BATON ROUGE, La. – For the third time this season the Lamar University men's tennis team has stepped on the court to take on a nationally ranked foe. The Cardinals did so Sunday riding a four-match win streak but that came to an in Baton Rouge, La. The Cardinals (5-3) lost to No. 37 LSU, 6-1.
Although the scoreboard showed a 6-1 victory for the home team, the decision was a lot closer when looking at each individual match. Three matches had to go to a third set before being decided, and four sets were forced to tiebreaks before a point was awarded.
Big Red put up a strong fight against the favored Tigers. The doubles competition was close despite the fact that only two of the matches were completed. LSU picked up the first win at the No. 3 spot, and locked up the point when the nation's 17th-ranked duo of Jordan Daigle and Boris Arias defeated juniors
Nikita Lis and
Jeandre Hoogenboezem, 6-4, at the No. 1 spot.
The close setback at No. 1 was made even tougher by the fact that LU was locked in another close battle at No. 2 doubles. The team of
Michael Feucht and
Benny Schweizer had LSU's Justin Butsch and Tam Trinh on the ropes trailing 6-5 when the match was called.
The Bayou Bengals added two more points to their lead with wins at Nos. 5 and 3 singles, respectively, to take command lead, but the Red and White fought back with a victory at No. 1 singles. Feucht got the Cards on the scoreboard with his 6-4, 7-5, victory over Gabor Csonka at line one.
The Tigers got the match-clinching win at No. 6 singles when Nikola Samardzic edged out LU's
Juuso Laitinen in three sets, 3-6, 7-6 (7-1), 6-2. The final singles match to finish was just as close. Junior
Nikita Lis battled Butsch to a third set before bowing out, 7-6 (7-5), 2-6, 6-4.
The Cardinals will look to start a new win streak Wednesday when they travel to Thibodaux, La. to take on Presbyterian College in non-conference action. The match against Presbyterian is slated to begin at 10 a.m.
-LU CARDINALS-
