April 19, 2006
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WACO, Texas - The No. 6 Baylor men's tennis team kept its conference hopes alive tonight with a 4-3 victory over No. 4 Texas that went all the way down to the wire. Baylor gave Texas its first conference loss dropping the Longhorns to a 5-1 Big 12 record. The Bears increase to 4-1 with two conference matches left in the regular season.
After losing the doubles point, the Bears started singles action down 0-1. Will Ward evened the score with a win on court four over Texas' Milan Mihailovic in straight sets 6-3, 6-1.
Next, No. 9 Lars Poerschke put the Bears one more step ahead defeating No.11 Travis Helgeson 6-3, 7-5 in the top spot. With Baylor up 2-1, Texas fought back taking wins on courts two and three.
No. 54 Roger Gubser defeated Baylor's No. 50 Matija Zgaga 7-5, 6-3 in the number two spot. No. 41 Michal Kokta fought hard against Texas' No. 44 Callum Beale but could not hang on to the tie-breaker dropping the match 6-3, 7-6(3).
With Texas up 3-2, the pressure fell to courts five and six where Matt Brown and Vladimir Portnov battled in split-sets for the Bears.
No. 115 Brown won his first set 6-4 but Miguel Reyes Varela came back taking set two 6-3. Brown battled in the third set and was quickly up 3-0 but Varela gained some ground before Brown shut him out 6-3 to tie the score 3-3.
The match fell to the shoulders of Vladimir Portnov on court six. After falling in the first set 6-2, Portnov battled back the entire second set splitting with a 6-4 win. The third set was neck-in-neck throughout with the score reaching deuce in almost every game.
With the score tied 5-5 in the third set, the score reached deuce again, this time the advantage and the game went to Texas. Up 6-5, it looked grim for the Bears, but Portnov once again fought out of a deuce situation and tied it up once again 6-6.
The match came down to a tiebreaker. Portnov lost the first two points giving Texas the advantage but tied it up again making the tiebreak score 2-2. Portnov continued to dominate the tiebreak winning 7-4 and handing Baylor the win over Texas 4-3.
"We realized that we need the whole team to win. We really grew as a team from our last match and competed on a much higher level than we did (against Texas A&M). We have a foundation now that we can really step off of and build on," head coach Matt Knoll said.
Next up, Baylor will host No. 25 Colorado Friday, April 21. Colorado is also in competition for the Big 12 title with a 4-1 record. The match will begin at 6 p.m. at the Baylor Tennis Center.
