Cleveland St.
Buffalo Opens Home Season With 4-3 Win
2/1/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Tennis
BUFFALO, NY - The UB men's tennis team opened up the 2014 home schedule with a rollercoaster 4-3 win over Cleveland State Saturday afternoon. The Bulls were up 2-0 early before the Vikings rallied for a 3-2 lead. It would come down to a Sergio Arevalillo win at fourth singles to clinch the win for the team, which is now 2-0 in the duals season.
"Doubles went so quick that I think we were put to sleep a bit, but they (Cleveland State) are a strong team and they were taking it to us in singles," head coach Lee Nickell said. "We weren't as sharp as we had been mentally and that kind of hurt us a bit, but all in all our fight was there and our competitive drive was there and that's what took us through this match."
The doubles portion was dominated by Buffalo, who swept all three matches to earn what would become a very valuable point. The lead would move to 2-0 after a win at second singles by Sebastian Ionescu, who had earlier teamed with Pablo Alvarez for a 6-3 win at third doubles. The Vikings would strike for wins at first, sixth, and third singles in fast order to go ahead 3-2. To add to the pressure, Cleveland State would also force third sets at fourth and fifth singles after convincing first-set efforts from Arevalillo and Akhil Mehta, respectively.
Mehta would battle back from a 6-4 loss in the second set and had a critical break to turn a 4-3 deficit in the third set into a 5-4 lead en route to the victory. That would put the pressure on fellow sophomore Arevalillo, who trailed 5-4 in the third set to Joe VanMeter. He would force a 5-5 tie to go into a tiebreaker, and he would cruise easily to the 6-5 win after dominating the extra play.
"Akhil and Sergio had a couple of matches last year that came down to them and they couldn't quite pull through. For them to both be down today and come back just shows you what they're accomplishing here at this program."
After moving up to 69th in the ITA Top 75 polls earlier in the week, the Bulls will likely move up after the win Saturday. Next up for the team will be a pair of matches on the road next weekend. First will be Dartmouth on Friday morning, followed by a Saturday afternoon match against Penn.
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