Men’s tennis falls to Utes
Losses in doubles put the Utah State University men’s tennis team in a hole from which they were unable to recover in a 6-1 loss to the University of Utah Saturday in Salt Lake.
Utah won all three doubles matches to take the doubles point and go up 1-0 to open the competition.
USU Head Coach Chris Wright said the Aggies were hurt when Utah had the momentum following doubles play.
“We didn’t play real well in doubles,” Wright said. “Momentum starts it all off.”
Moving into singles play, the Utes continued to win. The only victory for the Aggies came by Jason Trask at No. 5 singles.
Trask defeated Utah’s Jonathan Engelbrecht 7-5, 7-5, to give the Aggies their lone point of the match. With the victory, Trask moves to 3-0 and is the only Aggie who remains undefeated this season.
“It was a good win for Jason,” Wright said. “He played solid. Maybe not his best, but he got the win.”
Wright said there were close matches, but Utah played well.
He said, “There were a couple that could have gone our way, but [Utah] did what they had to do to win.”
In No. 1 singles, Utah’s Corrie Scheepers defeated Andreas Madersbacher 7-6, 6-2, and Aggie Clayton Thomas lost to Nicholas Yip, 3-6, 6-2, 6-1, at No. 2. In the remainder of the singles matches, Ute Daniel Carlsson was victorious over Jonah Nelson, 6-0, 6-3, and Utah State’s Steve Peterson fell, 6-4, 6-0, to Tobias Tangberg.
The loss drops the Aggies to 1-2 on the season.
Utah State will now have nearly two weeks off before it plays its next match Feb. 8 at Montana State University.
Wright said the team will use the time off to work on their game, especially doubles play.
“We’re going to focus on doubles,” he said. “If we can get the doubles point it will help going into singles.”
Having a long break between matches is not something the Aggies necessarily want, but Wright said they’ll try to take advantage of it.
“We have some things to work on and we’re going to spend some time on them,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll get them taken care of and go up [to Montana State] and bounce back.”