Friday’s match between Oregon men’s tennis and No. 2 UCLA looked at first to be setting up to be a classic, but the Bruins eventually pulled away with a 4-0 win to advance to the championship match and send the Ducks home.
With no more regular season matches to be played, Oregon (17-9, 4-4 Pac-12) now awaits its fate in the NCAA Tournament. The field will be announced Tuesday.
On Friday, though, all focus was on UCLA (25-2, 8-0) after a big-time, 4-2 win over Cal in the first round of the tournament on Thursday.
With four singles players for the Bruins ranked nationally, the Ducks clearest path to an upset involved winning the doubles point.
Thomas Laurent and Cormac Clissold fell 6-3 to Martin Redlicki and Evan Zhu before the Ducks’ Armando Soemarno and Charles Roberts evened it back up with a 6-4 win of their own.
It came down to the No. 2 pairing of Simon Stevens and Ty Gentry, who have put together quite the 2018 season. The pair kept it close, but fell 7-6, which clinched the doubles point for UCLA.
The Bruins then rolled in singles. Laurent more than held his own against Redlicki, the No. 1 player in the country. The Oregon junior won the first set, 6-4, and was trailing 3-2 in the second set before his match, along with Stevens’ and Gentry’s was abandoned.
Akihiro Tanaka, Riki Oshima and Cormac Clissold weren’t able to gather any momentum in their respective matches, losing in straight matches to clinch the 4-0 sweep for the Bruins and send the Ducks home.
Follow Cole Kundich on Twitter @ckundich