UCLA Men’s Tennis Edges Southern Cal to Advance to NCAA Semifinals

The UCLA Men’s Tennis team remains in the hunt for the NCAA Tennis Championship after beating the Southern Cal Trojans yesterday, 4-3.

If the Bruins can beat the Ohio State Buckeyes today, they will play for the title tomorrow.

Yesterday, UCLA took on a familiar foe, the Southern Cal Trojans. The Bruins got on the scoreboard first by taking the doubles point when Austin Rapp and Keegan Smith beat Jack Jaede and Laurens Verboven, 6-4, after Martin Redlicki and Evan Zhu defeated Brandon Holt and Riley Smith, 6-4.

As the teams moved to singles play, Keegan Smith scored UCLA’s second point when he beat Jaede, 7-5, 6-3.

Southern Cal got on the scoreboard when Daniel Cukierman topped Zhu, 6-4, 6-4, and the Trojans tied it up when Riley Smith beat Connor Hance, 6-3, 7-5.

Verboven put the Trojans ahead 3-2 by defeating Logan Skaggs, 3-6, 6-1, 6-0. That put the Bruins on the edge of elimination. UCLA needed to win on both of the final courts in order to advance.

Maxime Cressy managed to tie the match back up with a 6-3, 7-6 win over Thibault Forget, meaning the match would be won by the school who won on court one. On court one, Redlicki took the first set, 6-4, but dropped the second set to Brandon Holt, 4-6, forcing a match-deciding third set, which was all-Redlicki. He won the third set, 6-2, to score UCLA’s fourth point and winning the match for the Bruins.

Next up, UCLA will face Ohio State this afternoon. While today’s match will probably be a battle because you don’t fold over when a berth in the national championship match is on the line, the Bruins did beat the Buckeyes, 4-1, in Seattle on February 17th.

The difference today is that today’s match is scheduled to be played outdoors. That said, the weather forecast for Winston-Salem this afternoon is scattered thunderstorms. That could certainly force today’s match indoors.

With only two men’s matches on tap for today, it remains to be seen whether that would simply result in back-to-back semifinals or if one of the semis would get moved to the UNC campus like UCLA’s match against Michigan did the other day. Keep an eye on the UCLA Men’s Tennis Twitter account for weather-related updates to the start time and/or location of today’s match, but, as of this morning, the schedule remains unchanged.

Go Bruins!!! Bring home 117!!!