Southern Miss
UAB
Men's Tennis Claims 4-2 Victory Over UAB
2/12/2016 12:00:00 AM | Men's Tennis
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- The Southern Miss men's tennis team claimed a 4-2 victory over UAB in Conference USA action Friday afternoon at the UAB Tennis Courts.
The Golden Eagles improved to 5-2 overall while UAB dropped to 3-2.
"Our team got off to a good start by winning the doubles point," Head Coach Zubin Engineer said. "Jorman and Mikhail stepped it up after being down to clinch the doubles point."
UAB opened the doubles by taking the match at No. 1 when Luiz Pelipe Pinto and Christian Coetzee defeated Wen-Po Tseng and Chao-Yu Huang 6-4. Daniel Merker and Tarun Surat battled Mitchell Martell and Kenton Parton at No. 2 in a tight contest and came away with a 7-5 victory. Mikhail Esipov and Jorman Reyes clinched the doubles points with a tiebreaker win at No. 3 over Eric Komati and Stephan Vancurik, 7-6 (3).
UAB evened the match with a win at No. 3 when Komati defeated Huang in straight sets, 6-2, 6-4. Southern Miss got a point a No. 2 singles as Tseng downed Coetzee 6-4, 6-2. The Blazers added a point to tie the match at 2-2 after Pinto defeated Merker 6-4, 6-3.
The Golden Eagles then posted back-to-back win to clinch the match. Rakshit Rishi defeated Parton on court 6 with a 6-4, 6-3 win and Reyes added the final point for the 4-2 win on court 4 with a 7-6 (4), 6-1 win over Poysti.
"Wen-Po got the first singles point playing solid from the back and finishing the points well," said Zubin. "Rakshit played solid to outlast his opponent. Jorman is a great competitor and clinched the match. Tarun played aggressively from the back and when he got chances to hit big, he executed well. He was serving for the match when it was stopped. The team understands the importance of staying focused and the ability to compete on a day to day basis."
Southern Miss will travel to Samford for a 4 p.m. match on Saturday.
