Baylor Eases Past Texas 4-1 + What's Coming Up

What was expected to be a pretty close match turned into a fairly routine victory for #2 Baylor as they pushed past #10 Texas 4-1.

Packed house at Caswell Tennis Center pic.twitter.com/4BNR8zOssW
— Texas Tennis (@TexasMTN) April 15, 2015

Baylor started things off by taking the doubles point with wins at #2 and #3 despite having Tony Lupieri and Max Tchoutakian playing together for the first time at #3. Lupieri's normal doubles partner Mate Zsiga did not play doubles but did play singles. Baylor's Diego Galeano was also serving for the match at #1 doubles when the point was clinched.

Thursday Recap: UNC Tops Duke, Ole Miss Fights Back, aTm Rings Up Another Win, Dawgs over Hogs

North Carolina won the big match of the day as they knocked off cross town rival #6 Duke 4-2.   The Tar Heels started off by taking the doubles point as its #3 team of Esben Hess-Olesen and Andrew Gores provided the clincher winning 8-5.  The senior duo had never played an official doubles match before today but were thrown together after fellow senior Oystein Steiro had to sit out with an injury.

Duke quickly tied the match at 1 with Chris Mengel picking up a win when Esben Hess-Olesen was retired with an injury when trailing 5-2 in the 1st.   Just a few minutes later UNC would retake the lead when Robert Kelly laid out TJ Pura 6-0, 6-1 at #6 singles.  I thought Kelly would win going in but I didn't think it'd be like that.  

Brayden Schnur would extend the UNC lead to 3-1 as the Tar Heel sophomore picked up his most impressive win of the year when he knocked off #11 Nicolas Alvarez 6-3, 6-4 at #1 singles.  Raphael Hemmeler would get Duke to within 3-2 after he scored a 7-5, 6-3 win at #3 singles over Brett Clark. 

Duke needed both of the final matches but UNC wouldn't even give them 1 as Ronnie Schneider came back from a set down to beat Jason Tahir at #2 and just moments later Jack Murray would finish off Bruno Semenzato at #4.  

What's Coming Up + Daily Top 10

It's hump day so that means it's time to look ahead at what's coming up over the next 4 days.  As you can see there are going to be more than a few good matches coming up and in fact Duke and UNC will jump start the weekend tomorrow afternoon.  For a full list of all the matches you can look in my live scoring links page.

The HUGE match of the week takes place in Waco on Friday night when #2 Baylor hosts #1 Oklahoma.  Oklahoma has already beat Baylor twice this season - once indoors in Chicago at the National Indoors and once outdoors in Indian Wells at the BNP Paribas Collegiate Challenge. There's a very good chance that this could be the 1st of 3 matches between these two teams just in Waco alone because not only is the Big 12 conference tournament in Waco this year but so is the NCAA Championships. They always say it's tough to beat somebody 3 times in a season - what do they say about beating someone 5 times?

I'll do in-depth previews with predictions on the ones in bold.