Southern Miss Halts UIW
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS – The University of the Incarnate Word men’s tennis team fell to 2-1 at home this season after dropping their Monday fixture, 5-2 against Southern Mississippi at the Mabry Tennis Center.
The Cardinals (3-5) headed into the match-up coming off of a pair of hard fought victories from Saturday, but were unable to keep a clean sheet at home against the Golden Eagles (5-3).
UIW took the first point of the day after winning two out of the three doubles matches, but went on to drop five of the singles games. In doubles play, Leonard Ivic and Philipp Raickovic defeated Wen-Po Tseng and Chao-Yu Huang, 8-5, in the #1 match while Tucker Brown and Joey Vatanadolik defeated Turan Surat and Daniel Merker, 8-3 at #2.
In singles play, the Cardinals fate was narrowly decided when they dropped to the losing side of two matches that went into a tie break. The first was at the #2 seed where Josip Smoljan missed out on a two set sweep after winning the first set 6-0, but dropped the second, 7-6. The advantage then fell to opponent Tseng in the third, after a 6-2 decision earned a point for the Golden Eagles. Raickovic was the second UIW player to lose a three set battle. Despite winning the first set, he lost against Merker 6-7, 6-2, 6-2.
The only Cardinals player to earn a point in the singles competition was Ivic who defeated Surat in three sets at the #1 position, winning with a 6-4, 0-6, 6-4 result.
The Cardinals are back in action on Friday when they remain at home to host Midwestern State University. The begin play at the Mabry Tennis Center at 3 p.m.
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