Kentucky Tennis knocks off Wake Forest; makes first Elite 8 since '11
The #8 seeded Kentucky Wildcats (24-7) defeated #9 Wake Forest (33-7) on Saturday at the Hillary J. Boone Tennis Center, 4-2, to advance to the NCAA Men’s Tennis Quarterfinals. Captain Millen Hurrion, a 5th-year senior from England, won the clinching match for the ‘Cats. Kentucky is in the Elite Eight for the first time since 2011.
Playing in front of a large home crowd, the ‘Cats dropped the doubles point but captured five of the six first sets in singles and never looked back. Wake Forest, a traditional power that has made two of the last three NCAA Team Finals (winning in 2018), gave UK quite a challenge, but the ‘Cats persevered.
Wake Forest won matches on courts 2 and 3 to capture the doubles point.
UK had some momentum early on court 2 with an early break.
The Demon Deacons got an early break on court 3 and two late breaks on court 2. They won deuce points serving up 5-3 on court 2 and 5-4 on court 3 to take the doubles and gain early momentum. Court 1 went unfinished at 5-5.
No. 1 Doubles: #55 Musitelli/Hurrion (UK) vs Nava/Maciag 5-5
No. 2 Doubles: Diallo/Lapadat (UK) LOST TO Banthia/Schnaitter 3-6
No. 3 Doubles: Draxl/LeBlanc (UK) LOST TO Matt Thomson/Ben Draper 4-6
Order of finish: 3, 2
Wake Forest led 1-0 after doubles.
Kentucky came out on fire in singles. Liam Draxl (1), Gabriel Diallo (2) and Hurrion (3) all quickly captured first sets for the ‘Cats. Wake countered with a set on court 4. Josh Lapadat fended off a set-point on court 5 and eventually took the first set 7-5. JJ Mercer won a tiebreaker on court 6 to give UK five of the six first sets.
Draxl cruised to a 6-3, 6-1 win on court 1 to even the score. The #4 ranked junior was off the court in 75 minutes.
Wake countered with 2nd sets on courts 2 and 3, forcing Diallo and Hurrion to go the distance.
Mercer, a sophomore from nearby Huntington, WV, picked up a 7-6, 6-1 win on court 6 while Wake countered 6-3, 7-5 on court 4, tying the overall match at 2-2. The performance by Mercer was particularly impressive, considering Wake has a deep lineup.
Diallo rolled to a 5-1 lead in the final set on court 2, but a lightning delay halted play with him serving at 30-40. Hurrion (4-3) and Lapadat (2-1) also led when the lightning warning stopped play.
After an hour and a half delay, the match moved indoors. Diallo needed only two points to win his match and Hurrion quickly clinched it 6-4, 4-6, 6-3.
The Cats’ will make the five-hour trip up to the University of Illinois where they will face NC State or #1 TCU on Thursday, May 19.
The semifinals are scheduled for Saturday with the finals set for Sunday. The individual singles and doubles tournaments will get underway on Monday, May 22. All matches will take place at the Atkins Tennis Center in Urbana-Champaign, IL. Draxl and Diallo will both compete in the individual singles tournament. Draxl, a semifinalist last season, will be the #4 seed.
No. 1 Singles: #4 Liam Draxl (UK) DEF #89 Jurabek Karimov 6-3, 6-1
No. 2 Singles: #21 Gabriel Diallo (UK) DEF Melios Efstathiou 6-2, 3-6, 6-1
No. 3 Singles: #83 Millen Hurrion (UK) DEF #61 Eduardo Nava 6-4, 4-6, 6-3
No. 4 Singles: Francois Musitelli (UK) LOST TO Rrezart Cungu 3-6, 5-7
No. 5 Singles: Joshua Lapadat (UK) vs Jakob Schnaitter 7-5, 3-6, 3-2
No. 6 Singles: JJ Mercer (UK) DEF Sid Banthia 7-6, 6-1
Order of finish: 1, 4, 6, 2, 3
NCAA Quarterfinal matchups
#1 TCU vs #8 Kentucky
#4 Ohio State vs #5 Michigan
#3 Baylor vs #6 Tennessee
#2 Florida vs #7 Virginia
I’ll be making the trip up for the team finals and providing updates along the way. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate my 40th birthday than watching UK play in Illinois! Go ‘Cats!
Discuss This Article
Comments have moved.
Join the conversation and talk about this article and all things Kentucky Sports in the new KSR Message Board.
KSBoard