Playing against a team that hadn’t lost a home match since February, Duke accomplished something few teams have been able to do all year in Miami.
The Blue Devils made easy work of Miami at the Neil Schiff Tennis Center Friday, dispatching the Hurricanes 7-0. The victory marked Duke’s third consecutive road win against an ACC opponent.
“This was a solid road win against a tough Miami team,” head coach Ramsey Smith said. “Our guys are really focused right now and all seven guys are competing well.”
The Blue Devils (13-5, 5-1 in the ACC) got off to a strong start as the pair of Bruno Semenzato and Daniel McCall cruised to an 8-2 victory in doubles. The team then sealed the doubles point as Jason Tahir and Josh Levine won their match against Miami's Gabriel Flores and Diego Soto 8-4.
“We started off with some really good doubles, which was some of the better doubles we’ve played in our last couple matches,” Smith said.
Duke carried over its hot play from doubles to the singles round, as they won the first set on all six courts.
Fred Saba and Raphael Hemmeler were the first ones to win their singles matches for the Blue Devils. Saba won his match against Flores 6-4, 6-1 and Hemmeler took down Soto 6-3, 6-1.
Josh Levine—Duke's fifth-seed—then sealed the victory, taking down Daniel Shebshayevich 6-3, 6-2.
“We got up early in our singles matches and were able to finish them off,” Smith said.
After the match was clinched, the Blue Devils didn’t let up, as wins by T.J. Pura, No. 48 Tahir, and No. 72 Semenzato completed the sweep—their first sweep against the Hurricanes (12-7, 2-4) since 2002.
The entire Duke squad has stepped up in the past two weeks to give Duke its three-match win streak, but the play of Tahir has been especially impressive for the Blue Devils.
Tahir, taking over as Duke’s No. 1 seed after the loss of Michael Redlicki, has stepped up immensely for the team, winning all three of his starts from the top seed.
“He looks really comfortable on the court right now,” Smith said. “He’s in a really good mindset, he’s focusing on competing and digging for every point and it’s just a huge difference from the very beginning of the year.”
The return of freshman T.J. Pura from mono has also given the Blue Devils a big boost. Pura’s return not only gives the team seven players they can rotate in the lineup, but Pura has also performed exceptionally on the courts, as he has yet to drop a single match in all the dual matches he’s played this year.
“This was kind of his first big test,” Smith said. “He got off to a little bit of a shaky start, down 2-0 in the first set, and then he started getting comfortable with the conditions and really started turning things around and played some good tennis.”
When the team steps up across the ladder from the No. 1 spot to the No. 6 spot, Duke has proven they are tough for any team to beat, even without Redlicki.
The Blue Devils face a difficult test against Florida State Sunday, but if they put in a similar team effort as the one they showed against Miami, they should come away with a similar result against the Seminoles.
“I think we’re really focused as a team right now,” Smith said. “I told the guys after the match that I feel like we’re competing really well at every single spot. The team seems to be on a bit of a mission right now and I like where we are. We’ve got another tough [match] on Sunday and we’ll try to finish the weekend strong.”
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