The Cavaliers men's tennis team completed an undefeated run through ACC play as they dispatched both Duke and North Carolina this weekend. With the wins, Virginia also notched its fourth consecutive ACC regular season title. The 10th and 11th ACC wins for Virginia were much closer than the scores indicate as the Cavaliers had to grind out wins in both matches.
"We've had a great weekend, beating two of the best teams in the conference in Duke and North Carolina pretty convincingly," Virginia coach Brian Boland said Today's match had some momentum changes, so the score wasn't reflective of how close the match was at times."
No. 2 Virginia (23-3, 11-0 ACC) came out strong Friday against No. 16 Duke (14-8, 7-3 ACC), winning all three doubles matches to take the first point.
The doubles match on the first court was very competitive, with Virginia's No. 2, comprised of juniors Treat Huey and Somdev Devvarman, going against the No. 5 team from Duke of Joey Atas and David Goulet. Devvarman used a shot down the line to put the Cavaliers up a break in the second game, but Duke picked up a break in the next game, and both teams held serve from then out, forcing a tiebreaker. Huey and Devvarman pulled out the match in the tiebreaker, 7-2.
In singles, the Cavaliers won all of the matches except for the third court. A questionable call occurred when Atas was rewarded a point in his tiebreak with Huey in the second set after the umpire ruled that a fan had distracted Atas.
"It wasn't a very good call, I didn't think." Huey said. "It's rough; the fans were cheering really loud and I loved it. I encouraged them to cheer really loud. I felt like the [Duke] assistant coach was just all over the ref to get a point and she just felt like she really needed to give them a point penalty after she'd warned [the fans] a couple of times."
The match against No. 5 North Carolina (21-2, 9-2 ACC) was also much closer than the score indicated. Once again, Virginia got off to a great start by winning all three doubles matches. Devvarman and Huey came back from down a break to win their match 8-6 and set the tone for the rest of the Cavaliers.
"Treat and I took the energy to another level." Devvarman said. "We came out with some big shots to break them, and once we go the break we started dominating the whole match."
Devvarman carried the momentum from singles into his doubles match, defeating junior Benjamin Carlotti 6-1, 6-2. Freshman Houston Barrick won his match 6-3, 6-4 to get Virginia within a point of winning the match; however, redshirt freshman Dominic Inglot lost his match, and Huey and freshman Lee Singer both lost their first sets, putting the match in doubt.
But Huey ended up being the deciding factor in the match. He and freshman Chris Kearney wore each other down, including several points where both players scrambled all over the court to play balls hit to the corners. Huey used a backhand down the line with the scored tied 3-3 in the third set to pick up a break on Kearney and went on to win the match 3-6, 6-3, 6-3.
The win gave Virginia the No. 1 seed in the ACC tournament that begins later this week and puts a big bulls-eye on the Cavaliers heading into their next match.
"We're not sharing the title with anyone, and that's how we like it." Devvarman said.
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