Saturday afternoon’s match between the Utah men’s tennis team and Arizona was an emotional affair as the Utes honored their departing seniors before the start of the team’s final home game at Coach Mike’s Tennis Center. While the acknowledgement of the seniors’ impending departure was undoubtedly bittersweet for players and fans, there were no mixed feelings to be had about the Utes’ dominant performance in capturing its first conference victory all season over the Wildcats.
“I think Senior Day is always a special day. I think everybody wants to do well and send our seniors off the right way,” said head coach Roeland Brateanu. “But from a preparation point of view, it was business as usual.”
While the team’s practices and routines had not changed prior to Saturday’s match, its performance was anything but ordinary.
The match began with an impressive start in doubles play for the Utes, who have notoriously struggled in that facet of the game against conference opponents. In the No. 1 spot, Utah junior Matt Cowley paired up with senior Cedric Willems to cruise by their opponents 6-2. Then freshmen Santiago Sierra and Johan Jonhagen finished a 6-3 thrashing of the Wildcats in the No. 3 spot to win the double point for Utah.
“In doubles, it’s important to get out there and be fired up right from the get-go and grab them by the throat,” said Willems. “That’s what we did. We were aggressive, we were disciplined and we were fired up. We did that because we had a little more incentive on senior day. I know I personally had more incentive, and the other guys wanted to end the losing streak we had going on.”
In the No. 1 match, Willems was unable to duplicate his commanding play in doubles and fell short of Arizona’s 68th-ranked Naoki Takeda 6-2, 6-0. After Willems was defeated, he joined injured seniors Slim Hamza and Justin Archer on the sidelines to watch as the team’s younger players strove to take charge and earn the victory.
Matt Cowley was quick to respond, and after a narrow 7-5 comeback in the first set, he came out firing on all cylinders with a 6-0 shutout in the second set to put the Utes up 2-1.
The Wildcats were not easily dispatched, however, matching Utah point-for-point after defeating Santiago Sierra in the five-spot, 6-0, 6-3, tying the match 2-2. Those would be the only points Arizona could muster, as on the other three courts, the Utes were on a roll.
After taking the first set 6-1, sophomore Parker McGuiness had a solid performance to take the second set 6-4 and put the team up 3-2. Junior Jamey Swiggart on the sixth court won a close battle in the second set to seal the victory for the Utes with a 6-2, 7-5 win in his match.
There was no lack of motivation for the Utes, who had been winless in conference play all season and were in need of some momentum before heading to the Pac-12 Championships. Brateanu said team morale was greatly improved by the well-deserved win and that a conference win on the eve of the championship gave a significant confidence boost to the younger players.
“The guys have been working hard all year long. They have been working hard at practice, and it was nice to finally get the reward,” said Brateanu. “For a lot of our young guys, it’s their first conference win and we’ll have to build on that and get more of them in the future.”
The Utes are currently in Ojai, Calif. preparing for their match Wednesday versus Washington in the opening round of the conference championships. Utah is 1-4 against the Huskies since joining the Pac-12 and lost 4-1 in their last meeting on April 10 in Salt Lake.
For the Utes to be successful in the tournament, they will need to match the intensity and emotion they showed this weekend. Slow starts, failures to win doubles and an inability to finish close sets when ahead have been contributors to the team’s conference struggles this season. If they avoid these issues as they did against Arizona, senior Cedric Willems is confident the Utes can compete in the tournament.
“The last time we played [Washington] we didn’t come out fired up. When we play them this time, that’s something that definitely has to change — we need to show energy right from the get go,” Willems said. “And just be aggressive and make sure we get the doubles point. I think that doubles point is going to be very important. We definitely know we have a chance, it just needs to go our way. Last time we played them there were a couple of matches that could’ve gone our way, but we couldn’t close it out. If they go our way this time, we can beat them.”
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