Monday Recap: TCU Wins a 4-3 Thriller of Texas A&M

What a match it was tonight in College Station between No. 3 TCU and No. 7 Texas A&M. These two former Big 12 rivals went toe-to-toe for three hours and fifteen minutes and in the end the match was decided in a third-set tiebreak at No. 5 singles.

TCU Celebrates (Photo by Sarah Lane/Texas A&M Athletics)

Friday Recap: Noles Rally Past Hokies, Upsets Galore In the SEC, Tulane Outlasts San Diego, UNF Upsets Georgia St

Friday was a wild day of tennis with several teams coming from behind to pull out thrilling wins. The biggest comeback of the day took place in Blacksburg as No. 23 Florida State appeared to be down and out against No. 40 Virginia Tech.

Virginia Tech took the doubles point with wins at No. 1 and No. 3 but Florida State turned it around in singles and took first sets at one through four.

FSU's Benjamin Lock cruised to a 6-3, 6-2 win over Joao Monteiro at No. 1 but Virginia Tech answered with a 7-6, 6-3 win from Aaron Gomez at No. 6.

Sunday Recap: Hoos Too Much For Hokies, Texas A&M Gets Past Florida

Both Virginia and Texas A&M faced tough opposition on Sunday but both answered the bell and came out on top.  Virginia won the doubles point and then took all 6 opening sets and managed to finish the top 3 out in straights as Mitchell Frank, Ryan Shane, and Thai-Son Kwiatkowski all won.   Virginia played singles without one of its top 3 players as Collin Altamirano sat out due to a stomach bug.

Virginia Tech did show some fight down low but Virginia still managed to win 2 of those 3 with all going 3 sets.

Virginia recap

"I was pleased with the overall performance today," said head coach Brian Boland. "Virginia Tech showed why they are a top-15 team, if not better. They are solid from top to bottom. We had all the momentum, winning doubles and six first sets, but they never gave up. We had to overcome a little adversity today and I was happy with how we responded to that."

"Missing Collin and Alex (Ritschard) in singles, I was pleased with how the guys stepped up," said Boland. "Alex is continuing to get better and is getting close to being back. Collin had a stomach bug and was able to play doubles, but not singles today. I thought the team responded well to having to reshuffle the lineup a little bit."

Saturday Recap: Step On Back - The Pack Attacked

Going into today's match against #12 Wake Forest, NC State had played in 11 matches that finished with a 4-3 score with the Pack on the losing end in 7 of those 11 matches.  It was just last weekend that NC State had #16 Virginia Tech on the ropes but the Pack couldn't slam the door shut and watched as the Hokies #5 rallied from 5-2 down in the 3rd to win.

Today NC State finally broke through as they upset Wake Forest 4-3.  The Wolfpack took the doubles point with wins at 2 and 3 and then picked up singles wins from Simon Norenius, Austin Powell, and Beck Bond at 2, 3, and 4 to seal the deal.  The match was played indoors at NC State's 4-court indoor facility so the matches at 5 and 6 didn't go on until a court opened up.  Both were played out after the clinch with Wake winning both.

Saturday Preview - Illini/Irish, Bruins/Cardinal, Gators/Gamecocks

Compared to what we'll see on Sunday (Virginia at Baylor, Wake Forest at Texas, Vanderbilt at Ole Miss) Saturday should be fairly tame day with just 1 matchup between top 15 schools.  Below are the best ones that I saw on the docket so check them out if you get a chance.

#34 South Carolina (8-6) at #17 Florida (5-3) - 1pm est. - Live Scoring - South Carolina comes into this one on a 3-match losing streak which includes a 4-2 loss on Thursday to Auburn while Florida is coming off a tough 4-1 loss to Georgia. Florida is 4-4 in doubles while South Carolina is 11-3 with both dropping the doubles point the last time out. Here's an interesting stat that you don't see too often for a team at this level - South Carolina is 0-13 at the #1 singles spot this year.  Most likely that streak will stay intact tomorrow because I'd be surprised if Hidalgo didn't beat Koch.  

Bulldogs Bite The Gators, Auburn Over South Carolina, Big Green Beats Big Blue, Stanford/USC Preview

The big match of the day in Gainesville had a close doubles point but once Georgia got the early lead it never looked back and ended up pulling away for a 4-1 win.

The doubles point looked like it was Florida's for the taking after the Gators #2 team of Elliott Orkin and Maxx Lipman cruised to a 6-1 win while its #1 tandem of Diego Hidalgo and Gordon Watson jumped out to a 4-2 lead.   With Georgia's #3 team of Wayne Montgomery and Paul Oosterbaan also winning 6-1 the pressure would go back on Georgia's #1 team of Austin Smith and Ben Wagland and the undefeated tandem wouldn't go away as they took 3 straight games to go up 5-4 and were serving for the match.  There would then be 3 consecutive service breaks to send the match to a tiebreak. After falling behind 4-2 and 6-4, Georgia's Austin Smith and Ben Wagland would fight off 2 match points and eventually win the last 3 points to take the tiebreak 9-7 in a match that took 57 minutes.