In some situations, two out of three is bad.
The University of Idaho men’s tennis team found this out the hard way, falling 7-0 to No. 73 Drake University Saturday, and 6-1 to No. 38 University of Nebraska Sunday.
The Vandals were able to pull out one victory on their heartland swing though, handling Creighton University 4-3.
The No. 66 Vandal loss to the Cornhuskers was the squad’s third straight, all to ranked opponents after getting shut out the week before by No. 45 Boise State.
Idaho Director of Tennis Jeff Beaman said the team was down after piling up losses, but knew it was all against quality teams.
“You hate to lose, but they’re all great teams,” Beaman said. “I was really disappointed about some results, but that’s the game of tennis. You never like to lose, and a loss to some good teams I don’t like but I can accept. The way our guys played in the first two this weekend and the level they played at just wasn’t where it needed to be.”
The Vandals opened against the Drake Bulldogs in Lincoln, Neb., but were unable to get a point off the team ranked seven spots below them. Idaho lost all six singles matches against Drake, as well as the doubles point, even though Cirstobal Salzar and Jose Bendeck won the No. 2 doubles match 8-7.
“As far as doubles go, we’re almost at the point where we’ve worked with every different pairing, and we’re still not winning the doubles point,” Beaman said. “It’s to the point where I’m just pulling names out of a hat for the guys to play together.”
Idaho senior, Alan Shin, proved to be the team’s sole bright spot in Lincoln, winning his No. 5 singles match Sunday against the Cornhuskers’ Erick Sock 6-3, 6-4. The Vandals couldn’t follow Shin’s lead, losing the other five singles points and getting swept in the doubles matches.
“I met with Alan in person a little while ago and since then we’ve worked on some stuff on how he competed and how to get to the level we need him to be at,” Beaman said. “He has improved over the last few weeks tremendously though.”
The score line was not indicative of the match quality, as two of the five Idaho singles losses went into a third set. No. 1 Marius Cirstea won his first set against Christopher Aumueller, but couldn’t hold off the Husker, falling 6-4, 5-7, 10-6. No. 6 Andrew Dobbs also lost in three sets 6-2, 2-6, 7-5.
After the first two losses Idaho traveled to Omaha where its fighting spirit prevailed, beating the Creighton Bluejays 4-3 after trailing 3-1.
Idaho lost its third straight doubles point, even with an 8-5 win at the No. 1 spot from Marius Cirstea and Abid Akbar. Creighton then won the No. 1 and No. 4 singles matches, before Idaho clawed back and got the win. Of Idaho’s four wins, two came by way of three-set matches, including a 1-6, 7-6, 6-1 win for No. 2 Abid Akbar.
“Winning against (Creighton) was a big step for us, we needed a win and to break out of that streak,” Beaman said. “…The guys that pulled through were mentally tired and it would have been easy to give up, but they wanted to get out of this losing streak.”
The Vandals return to action at 9 a.m. March 3 against Eastern Washington in Lewiston. They will also play Lewis-Clark State College at 2 p.m. the same day in Lewiston.
Madison McCord can be reached at [email protected]