Longhorns Roast the Buckeyes & Red Raiders Take The Luck Out Of The Irish, LMU Upsets Utah

After dropping a 4-3 thriller to Ohio State earlier in the year at the National Indoors, Texas reversed its fortune today and took out #11 Ohio State 4-1 in a match that the Horns seemed in control of just about the entire way.  Ohio State was 15-3 in doubles coming into this one but Texas got the point by winning at 2 and 3 by scores of 6-4 and 6-2.

With the nearly unbeatable Soren Hess-Olesen at 1, Texas knew it had at least 1 point in the bag and Soren quickly delivered that point with his 17th consecutive win with a 6-1, 6-3 thrashing of Chris Diaz.  The Buckeye junior had one opening in the match after going up 2-0 in the 2nd but Hess-Olesen came back and won 6 of the next 7 games to close it out.

Ralf Steinbach would get Ohio State on the board at #5 singles with a 7-6(4), 6-1 over Nick Naumann.  Naumann had 3 chances to take the opening set when Steinbach served at 5-6, 15-40 but Steinbach forced his way to the net on each of the 3 points and managed to put 2 away with Naumann going long on a lob on the other.  In the 1st set tiebreak after Steinbach got the early mini-break to go up 1-0, Naumann got overruled on a Steinbach serve, which happened right in front of the chair, and Naumann never really seemed to recover.

Clement Homs would extend the Texas lead to 3-1 as he closed out Kevin Metka 6-4, 7-6(4) at #6 singles  Homs broke Metka early in the 1st set and rode that break throughout the set.  Metka jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the 2nd and would serve for the set up 5-3 but on the deciding point Homs put a volley down at Metka’s feet and the Buckeye senior was unable to scoop it up which put it back on serve.  Homs jumped out to a 4-1 lead in the tiebreak but Metka won the next 2 on the Homs serve to pull within 4-3.  Metka’s usually reliable volley let him down on the next point as he pushed one well long and 2 points later Homs smacked a forehand winner down the line to finish it off.

Less than 15 seconds later the match would be over as Adrien Berkowicz would close out Hunter Callahan 7-6(3), 6-3 at #3 singles.  Callahan had his chances in the opening set and in fact served for the set twice up 5-4 and 6-5 but he just couldn’t close it out. Berkowicz dominated the tiebreak and for the most part the 2nd set.

The other 2 matches were abandoned with #2 on serve in the 3rd and Texas up a set at #4 and on serve in the 2nd.

Key stat of the match:  Texas won all 4 tiebreaks

Texas recap
Ohio State recap

FYI, the number beside the player’s school is the player’s Universal Tennis Rating as of March 14th.  For more details about UTR check out their website.