Vanderbilt men’s tennis fell 5-2 to No. 42 Arkansas on Sunday afternoon. After losing the doubles point, the Commodores fought hard and kept the singles matches close, but it wasn’t enough.
Arkansas took two of three doubles matches. Arkansas’ Enrique Paya and Hunter Harrison defeated Max Freeman and George Harwell 6-1 in the No.1 matchup. Jeremie Casabon and Adam Sraberg fell 6-2 to Alex Reco and Nico Rousset to give the Razorbacks the guaranteed doubles point and end the third match, which was knotted up at 4-4.
Head coach Ian Duvenhage was disappointed with his team’s recent performance in doubles.
“We have to start over with doubles,” Duvenhage said. “We haven’t won the doubles point in weeks. We have to look at new combinations. I think we’ve stuck with the current combinations long enough, so we’ll look at that and start over.”
Marcus Ferreira was the only Commodore to win his first set, 7-5 over Maxim Verboven. The match was heated with many warnings given to Verboven by the line judge.
“I think Marcus handled himself extremely well,” Duvenhage said. “He stood up for himself without descending into inappropriate behavior. He told his opponent that he didn’t appreciate his behavior.”
Harwell had a close opening set on the No.1 court, but he fell 7-5. Freeman went down a set with a 6-4 defeat to Aleksa Bucan and Joubert Klopper fought a tight first set before losing 7-5.
Freeman was the first Commodore to fall in the singles portion of the match with a 6-4, 6-1 loss.
Casabon was the next Vanderbilt player to go down, falling 6-2, 6-3 to Adrien Burdet on the No.5 court.
Down 3-0, Vanderbilt needed to pull a few upsets in the second set. Harwell delivered, winning his second set 6-2 in dominant fashion.
Minutes later, Ferreira delivered the first point for the Commodores with a dramatic 7-5, 7-5 win.
A few courts over, Macsen Sisam was down 4-1 in his second set, but battled back to tie the set at 4-4. Sisam ultimately fell to Rouset 6-4, 6-4, to clinch the match for Arkansas.
Harwell and Klopper played on.
Klopper lost some early momentum and fell 7-5, 6-2. Harwell battled back in the third set, and he defeated Reco 5-7, 6-2, 7-6 to give Vanderbilt its second and final point of the match.
Vanderbilt returns to the court on Mar. 12, when the team travels to Kentucky for a conference match at 5 p.m. CST.
