Feb. 12 marked the second time in the past three years that the Vanderbilt Commodores (1-3) and the Rice Owls (3-4) squared off on Super Bowl Sunday. Coming into the matchup, the Commodores had a 2-3 record all-time against the Owls. In this year’s edition, Vanderbilt came away with a huge victory, beating Rice 6-1.

The opening serve of doubles play was at 12 p.m. CST. In the first doubles match of the day, Rice’s Trinity Grear and Wes Barnett topped Vanderbilt’s Siim Troost and Paul Wang, 6-4. The Commodores evened things up with a strong performance from Michael Ross and Nathan Cox, as they defeated Campbell Salmon and Santiago Navaroo, 6-4.

All eyes then turned to Court 3, where Macsen Sisam and Joubert Klopper came up big for Vanderbilt, beating Eduardo Marais and Kabeer Kapasi, 7-5 to secure the doubles point.

The afternoon then proceeded to singles play, where Vanderbilt won all but one of their matches. Big victories from Klopper, Ross, Troost, Sisam, Emir Sendogan and Marcus Ferreira gave the Commodores five more points, and the 6-1 victory overall.

Despite a strong performance, head coach Ian Duvenhage was critical of his team.

“With the exception of a couple of matches, we didn’t play very well today,” Duvenhage said. “But we competed well, and that is very important for us to remember for the rest of the season. It is more important how we compete than how well we play,” 

Vanderbilt has a huge weekend ahead of them, as they will host Florida Atlantic University at 12 p.m. on Feb. 18, Oklahoma State at 11 a.m. on Feb. 19 and Belmont at 3:30 p.m. on Feb. 19.