Rough start for Aggie men’s tennis team in BYU match
The Utah State men’s tennis squad survived a rough start to its regular season Friday, falling 6-1 to in-state rival BYU.
“I thought our level of play was good,” USU head coach Christian Wright said, “We knew it was going to be a difficult match, but we felt good going in and had good intensity. We just have a few aspects of play to make a little sharper.”
The Cougars, currently the 38th-ranked team in the nation, dominated on the court, winning eight of the nine matches and giving only two sets to the Aggies to push them to a 2-0 record to start off the season. Earlier in the day BYU also defeated Weber State 7-0.
The lone Aggie victory came off the racket of senior Alex Thatcher, who defeated BYU senior Daniel Hwang in three sets (7-5, 1-6, 10-4).
Wright said he was incredibly impressed with Thatcher, a Mountain Crest High graduate.
“It was fun to see (Thatcher) win that. He seemed flawless in the last set. He didn’t make any mistakes and put pressure on his opponent. It was great, especially for his last time playing BYU.”
Thatcher’s win gave the Aggies their lone point in the event. The Aggies were playing from behind most of the day, starting off falling 0-1 to the Cougars after losing all three doubles matches.
Jakob Asplund, a Sweden-born USU senior, started off singles play for the Aggies falling to Evan Urbina in straight sets (6-1, 6-1), leading to a streak of straight set losses for USU before Thatcher finished off the day with his victory.
Freshman Frederik Peterson fell to Georgy Batrakov (6-1, 6-2) followed by sophomore Sven Poslusny’s loss to Evan Urbina (6-3, 6-0). Senior Bryan Merchant dropped two sets to Cougar Spencer Smith (6-4, 6-0) as junior Lenny Whiting, a transfer student from BYU, suffered the Aggies final loss, losing both sets to Patrick Kawka (6-0, 6-2).
Amid the loss, Wright still feels he has a strong roster to carry on success throughout the season.
“We are very deep this year,” Wright said. “On any given day I can see somebody stepping up and being a spark, being the person who gets us over the hump. I feel good about these guys.”
Wright said the loss gave the Aggies needed play to get back into the groove of play. “We have quite a few matches coming up, which should help. Our last match was in October and we spent the next two months finishing up school and such. We should see some good stuff coming up.”
Up next, the Aggies will travel to Las Cruces, N.M. to take on Texas A&M Corpus
Christi Friday, Jan. 21, followed by the Aggies of New Mexico State on Saturday, Jan. 22. Wright has big expectations for the Aggies first road trip of the season.
“We’re excited about it. We should see some tough matches, but we’re looking forward to it,” he said.
– steve.schwartzman@aggiemail.usu.edu