After four straight home losses, a road victory was just what the Oregon men’s tennis team needed. And that is just what it got Saturday in Moscow, Idaho.
The No. 66-ranked Ducks swept doubles competition and picked up five singles victories in a 6-1 rout of Idaho.
Sophomore Oded Teig picked up his 13th singles victory of the season against Idaho’s Eddie Brisbois, 6-3, 6-1. The Oregon ace also teamed with freshman Chris King for a dominating doubles victory against the Vandals’ Chris Faulman and Brock Berry.
King picked up a singles win against Faulman.
Sophomore Jason Menke continued his hot streak with a 6-1, 6-2 win over Fabian Dummett in singles and an 8-3 doubles victory with freshman Buck Mink.
Freshman Martin Pawlowski won for the second time in a Duck uniform since joining the team in early January. The Norrkoping, Sweden native defeated Amod Wakalkar 7-5, 6-3.
Senior David Becker defeated Idaho’s Brad Lum-Tucker, 2-6, 6-4, 6-3.
The lone Idaho point came at the No. 3 singles position, where freshman Buck Mink and the Vandals’ Stephen De Silva battled through a three-set marathon. Mink fell to De Silva after tying the match in the second set, 6-4, 5-7, 6-3.
“I thought we played pretty well for the most part,” Oregon head coach Chris Russell said. “This win was good for us in order to gain some momentum heading into next week’s match because we have a couple of tough ones coming up.”
The Ducks host No. 53 New Mexico State on Friday and No. 64 Pacific on Sunday.
While the men broke their losing streak on the road, the women started one of their own. The No. 53 women dropped two Pacific-10 conference matches to Arizona and Arizona State.
Despite being outscored 13-1 through the two matches, women’s coach Jack Griffin said the Ducks played tough.
“It doesn’t look good losing 7-0, but we played three three-hour singles matches,” Griffin said. “For our second outdoor match of the season, I think we performed extremely well. If we keep this progress up, we’re going to start having some wins against higher-ranked opponents.”
On Saturday, sophomores Jeanette Mattsson, Monika Geiczys and freshman Davina Mendiburu each battled their Sun Devil opponents to the third set before falling.
Geiczys and freshman Courtney Nagle picked up the only win against Arizona State’s No. 1 doubles team, defeating Karin Palme and Adria Engel, 8-6.
On Friday, the Ducks were dealt a 6-1 setback to No. 25 Arizona.
Junior Adeline Arnaud earned the only victory of the day, sweeping the Wildcats’ Laresa Marino, 6-3, 6-0.
The Ducks came close to capturing the doubles point, but lost all three matches by less than three points.
The women have this week off before traveling to Los Angeles for Pac-10 matches against Southern California and UCLA.