Thursday Recap: UCSB and Cal Poly to Meet in Big West Finals, Big Ten & WCC Undereway

The top two seeds at the Big West Tournament advanced to the championship match with No. 1 UC Santa Barbara shutting out No. 4 UC Irvine while No. 2 Cal Poly gutted out a 4-2 win over No. 3 UC Davis. UCSB and Cal Poly met in the regular season finale last Saturday with UCSB coming out on top by a 5-2 score in a match that was played at Cal Poly.

UCSB took the doubles point with wins at No. 1 and No. 3 then the Gauchos picked up straight set wins from Morgan Mays, Cody Rakela, and Teague Hamilton at 3, 5, and 6. UCSB was in control at No. 2 when it was abandoned due to the clinch while Irvine was up at No. 1 and No. 4 had just split sets.

Saturday Recap: TCU Hooks The Horns, Cal Men Take the Big Slam, Stanford Women Slam #1 Cal, Coastal Carolina Dancing

The first big match of the day took place in Austin between No. 18 Texas and No. 2 TCU. The Horned Frogs took the doubles point with a 6-1 win at No. 3 from Cameron Norrie and Alex Rybakov and a 7-6(1) win at No. 1 from Hudson Blake and Reese Stalder.

Texas turned it around in singles and claimed five opening sets to really put TCU on its heels. The only Horned Frog to win a first set was also the first one to finish as Cameron Norrie defeated George Goldhoff 6-4, 6-1 at No. 1.

TCU found its fire in the second set and took all six sets to send five of the six matches to a third set. Jerry Lopez put TCU ahead 3-0 after completing his comeback with a 1-6, 6-4, 6-3 win over Michael Riechmann at No. 5.

Ride Sally Ride - Mustangs Run Over The Pokes, Boise State Comes Up Big Again, Texas Takes Out Tulsa

The hits keep on coming and on today's playlists we heard the 1966 classic Mustang Sally after No. 36 SMU ran all over No. 5 Oklahoma State 4-0.

SMU jumped out to the early 1-0 lead after taking the doubles point with wins at No. 1 and No. 3 and then the Mustangs claimed four opening sets in singles. SMU's Nate Lammons made it 2-0 with a 7-5, 6-3 win over Julian Cash at No. 1 and then Hunter Johnson put the Mustangs a point away from clinching with a 6-4, 6-3 win over Arjun Kadhe at No. 2. Redshirt junior Tony Russell would bring it home for SMU with a 7-6, 6-3 upset win over Lukas Finzelberg at No. 5.

Monday Recap: Bruins over Runnin' Rebs, Mustangs Over Broncos, Tigers Beat the Jags, Stanford Plays a Match

Typically Mondays only have 1 or 2 matches but there were a handful of decent ones on the slate today with Cal Poly going into Boise and winning, Memphis winning at South Alabama, and UCLA getting a slightly tougher than expected win over UNLV.

UCLA won the battle of the abbreviations with a 6-1 win over UNLV.  UCLA was a little shorthanded with 2 of its top 3 players out of the doubles lineup with Mackenzie McDonald (14.91) and Martin Redlicki both participating in a Futures event in Calabasas this week.  After UCLA dropped the doubles point things were actually looking a little concerning but fortunately Redlicki was able to make it back in time to play in singles because otherwise the Bruins would have had to slide everyone except Mkrtchian up 2 spots in the lineup which could have spelled trouble for UCLA. In all seriousness UCLA probably still would have won no worse than 5-2 even without Redlicki.