FLUSHING, N.Y. – In one of the closest East Coast Conference men's tennis championship matches to take place in over sixteen years, the Queens College men's tennis team fell in a closely-contested match that lasted four hours to the score of 4-3 to St. Thomas Aquinas College Spartans Saturday afternoon inside the QC Tennis Bubble.
With the loss, the Knights moved to 16
-8 overall, while the Spartans improve to 17-7 overall and clinch the automatic bid to the NCAA Men's Tennis Tournament.
In a match that saw doubles competition last close to one hour with the deciding point in a tiebreaker, four singles matches were decided in tiebreaker fashion with two matches going into the deciding third set.
Doubles Competition
The Spartans struck first as the Knights' #1 doubles pair of sophomore
Omar El Shehawey (Cairo, Egypt) / senior
Moritz Borges (Hunxe, Germany) fell 6-0 to Eduard Simo/Ludovico Truffelli to the score of 6-0.
But the Knights would rebound to tie the doubles competition 1-1 as the #3 doubles pair of junior
Mariano Bibiloni (La Plata, Argentina ) / sophomore
Tim Ostheimer (Frankfurt, Germany) defeated the pair of Ody Papaioannou/Maximilian Kendler to the score of 6-3.
Down to the doubles match at #2 court, Queens' #2 doubles pair of junior
Kareem Rashad (Alexandria, Egypt) / junior
Lucas Demuth (Buenos Aires, Argentina) battled to defeat the pair of Valentin Baranyi/Tony Khamassi to the score of 7-5 to give the Knights a 1-0 lead heading into singles play.
Singles Competition
Rashad would put Queens up 2-0 with a two-set victory at #1 singles with a 6-4, 6-3 victory over Simo.
But the Spartans would trim the lead down to 2-1 as freshman
Philipp Uhde (Heidelberg, Germany) fell in two closely knitted sets to the score of 6-4, 7-5 to Ivan Laiz at #6 singles.
Borges would take a convincing first set victory of 6-2 over Truffelli but would need a second set tiebreaker victory of 7-6
(8-6) to give the home side a 3-1 lead.
But once again the Spartans would cut the deficit down to 3-2 as Bibiloni fell at #2 singles to Kendler in a first-set tiebreaker 7-6
(7-2) before Kendler closed out the second set with a 6-2 victory.
With the match down to the final two singles matches at courts #3 and #4, Demuth battled back from a first set loss of 6-1 to Lehmann before the Argentinian native forced a third set with a 6-2 second set victory. But Lehmann would tie the match 3-3 with a 6-3 third set victory shifting attention to the #4 court.
Shehawey battled back from a first set loss of 6-4 as he forced a third set with a 6-4 second set victory over Papaioannou.
The Egyptian native continued to fight back as he battled with cramps but in a single match that lasted close to three hours and struggling to sum one last surge of energy, Shehawey would fall 7-5 in the deciding set as the Spartans clinched the Championship point.
Selection Tuesday
Ranked #3 in the NCAA East Regional poll released on April 24th, head Coach
Somadi Druker and the Knights now shift their attention to Selection Tuesday (May. 3) evening as they await their next opponent in the upcoming NCAA Men's Tennis Tournament slated to start May 9
th. The selection show will air on
www.NCAA.com at 8:30 p.m. ET.
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