Thursday, March 6, 2008

Men’s tennis: TCU 4, Oklahoma 3

By Pegasus News wire

The No. 29 TCU men's tennis team fought to a 4-3 win over No. 35 Oklahoma on Wednesday night at the Bayard H. Friedman Tennis Center. With the win, the Horned Frogs improved to 10-1 this season, while the Sooners dropped to 4-4 overall.

"It's a match we should've won, which turned into a match we should've lost, and we were able to come back to get the win," said TCU head coach Dave Borelli. "For Zach (Nichols) to come down from 5-0 in the third set was very impressive."

The Frogs began the match with a sweep of doubles play. Emanu Brighiu and Adrian Simon led off with an 8-2 victory over Vlad Marinescu and Alexandru Joitoiu at the No. 2 position. The TCU duo of Kriegler Brink and Cosmin Cotet followed with an 8-4 win over the 28th-ranked duo of Andrei Daescu and Federico Chavarria, while Zach Nichols and Jack Seider improved to 11-0 this season with an 8-3 win over Ionut Beleleu and Ryan Thomas at the No. 3 spot.

After a TCU loss at the No. 6 singles position, Brink put the Frogs back up 2-1 with a 6-1, 6-3 victory over Joitoiu at the No. 4 flight. Brink improved to 10-0 in singles play this year with the win.

Oklahoma would bounce back to win matches at the top two singles positions to take a 3-2 lead in the match. Brighiu fell to Sergey Avdeyev by a score of 6-3, 7-5, while Cotet, ranked No. 27 nationally, fell to No. 21 Daescu by a score of 6-2, 3-6, 7-5.

TCU's Simon, ranked No. 115, won a gutsy 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 match over Beleleu at the No. 3 position, tying the match at 3-3.

With Nichols trailing 5-0 in the final frame, the TCU freshman rallied back to win five games and eventually force a tiebreaker. Nichols would take the tiebreaker by a score of 7-3 to give TCU the victory.

The Frogs, who have already matched their win total from last season, will return to action on Saturday at 1 p.m. at No. 19 Texas A&M.

Source: TCU

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