when the Lobo pair broke serve to go up 4-3, but were broken right back. UNLV served a love game and then broke again for the opening point.