After falling 5-2 to No. 12 Baylor, the No. 16 men's tennis team (8-9) defeated the No. 38 Miami Hurricanes 7-0 to split the weekend's matches.
"I thought we did a good job coming off a loss yesterday to Baylor," Duke coach Jay Lapidus said. "Baylor is a very good team and I thought we did a good job after that."
Duke took the doubles point Sunday as Nos. 1 and 3 both took wins. Philip King and Michael Yani at No. 1 won over Tarik El Bassiouni and Andrew Golub, 8-5.
Duke completely swept all the singles matches against the Hurricanes. Joel Spicher, playing at No. 4, was the first to win, handily defeating Joel Berman, 6-4, 6-2, to give the Blue Devils a 2-0 lead over Miami. Yani quickly dismissed Tomas Smid at No. 2 in the first set 6-3.
In the second set, Smid got up 1-2 before Yani blasted three shots by him to take the lead and tie the set at 2-2. Yani then went on to win the match 6-3, 6-4.
Yorke Allen had a tough first set against Jose Lieberman that went into a tie-breaker 7-6. But the junior easily defeated Lieberman later as he took the second set 6-4, to win the match 7-6, 6-4. Sixth-seeded Peter Shults' dropped the first set against El Bassiouni, but came back to win 4-6, 6-3, 6-4.
"We fought really hard in the singles," Lapidus said. "[Shults] did a great job also after losing in the first set. It's so good to see a guy lose a tough first set and then come back."
King's match at No. 1 was the longest of the day, as he struggled in the first set against Todd Widom. The first set went into a tie-breaker with King losing 7-6. King came back, though, and took the second set 6-4, and easily won the third set to take the match, 6-7, 6-4, 6-1.
"I thought Philip did a really great job because he played a really good guy," Lapidus said. "He played really well the first set and a half, and then he came back and hung in there and [Widom] just kind of broke down in the third."
Against Baylor, Duke lost the doubles point, including the No. 3 spot, where Alex Bose was paired with Zimmerman. The duo fell to Reiner Neuohr and Matias Marin, 8-6. King and Yani lost at No. 1 to Markus Hornung and Nathan McGregor, 8-6. Allen and Spicher lost 8-2 to Benjamin Becker and Zolton Popp at No. 3.
"I felt good about the way the doubles turned out," Lapidus said. "We will probably stick with the same thing on Wednesday and see where it goes from there. We've been trying to find the combinations and I think we maybe have it."
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