The Oregon men’s tennis team kicked off conference play with a 5-0 loss against the No. 5-ranked USC Trojans.
Oregon came into the Pac-12 opener winning the doubles point in 13 of 16 nonconference matches. The same success didn’t carry over against USC.
The Ducks dropped the doubles point to give USC the early lead. Nick Crystal and Laurens Verboven topped Oregon’s Thomas Laurent and Cormac Clissold, 6-3. The Ducks’ No. 3 pair of Simon Stevens and Akihiro Tanaka also lost, dropping a 6-2 contest to USC’s Rob Bellamy and Jack Jaede.
USC earned the second point of the match when Crystal defeated Stevens, 6-4, 6-1 on Court 2. Akihiro Tanaka didn’t pull out the victory on Court 3 with a 7-6, 6-4 loss to Logan Smith to put the Trojans up 3-0 and one point away from the victory.
The Ducks needed a big time rally to pull out the victory. They hung around — all four remaining matches were pushed to three sets.
However, there was no comeback at Marks Stadium. The Trojans’ Jaede and Thibault Forget won simultaneously over Jayson Amos and Clissold to give USC the 5-0 win.
Laurent’s and Ty Gentry’s matches were unfinished.
With the loss, Amos remains at 90 career singles wins in his Oregon career. His next win will put him in sole possession of first place in program history.
Follow Cole Kundich on Twitter @ckundich