LOS ANGELES - In the doubles competition of Sunday's NCAA Championship quarterfinals at the Los Angeles Tennis Center, the men's tennis team seemed unintimidated by the fact that its opponent, UCLA, was not only the host school for this event, but also the No. 1 seed. With 8-6 victories at both the No. 1 and 2 positions, 10th-ranked Duke captured the doubles point and an early 1-0 lead.
But then came singles.
Sven Koehler's 6-2, 6-2 victory at the No. 6 spot put the Blue Devils briefly up 2-0, but just as the senior was putting away Jason Cook, his teammates were falling one by one to their Bruin opponents. Straight-set triumphs at the No. 1, 3, 4 and 5 positions gave UCLA a 4-2 win and a spot in the national semifinals, leaving Duke (22-8) to ponder what might have been.
"After doubles, where we played really well-I thought the best we'd played all year-we were all fired up and excited," Blue Devil coach Jay Lapidus said. "I'm not exactly sure what happened, we just did not play well in singles. I think we got all excited about the prospect of winning.
"We needed to relax, but we just put too much pressure on ourselves. We were at UCLA and there was a big crowd making a lot of noise and I think we just short-circuited. They were just so excited by the thought of winning. But I've got to hand it to [UCLA]. They played very well in singles and just blew us out of the water."
At No. 1 doubles, the eighth-ranked duo of Doug Root and Jordan Wile upset Kevin Kim and Eric Lin, ranked No. 2 in the country, for the second time this year. Koehler and Dmitry Muzyka, ranked ninth in the nation, downed Alex Decret and Eric Taino at the second slot.
Root, ranked 40th nationally, fell to No. 10 Taino at No. 1 singles, 6-2, 6-2, while Wile lost to 51st-ranked Matt Breen at No. 5 by an identical score. Muzyka, No. 68 in the country, was beaten by the 34th-ranked Kim, 6-3, 6-4, and Adam Gusky fell to Vince Allegre, 6-1, 6-4, at third and fourth singles, respectively.
Lapidus said he was both surprised and disappointed by his team's singles play-particularly by Muzyka and Wile's losses, since both players had been consistently winning points for Duke at Nos. 3 and 5.
"It was disconcerting to me because of the way we played in singles all year long," Laidus said. "I believe they're not that much better than us; we were just overanxious. If you had told me beforehand that we would have lost like that at those two positions, I wouldn't have believed you."
The Blue Devils reached the quarterfinals by knocking off No. 8 Louisiana State 4-1 on Saturday at UCLA's Sunset Courts. While Gusky and Porter Jones quickly disposed of Pedro Escudero and Gus Fernandes at No. 3 doubles, 8-2, their Duke teammates were embroiled in tight matches. Koehler's winner on a return of serve finally gave him and Muzyka an 8-6 victory, just as the No. 1 doubles match was about to go into a tiebreaker.
In singles, Gusky easily handled Zak Blanchard, 6-3, 6-2, while Wile had a 17-match winning streak snapped when he lost to Eduardo Villagomez, 6-4, 6-2. Moments after the Blue Devils' Alberto Brause, 41st in the nation, put away No. 29 Michal Chmela, 6-4, 6-3, at the second slot, Muzyka had a match point on his serve against Tom Hand and a chance to send Duke into the quarterfinals. Hand called the potential winning shot long and, after the official declined to overrule him, won the next two points to tie the second set at 5-5. Muzyka, however, quickly broke back in the next game, and eventually finished Hand off on his third match point.
While the top eight teams in the country received automatic bids to the NCAA Championship-which Stanford, seeded No. 3, won for the third straight year-Duke had to capture the Region II Tournament in Atlanta to earn a trip to LA. The top seed, the Blue Devils were nearly upset by host school Georgia Tech in the first round on May 9.
Duke took the doubles point against the Yellow Jackets, but faltered in singles. It took come-from-behind, three-set victories from both Root and Muzyka to give the Blue Devils a 4-3 win and a semifinal match against a familiar opponent: Clemson.
The Tigers had upset Duke, 4-3, in the finals of the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament on Apr. 20, after losing to the Blue Devils by an identical score during the regular season. Just as it did in the ACCs, Duke lost the doubles point at the Regional, but straight-set victories by Koehler-in his second singles match since returning from a fractured wrist suffered in February-and Gusky, who avenged an earlier defeat by Theo Neto, helped lead the Blue Devils to a 4-1 win.
"I think that was a turning point, the singles were, in terms of the postseason for us," Lapidus said. "The guys picked up their level of concentration. We ended up beating them badly and it gave us a lot of confidence going into South Carolina and also LSU."
Duke easily handled the Gamecocks 4-1 in the Regional final to earn its sixth-straight NCAA berth.
Several Blue Devil players also garnered individual spots in the tournament. Root and Brause both competed in the first round of the NCAA Singles Championship on Wednesday. Root faced USC's George Bastl, while Brause met UCLA's Kim. Today, Root and Wile will take on Texas' Nick Crowell and Paul Martin, who they lost to earlier in the season, in the first round of doubles competition. Root and Wile are seeded in the five through eight bracket, which guarantees them All-America honors.
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