SAN DIEGO, Calif. – The University of San Francisco men's tennis team picked the right time to do something it hadn't done in three years by defeating No. 60 Santa Clara, 4-2, for its first victory over the Broncos since the 2009-10 campaign.
The match took an ominous tone from the outset, as the SCU tandems of John Lamble/Ilya Osintsev and Matt Kecki/Tom Pham secured the doubles point, just the third time the Dons have lost the double point this season. USF had gone on to lose at Southern California and at Santa Clara the previous times two times it fell behind 1-0.
This day was different, however, as the Dons rallied from a 2-1 deficit to advance to Friday's semifinals with consecutive singles victories from
William Schumacher,
Thai Tu and
Nils Skajaa.
Skajaa found himself playing the decisive match for the second straight day. Yesterday, the freshman from Odder, Denmark defeated LMU's Nicholas Bjerke in a three-set thriller to give USF the 4-3 win.
"We had another great match today with
Nils Skajaa again clinching in 3 sets,” said USF coach
Peter Bartlett. “We lost our doubles point but the guys didn't get discouraged and really put their heads down and focused on the singles.
“We got great matches out of
Thai Tu at No. 1 and Will Schumacher at No. 5, and
Nils Skajaa did great job coming back from a set down and 4-0.”
The Dons will take on top-seed and 10
th-ranked Pepperdine in a semifinal matchup at 12:30 p.m. on Friday. The Waves beat USF by score of 6-1 on March 29 at the Cal Club.
Semifinal Matchups – Friday, April 26
#1 Pepperdine vs. #5 San Francisco
#2 BYU vs. #3 San Diego
*both matches at 12:30 p.m.*
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
DOUBLES:
1. John Lamble / Ilya Osintsev (SCU) def.
Nils Skajaa /
Bernardo Saraiva (USF) 8-4
2. Matt Kecki / Tom Pham (SCU) def.
Thai Tu /
Germain Bahri (USF) 8-5
3. Richard Bucalem /
Jonathon Knowlman (USF) def. Eugene Muchynski / Tomasz Soltyka (SCU) 8-6
Order of finish: 3, 2, 1
SINGLES:
1. Thai Tu (USF) def. #83 John Lamble (SCU) 7-5, 6-2
2. Ilya Osintsev (SCU) vs.
Bernardo Saraiva (USF) DNF
3. Nils Skajaa (USF) def. Matt Kecki (SCU) 2-6, 6-4, 6-3
4. Tom Pham (SCU) def.
Rich Van Hout (USF) 6-2, 6-1
5. William Schumacher (USF) def. Tomasz Soltyka (SCU) 6-1, 6-2
6. Germain Bahri (USF) def. Eugene Muchynski (SCU) 6-2, 6-1
Order of finish: 6, 4, 5, 1, 3
FINAL SCORE: USF 4, SCU 2
