Chicago, Ill. - It was a long wait for the start of the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference men's tennis semi-final between the host Illinois Tech and visiting Concordia Wisconsin Thursday night at the XS Tennis Center. An 8pm start turned into an 8:30pm start. After several well-fought matches it was the number two seed Scarlet Hawks defeating the number three seed Falcons 4-1.
With the win, the Scarlet Hawks advance to the NACC Men's Tennis Championship game Sunday, where they will take on number one seed MSOE at 10:00am in Kohler, Wisconsin. The Raiders gave the Hawks their only conference defeat of the season, 4-3 on March 23rd in Milwaukee. This will be the Hawks sixth consecutive season reaching the championship game. They won the tournament championship in four of the previous five seasons.
To get to the championship match, the Scarlet Hawks had to get through a gritty, senior-laden team in the Falcons.
The first test was doubles play, and it wound up going the distance.
The Hawks number three doubles team of
Pol Dueso Guell and
Eduardo Lopez were first to the doubles finish line, defeating the Falcons' Renan Revite and Hayden Latus 6-2. The Falcons would respond by taking the number one doubles match, with Landon Sather and Joshua Klement defeating
Alexander Feher and
Avneet Singh 7-5.
With doubles play tied at 1-1, that left it up to the number two doubles match to decide which team would claim the lone doubles point for the 1-0 advantage heading into singles play. At first it appeared that the Falcons team of Ryan Bilan and Dylan Nadolski would run away with the match, jumping out to a 5-1 lead. But the Hawks'
Pedro Caroa-Accino Roca and
Hozumi Tada dug deep and won the next five games to take a 6-5 lead. The Falcons would break the Hawks winning streak and win the next game to tie the score at 6-6 and force a 7-point tie-breaker. The Falcons would open up a 2-0 lead in the tie-breaker, but the Hawks won the next four points for a 4-2 lead. The teams would trade the next two points, pushing the score to 6-4, Illinois Tech. Roca and Tada would earn the final point needed to win the tie-breaker 7-4, and the doubles number two match 7-6, giving Illlinois Tech a 1-0 lead heading into singles play.
The Hawks would extend their match lead to 2-0 when Feher dispatched the Falcons' Latus 6-1, 6-4 in the number two singles match. CUW would get their first point of the match in the number one singles match, when Sather erased a 3-0 deficit in the first set to Roca to win 6-3, 6-2, pulling the Falcons within one point at 2-1.
Tada had control of the number four singles match, running out to a 6-1 first set victory. But the Falcons' Bilan would get an early advantage in the second set, taking a 4-1 lead. Tada had to play catch-up, winning four straight games to take a 5-4 lead. After Bilan won the next game, Tada completed the comeback, winning set two 7-5, and putting the Hawks on the verge of the overall match victory, leading 3-1.
The final team point in the match came from the number three singles match. CUW's Revite took the opening set 6-4 over Dueso Guell. Dueso Guell responded by winning set two 6-2, setting up a third and deciding set. In a back-and-forth affair, it was Dueso Guell who came out on top, winning set three 6-4, and giving the Hawks a 4-1 match victory.
In the unfinished matches, Klement had a 7-6 (7-5), 4-5 lead on Lopez, while Singh had a 7-5, 1-5 lead on Nadolski when play was stopped.
Up Next
The Scarlet Hawks will travel to Kohler, Wisconsin on Sunday morning, where they will have a rematch with MSOE at 10:00am for the conference championship. The winner will receive the automatic conference berth to the NCAA Divsion III Men's Tennis Championships.
