Baylor
Florida
Men's Tennis Drops Match to Florida
1/22/2012 12:00:00 AM | Men's Tennis
 6Florida (1-0) Rank: #8 |
|  1BAYLOR (1-1) Rank: #5 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Jan. 22, 2012
WACO, Texas- Baylor's fifth-ranked men's tennis team lost to the eighth-ranked Florida Gators, 6-1, on a windy Sunday afternoon at the Hurd Tennis Center on the campus of Baylor University.
Mate Zsiga, playing at No. 1 singles, tallied the Bears' lone point of the day, the 20th-ranked freshman downed Florida's 69th-ranked Bob van Overbeek. In the first set, Zsiga dropped behind 1-4 but came storming back to win five straight games to take the set 6-4. In the second stanza, Zsiga leapt out to a 3-1 lead, van Overbeek, a junior, countered with a game to make it 3-2 but the rookie took the next three games to seal the victory. The win raised Zsiga's team-best singles record to 15-3, including a 5-3 mark against ranked opponents.
Freshman Diego Galeano saw his first singles action, debuting at No. 2 against Nassim Slilam, a senior. Galeano enrolled at Baylor in January and has been hampered by a knee injury since his arrival. Against Slilam, Galeano led 3-2 in the first set but eventually lost 6-3 and put up a valiant fight in the second set before losing 7-5.
All three of Florida's doubles tandems were ranked No. 41 or better and the Gators swept all three doubles matches. The fourth-ranked team of Nassim Slilam and Billy Federhofer downed Baylor's Marko Krickovic and Robert Verzaal, 8-5, at the No. 1 court. Spencer Newman and Frank Carleton, ranked No. 41, downed Roberto Maytin and Diego Galeano, 8-6, and 25th-ranked Andrew Butz and van Overbeek defeated Kike Grangeiro and Zsiga at No. 3 doubles, 8-5.
"We really don't work on doubles that much and I wasn't surprised that we didn't play that well in doubles, we have several new teams, I feel like that is something that's going to evolve over the course of the year. The singles were pretty disappointing," said head coach Matt Knoll. "We didn't do a very good job of managing the wind today. You're just not going to play very good tennis on a day like today, so your objectives have to change. Now it's about competing and making a lot of balls...I think we competed well but we just didn't hit good balls."
Baylor falls to 1-1 on the season while Florida is now 1-0.
The 2012 ITA Kick-Off Weekend begins next weekend and Baylor will host Florida State, New Mexico State and Rice. The winner of next weekend's competition will earn a trip to Charlottesville, Va., to compete at the ITA National Team Indoor Championships. The Bears will play New Mexico State on Saturday at 3 p.m., while Florida State and will also match up. The two winners will play on Sunday at 3 p.m., for the right to advance to the Indoor Championships.
Players Mentioned
